“In an emergency like this,” he said,
as if he were reciting from a manual, “the first task is to help
as many as possible—to save as many lives as possible. There is no
hope for the heavily wounded. They will die. We can’t bother with
them.”
See Important Quotations Explained
Summary
On the evening of August 6, a naval
ship travels up and down the rivers of Hiroshima, telling people
to be patient and wait for further help. It is the first official
word about any aid and it brings much joy to those suffering in
Asano Park.
A half-dozen priests from the Novitiate, another mission
about three miles away, arrive at Asano Park with stretchers for
Father LaSalle and Father Schiffer. Father Kleinsorge is almost
too ill to move, but he finds a few working faucets nearby and brings
water to the injured in the park. He stumbles upon a group of twenty
soldiers in the woods, so terribly burned that their mouths are
swollen up and their eyes melted. He promises them help that he
knows will never come. Awaiting the return of the other priests,
he also comforts the Kataoka children, a thirteen-year-old girl
and her five-year-old brother, who believe their mother to be dead.
The priests finally return at noon the next day to help Mrs. Nakamura
and her children go to the Novitiate, while Kleinsorge returns to
the city to file a claim with the police. The government broadcasts
via the radio that they believe a new type of bomb was used in Hiroshima,
but few of the survivors in Hiroshima hear the broadcast.
As Mr. Tanimoto paddles his boat along the river, he
finds more and more injured people on the riverbanks and in the
river itself. He helps rescue two young girls, both badly burned,
who have been standing in the river shivering. One dies soon after
she reaches the park. He also takes his boat to help move approximately
twenty men and women who lie wounded on a sandpit, unable to move
and in danger of drowning in the rising tide. Many of them are so severely
burned that their skin comes off as he carries them in his hands.
Unfortunately, most of his efforts are for naught. He awakens after
a short rest to discover that he has not moved them high enough
and that many have been carried away or drowned by the tide after
all. Completely exasperated, he finally goes to a medical station
on the East Parade Ground, another supposedly safe area, where he
reproaches a doctor for not helping those in Asano Park. The already
overburdened doctor tells him that he is helping those with less
serious wounds because the heavily wounded will die anyway.
No one seems more horrified than Dr. Sasaki, who does
his best to stem the rising number of corpses at the Red Cross Hospital.
He works for nineteen straight hours as the number of bodies around him
piles up—there is nobody to take the corpses away—then manages an
hour of sleep before he is woken up again. He works straight through
the next three days, and does not return home until August 8 to
assure his mother that he is alive. Dr. Fujii, meanwhile, is still too
hurt to help anyone but himself and lies in pain on the floor of his
parents’ roofless house. Eventually he makes it to a friend’s house
outside of the city, where he is visited by Father Cieslik.
Miss Sasaki lies abandoned and helpless for two days
and two nights under her makeshift lean-to in the courtyard of the
tin works factory. On August 8 some friends
find her and tell her that her mother, father, and baby brother
are all presumed dead. Finally she is taken to a series of hospitals,
where she hears doctors discuss whether to amputate her leg or not.
It turns out to be badly fractured but not gangrenous, and eventually
she arrives at a military hospital on the island of Ninoshima.
A few days after the bombing, right about the time a
second bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, the citizens of Hiroshima begin
to comprehend the extent of the damage and learn the fates of their missing
friends and relatives. The Nakamuras stay in the Novitiate, alive
but still weak with illness. Toshio Nakamura, Mrs. Nakamura’s ten-year-old
son, begins to have nightmares about his idol Hideo Osaki, who was
burned alive in the factory where he worked. Soon after, Mrs. Nakamura
discovers that her mother, brother, and older sister are all dead.
Mr. Tanimoto is called to the aide of Mr. Tanaka, a former enemy,
who lies dying in a shelter. Once a fervent hater of Christianity,
the man listens to Mr. Tanimoto read a psalm to him as he dies.
Amid all of the suffering, some families are reunited, including
the Kataoka children and their mother.
In the week after the blast the doctors are still completely
unable to cope with the thousands who are wounded. On August 11 Miss Sasaki
is evacuated from the island military hospital and put on the deck
of a ship. There, in the heat of the sun, the infection in her leg grows
worse. At the Red Cross Hospital, the doctors are just beginning
to get control of the number of dead bodies, cremating the corpses
and stuffing the ashes into X-ray envelopes. The envelopes are labeled
and stacked in a makeshift shrine in a hospital room.
On the morning of August 15, Japanese
citizens tune in as Emperor Tenno reads the news over the radio:
Japan has surrendered unconditionally, and the war is over.
Analysis
Chapter Three describes the general mood of confusion
of the people of Hiroshima—they wonder what has happened and what
to do next. Despite the broadcast over the radio that a new type
of bomb has been used, most citizens still have no idea what has
happened. The simplistic rumors of what might have caused the explosion
contrast cruelly with the hard-to-imagine technological advancement of
the atomic bomb. The citizens’ ignorance indicates Japan’s cultural
isolation from the rest of the world at that time— it was decades
behind the United States in industry and technology.
While Chapters One and Two deal with the immediate shock
and confusion that follows the explosion, Chapter Three forces us
to confront the stark reality of what has happened to thousands
of people. It bears witness to some of the most gruesome effects
of the bomb, with vivid accounts such as when Mr. Tanimoto tries
to help a woman and gets a handful of her burnt flesh, and when
Father Kleinsorge comes across the soldiers with melted eyes.
Hersey’s narrative shows how the extensive damage caused
by the bomb compromises the victims’ sense of their own humanity. We
encounter nameless, suffering victims everywhere. The hospitals are
overwhelmed by corpses, and doctors can only treat the lightly wounded,
choosing between displaying compassion for the worst victims and
the ruthlessly economical decision to help only those who can actually
be saved. Miss Sasaki does not even speak with the two severely
wounded people with whom she shares the shelter; they are so badly
hurt that they barely recognize one another’s common humanity. When
Mr. Tanimoto is carrying the horrifically wounded people he tells
himself over and over, “These are human beings,” reminding us as
well as himself. To critics of Hersey who feel that his attitude
toward his subjects was too distant and amoral, we might argue that
the terrifying images in this chapter speak for themselves.
Hersey explores both the physical and psychological wounds caused
by the bomb. Toshio Nakamura has nightmares about his friend’s death;
Mr. Fukai, the man who had to be dragged from the mission house,
probably threw himself into the flames; and Mrs. Kamai still clutches
her dead baby in her arms, searching in vain for her husband. Since
Hersey’s account is primarily concerned with those who escape the
explosion relatively intact, both mentally and physically, these
small sketches of minor characters are important in establishing
the emotional wreckage left by the bomb.
While the vivid descriptions of human tragedy are likely
to provoke sympathy and outrage among readers, some people have
criticized Hersey for not appearing outraged enough at the atrocities.
At the end of the chapter, Hersey quotes Mr. Tanimoto’s letter to
an American friend, in which Mr. Tanimoto writes about the “great sacrifice”
of the Japanese on behalf of an “everlasting peace of the world.”
The letter makes the Japanese capitulation seem like a proud moment
for both Japanese and Americans alike. Many historians have pointed
to the Japanese need to save face as a major reason for the bomb’s
efficiency, one that was certainly not lost on President Truman:
the bomb allowed the Japanese to surrender but still keep their
pride. Were Hersey to end the book with this information, the implication
would be that there was nothing wrong with America’s decision to
drop the bomb.
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