Hiroshima (book) facts for kids

Hiroshima (ISBN: 0-679-72103-7) is a magazine article written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey that appeared in The New Yorker in August 1946, one year after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The article was soon made into a book. It described how the bombing affected the lives of six individuals:

• Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto: a Methodist minister educated in the United States at Emory University was 3,500 yards from the center of the explosion;
• Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura: a war widow and seamstress, the mother of three young children was 1350 yards from the center of the explosion;
• Dr. Masakazu Fujii: a prosperous doctor and owner of a private hospital was 1550 yards from the center of the explosion;
• Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge (Makoto Takakura): a Jesuit priest stationed in the city was 1400 yards from the center of the explosion;
• Dr. Terufumi Sasaki: a young doctor at the Red Cross hospital was 1650 yards from the center of the explosion; and
• Miss Toshiko Sasaki (Sister Dominique Sasaki): A clerk at the East Asia Tin Works (no relation to Terufumi Sasaki) was 1600 yards from the center of the explosion.

Each account is followed by a brief statement describing how close each person was to the center of the blast.

Related pages

• Nuclear or Not?
• Nuclear disasters

Images for kids

• 

  John Hersey

• 

  Toshiko Sasaki (Sister Dominique Sasaki)