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.
