Today is the 66th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan. The radius of total destruction was about one mile; the radius of fires was about 4.4 miles. 70,000-80,000 people, or about a third of population, were killed instantly. About twice that many or more eventually died from the effects.
The best single work you can read about Hiroshima is John Hersey’s Hiroshima
Though Collier’s Weekly had previously published an account of the bombing, the editors of the New Yorker recognized the impact that the article would have by providing a human face to the victims, and devoted the entire August 31, 1946 edition to it. Although the four chapters were intended for serialization in four consecutive issues of the magazine, the editors decided to devote one entire issue only to it. There were no other articles and none of the magazine’s signature cartoons. Readers, who had never before been exposed to the horrors of nuclear war from the perspective of the actual people who lived through it, were quick to pick up copies, and the edition sold out within just a few hours. The article was read in its entirety over the radio and discussed by newspapers. Shortly after it appeared, the Book-of-the-Month Club printed it as a book and distributed it free of charge to all of its members. Only in Japan was the distribution of the book discouraged by the American Occupation Government.
The opening sentence:
“At, exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.”
Modern editions of the book include a chapter, “The Aftermath,” written 40 years later. Hersey’s report, is perhaps, the best piece of wartime journalism ever.
Hersey had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his novel, A Bell of Adano. He was that kind of writer.