[conorh]

There is a book named Hiroshima by John Hersey about the aftermath of the bomb dropping on Hiroshima. It is interviews with survivors and tells the story in detail through their eyes in story form; the immediate effect, the days after and the lasting impact. It was, for me, a difficult book to read because of just how horrific the suffering was that people went through, but I think it is one of those books that everyone should read once just to get some idea of how terrible the after effects of nuclear war can be.

[rippercushions]

It was first published by the New Yorker and it's available online:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

[conorh]

The book is updated with a section that follows up 40 years later. I think it is worth getting the book for that part as it talks more about the lasting effects and even the societal stigma that the survivors went through.

[onecommentman]

If you are doing a deep dive into Hersey’s article, you should read it in the context it was written, for an American audience (generally readers/subscribers of the New Yorker magazine) who had just directly and personally survived the struggles, and sometimes the horrors, of WWII.

The best way to simulate that in the 2020s is to read “Hiroshima” as the last article (of 70) in the compilation The New Yorker Book of War Pieces, 1947 republished 1988. It’s out of print, but affordably available in the used book market. Something about being embedded in truly major world events brings out the best in writers, so all 70 magazine articles are easy reads of sometimes difficult content. By the time you reach “Hiroshima” after 500+ pages of WWII articles starting in London 1939, you will have gained a bit of the mindset of the educated war-weary-but-victorious 1946 American reader for which the essay was written. And you will read the essay a bit differently.

[edited for Hersey, not Hershey…idiot autocorrect…]

[rodface]

It has been a long time since I’ve been so completely unable to stop reading a piece. Broke into tears several times. So awful. Thank you.