Another Hiroshima Anniversary: John Hersey's Epic New Yorker Article

(Aug. 6) -- "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."

So begins the 31,000-word article by John Hersey that appeared in the Aug. 31, 1946, issue of the New Yorker. "Hiroshima" was the first and last single story to fill a full issue of the magazine. The editors explained: "The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use."

Today marks the 65th anniversary of that horrible, world-changing day, and Hersey's article -- later turned into a book -- remains a powerful account of the quotidian events in the daily life of six Hiroshima residents leading up to the bombing and the hours, days and months following the devastation. The style is purposefully spare. Hersey later explained, "The flat style was deliberate, and I still think I was right to adopt it. A high literary manner, or a show of passion, would have brought me into the story as a mediator; I wanted to avoid such mediation, so the reader's experience would be as direct as possible."

Since then, there have been many books written about the atomic bomb and the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Hersey's account still chills and remains a must-read. There's no online version available (at least none we could find), but it's readily available from the usual book outlets.