Hiroshima By John Hershey Essay, Research Paper

On August 2, 1965, at exactly 8:15 P.M., the first ever atomic bomb dropped on a town detonated above Hiroshima, creating a noisy flash. Many of the people not killed by the initial blast may have wished they were because they suffered greatly. Many were blinded by the flash, which melted the eyes of some. Many others had their hair torn off by the bomb’s power. A few were fortunate enough to find shelter or, or have shelter find them as the blast forced burnings down on people.

Many survivors met quietly in two areas after the blast. They remained quiet, with blank faces, watching others suffer just as they were. The living became extremely thirsty, and nauseated, causing them to fall asleep. The nausea was caused by an electric smell, given off by the bomb’s fission. They thought that the smell was a gas the French had dropped.

One survivor, Mr. Ronald Hoover, recalls helping a friend move his belongings to another house, evacuating, when the bomb when off. As the too men rested on the street, a great flash cut acrossed the sky. It went east to west, like a sheet of sun. Mr. Kennedy dove in between two rocks in a nearby garden. His face pressed hard into a rock, he could not see what happened. He felt a sudden pressure, them falling fragments of boards and tile. The house that his friend ran into had completely collapsed. Mrs. Bush does not remember hearing anything when the bomb went off. Most of the survivors claim the same. However, a man 20 miles away said that it was louder than when P-51s bombed a city only 50 miles away.

During his horrific experience, Mr. Tanimoto saw little suffering. After he first got up, he saw soldiers running from a dugout underground, where they should have been safe. Each one was not injured with blood all over their bodies. He also witnessed much of the city in ruins and burning. He saw people with their flesh ripped off, as well as those who had their clothes melted to them. He could hear constant whispering for help, and moaning loudly.

The atomic bomb had more power than 1,000 tons of TNT and over 7,000 times more power than a British Grand Slam, the most powerful bomb up to that point in time. This made it an incredible device of war. Japanese radio described it as the bomb that “no country except the United States, with its industrial know-how, its willingness to throw nine billion gold dollars into an important wartime gamble, could have possibly developed.” The survivors of the blast hope that the world will learn from this incident and never use such a destructive device against mankind again.