John Hersey's Hiroshima tells the story of the first atomic explosion in Hiroshima, Japan. I hope we all learned about this and WWII in school...But the history books don't detail the skin slipping off of victims' hands like gloves, dead babies crazily cradled by terrified parents, people who drowned because they were too burnt to move out of floods. While reading, I must have made a color wheel of faces for different shades of horror. Sometimes I just couldn't keep reading.
Hersey doesn't get poetic about any of the facts. His straight reporting only foils the bizarre tragedy, apparent randomness of survival from the bombing and following diseases, and the loss. So much loss.
Its an overwhelming story that I hardly want to remember. That's the point, if there really is any. To remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment