Class notes
Required reading:
Hersey, Hiroshima
Required viewing:
FDR and The Depression, World War II
Written assessment:
Quiz 9
Written assignment due:
web response paragraph
Web paragraph prompt:
Hersey tells the stories of six people affected by the first military use of the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima in August 1945. His story, published in August 1946, was for many Americans the first detailed account of the effects of the atom bomb explosion from the point of view of the inhabitants of Hiroshima.
Hersey tells his story in a relatively objective (or at least non-sensational) style - he records facts and incidents, and describes scenes, but he does not typically use exaggerated language in doing so. He also does not "preach" - he does not tell his readers what to think about the decision to use an atomic bomb.
Why might Hersey have chosen to tell this story, in this way? How might you expect his readers in 1946 to react to his story?
12 comments:
I think that Hersey's style is very efficient. The event was so catastrophical that he did not have to tell the reader how bad it was. He just used pure facts and descriptions instead of preaching. All the pain, helplessness and disillusion was written between the lines.
I think this book had to be shocking for ordinary Americans. The war propaganda pictured Japanese as bloodthirsty beasts who must be terminated. People did not realize that it was not attack against soldiers like kamikadze; but the extermination of one city. When they read the book the found out that the characters of victims and survived are similar to the them therefore it created some kind of solidarity.
I think the main reason that john Hersey chose to write this piece is that there have been no such destructive weapons in human history. Hiroshima became the first victim of the first atomic weapon. Although, this book tries to tell stories in unbiased way, the bomb itself considered as inhumane by many and way that Hersey describes survived victims is realistic, which means, the description includes a lot of cruelty. Normally, when people see something that is cruel and inhumane, they feel angry to those who used atomic weapon and sympathy for victims.
In terms of selection of victims, most of them are illegitimate targets, including doctors and priest, this will amplifying the sympathetic feeling of readers. However, it can be differ, those families, which one or several members of family were participating in war, could have different feelings that ‘although this is hard to read but one of my family members could have been killed if they progress war without the bomb’. It is all relevant view.
John Hersey at first published "Hiroshima" as an article in the New Yorker and afterwords he edited it into a book.
Since it was, in it origins an article, I think that he was one of the first people to have access to such important information on such an important and world wide know event.For most people these articles were terrifying, shocking but interesting news. By reading these articles, and afterwords the book, people could get a glance of how much people of Hiroshima suffered, and of how much damage and despair these atomic attacks brought them but they couldn't do much to change what has happened.
Sanja
Hersey the author of a historical narrative about Hiroshima tragedy picked his characters for a reason. On one hand they were ordinary people, residents of Hiroshima, on the other these other hand doctors and priests are people who face tragedy by heavily interacting with peoples “souls and bodies”.
Many other historians and writers are struggling to interpret events without bias. Fro example, Tompkins are very well explains some difficulties about perspectivism. Hersey has tried to report the situation and stories of these people how it was without brining his perspective in to account. The tragedy of Hiroshima is horrifying by itself and there is no need in sensational style. In that time American media was heavily using sensational language to narrating about Perl Harbor attack and raise hate and convince American society to go to the war. This hate was raised not only against some particular state or government but against people as well. That might be one of the reasons why Hersey tried to explain that ordinary people in most cases has nothing to do with aggressive actions of the state and tried to avoid raising hate feelings towards any nation. “Yes, people of Hiroshima died manly in the atomic bombing, believing that it was for emperor sake” (p.117)
The reason why John Hersey chose to write his book in the style where he does not say if it was wrong or right to use atomic bomb is that it was not common for writers to write something without deciding the side you are on. Therefore when people see something they are not used to they are more likely to be shocked and astonished. John Hersey wrote this book to make Americans decide on their own weather it is right or not to use such a weapon of destruction. By usage of facts and not making his own conclusions he supports Americans to think. In my opinion he wrote it in this way, because I do not consider Hiroshima as a equivalent revenge of Americans, so many innocent folks died there, that is why he used the style he used, did not want to make Japanesse victims but Americans.
John Hersey lets the six survivors tell the story of the Hiroshima tragedy. He actually reports on what they did at the time the bomb dropped and how they dealt with it afterwards. He is trying to look as objective as possible to make the book believable. The newspapers then were full of sensational stories, so when he writes differently it makes people believe.
I thing that one of the reasons why John Hersey choose this style is because the book was first published in a newspaper and so it was supposed to be an objective report. He tried to give Americans the information and also the insight into what had happened. He chose the survivors among ordinary (clerk, Miss Toshiko) people as well as people with higher education (Dr. Masakazu Fujii)… I think he did this so that anyone could identify oneself with some characters in his book and to make Americans sympathize with the Japanese victims.
In my opinion, the reason why Hersey decided to write the story in a clear-eyed report is that he himself doesn’t know what stand to take regarding Hiroshima and neither does the American people. On the one hand, there was an urgent need to stop Japanese perpetual offences. It was very hard, nearly impossible to stop Japanese soldiers in their headless kamikaze strikes; given by their cultural value – pride and face saving principles. Thus, the atomic bomb seems like the only solution of the situation. On the other hand, thousands of innocent people were killed, so consequently human conscience is definitely involved.
The writing style that Hersey used gave his audience a feeling they were reading an unbiased piece of report that informed them about what the bomb had caused there. The interpretation of the information is then up to each individual. Any other kind of writing either praising or criticizing the event would appeal to be part of a propaganda aiming at manipulating g people’s perception.
Generally, I guess, there was a wave of solidarity that rose among people. Reporting stories of people who had to directly face the disaster made people to think of the bombing in the human point of view, not in the context of the war.
Hersey did amazing job in his work. He wrote it in the view of just ordinary people and their families. He describes it rather realistically without too many emotions directly expressed. But when the reader reads what “Hiroshimans” did, it is very touching and evokes lot of feelings. He might have written it in this way because the realistic picture is most efficient in this case. He also stays objective, does not tell much of political background and maybe it was because people were sick of policy at that time, tired of sensations and fed up with newspaper reports. Also including policy would be a delicate matter so early after the end of the war.
As mentioned if his story was first report from the Japanese side. People might eventually see the effects of war on other people. For Americans, the saw returning soldiers as well as all around the Europe, everyone was counting their deaths. It offers a new kind of story, picture of innocent civilians being hit by a weapon never used on humans in the history of a mankind. So for some people it must have been really shocking and it might also persuade them to change some of their life values.
Probably 1946 was too early for post-war America to have articles that were preaching against the country's deeds and criticizing its military decisions. Rather, the author tried to imply the effect of destruction and annihilation with pure facts, rather than sentiment, because this sentiment would mean criticizing own government and the own country and that would have been especially politically incorrect right after the war.
However, I still think that publication of such an article was a very progressive thing in America. In a country like Soviet Union, for example, this would never happen. Such articles and publications showed that nothing, at least on the level of facts and figures, was meant to be left hidden from general public
If we remember the previous academics and their works, "the problem of history" may be the fact that some historians extensively use their point of views. Hersey's Hiroshima is undoubtedly the objective description of 6th August and the consequences of atomic explosion. This is a good point, when authors take a natural position and write history based on actual facts and figures. Hersey showed the real side of war, without hints and suggestions. He said - "this is what actually happened" and let you world decide and make conclusion.
This may be a good example of unbiased story telling.
The amazing description of on what the life resembled for those who has worried a nuclear attack. It is concentrated on the moral problems connected with war. Work which is written in simple prose combines the deep analysis of a question with the novelist attention to a descriptive part. Recreates all experience of victims of the points of view, beginning fifteen minutes before explosion, and the covering period directly after that. Six whose stories Hersey tells, it is probable, valid not the representative of an average of Hiroshima of the supporter. Influence on readers in my opinion was widely interested and huge, and it has got more and more inevitably as the story told not from the point of view of a drawing and the diagramme, but from the point of view of simple people.
The author wrote Hiroshima for the American public, at a time when the Japanese were disliked because of their attacks on Hawaii. It would not have been smart to write his writing in a pro Japanese way, because it would have attracted fewer readers since the Americans´ anger on the Japanese would not allow any compassion. For that reason he narrates the horror of Hiroshima in a neutral way to appeal pity for the Japanese. He exemplifies the destinies of 6 innocent people, a doctor, a priest a mother, etc. At first he shows an extract from their everyday life to show us that they are regular people that could also be Americans, and have nothing to war. They are innocent and as the authors describes those events very emotionless it becomes even clearer that they are involved in something they are not guilty of and do not want to be part of. This should open the Americans eyes that the people mentioned in the reading could also be them, and that dropping the bomb was a mistake.
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