There, in the tin factory, in the first
moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.
See Important Quotations Explained
Summary
Chapter One introduces the six main characters of the
book, describing their activities in the minutes or hours before
the explosion. On the morning of August 6, 1945,
all of the characters are either engaged in their everyday activities
or preparing for a possible B-29 raid. Unlike
many other cities in Japan, Hiroshima has been spared any raids
thus far in the war, and there are rumors that America has saved
“something special” for the city.
The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who was educated in America,
is especially anxious. He has recently volunteered to organize air-raid
defenses, in part to prove his loyalty to Japan. When the bomb strikes,
Mr. Tanimoto is helping a friend move some of his daughter’s belongings
to a house outside of the city center. They are about two miles
away from the center of the blast, but the bomb still levels the
house as Mr. Tanimoto takes cover in a rock garden.
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, is tired from
repeatedly taking her three young children to a safe area in response
to every warning. When the air-raid siren sounds early in the morning, Mrs.
Nakamura confers with a neighbor and decides to stay home and let
her children sleep unless she hears a more urgent warning. When
the bomb strikes about three-quarters of a mile from her house,
she is watching her neighbor tear down his own home in order to
help clear fire lanes. We learn in Chapter Two that this man is
killed instantly.
Dr. Masakazu Fujii runs a prosperous private hospital
overlooking a river. Because of the difficulty of evacuating his
patients in the event of an air raid, he has turned away all but
two patients. On the day of the explosion, he wakes up much earlier
than usual to accompany a friend to the train station. As a result,
when he returns, he has the leisure time to sit on a porch reading
the paper in his underwear. When the bomb strikes, the blast topples
the whole clinic, sending it and Dr. Fujii into the water.
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge is a German Jesuit priest stationed
at a mission house in Hiroshima. Recently weakened by diarrhea from the
wretched wartime rations, he is resting and reading a magazine in
his room when the bomb strikes. The mission house, which has been
double-braced for earthquakes, does not topple, and Kleinsorge and
his fellow priests survive.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki is an idealistic twenty-five-year-old
surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital. By two strokes of luck, Dr. Sasaki
manages to survive the blast unscathed. First, that morning he had
taken an earlier train than usual because he could not sleep—based
on the location and timing of the blast, he would have been killed
on his normal train. Second, when the bomb hits, he is safe standing
one step away from an open window. He is the only doctor in the
hospital who is uninjured, and he immediately goes about binding
the wounds of those around him.
Miss Toshiko Sasaki is a twenty-year-old clerk at the
East Asia Tin Works, working to support her brother and parents.
She is sitting in her office when the bomb strikes. The blast topples
a bookcase on top of her, crushing her leg, and she loses consciousness.
Analysis
Chapter One is an introduction to the characters described
in Hiroshima, providing a window into the normal
lives of each in the hours leading up to the explosion. There are
elements of the ordinary in each description, but there is also
a fair amount of wartime anxiety and disruption. Everyone’s lives
are touched by the war, even in the most indirect ways. Hersey shows
how wartime hardship is woven into every character’s daily existence:
Mrs. Nakamura, for example, has been trudging up to a safe area
every night with her children, and the siren warnings have lost
much meaning for her. Many people, it seems, are both anxious and
unconcerned at the same time.
The other common element in each character’s story is
the utter confusion generated by the blast. Many people expect to
hear the sound of approaching planes or the warnings or the air-raid
sirens, but nobody hears anything before the bomb is dropped. The
first moment is, as Hersey describes it, a “noiseless flash,” astoundingly bright
and powerful, toppling and imploding buildings before anyone even
hears a sound. Most of the people who survive are just lucky to
be in a safe place at the right time. Hersey refrains from making
explicit moral judgments, but it is difficult to miss the fact that
the confusion and chaos that the citizens of Hiroshima undergo reflect
the United States’s deliberate decision not to warn the civilians
in Hiroshima about the imminent bomb attack.
Hersey’s narrative style in Chapter One, which he continues
to use throughout the book, is to crosscut the stories of his characters at
a single moment in time—in this case, at the moment the bomb strikes.
It is a short chapter, scarce on details, but the technique heightens
the dramatic effect. Rather than learn a lot about each character’s
life, we learn only those details that are most relevant to their
state of mind on the morning of August 6th.
We also learn important details that will come up later in the book.
Such minor characters as Mr. Tanaka, for example, a man who criticizes
Mr. Tanimoto for his American ties, become more important later
on.
The last sentence of Chapter One gives us a sense of
the literary power of Hersey’s narrative: “There, in the tin factory,
in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed
by books.” Hersey juxtaposes elements on the human scale—a falling
shelf filled with books—with an invention beyond our comprehension. The
author thereby suggests that technologies bring consequences beyond
the scope of our imagination. However, Hersey shows that ironically,
even books, the symbols of tradition, knowledge, and education,
can be dangerous. He leaves the reader with a mixture of horror,
disbelief, and a kind of macabre irony about the unworldly power
of such a weapon.
payment page
