Hiroshima

Content Warning: The source text contains graphic descriptions of the injuries and illness caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. Some of these descriptions are presented in this section to reflect the book’s content and intent.

Hiroshima begins “[a]t exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima” (1). In a short opening section of a single paragraph, Hersey introduces each of his six characters. He explains what each person had done that morning, from first getting up until the moment the bomb hit. The chapter covers the early morning of August 6.

Hersey begins with Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister who had studied theology in the United States. Since Hiroshima was one of the next cities expected to be bombed, Tanimoto’s wife and children spent nights in a town to the north. Tanimoto was alone that morning. He was in the process of moving furniture and other items to the house of a friend in Koi, a suburb two miles out of the city center, to protect his church’s property from damage. A friend, Mr. Matsuo, had helped him move the church’s piano, and Tanimoto was returning the favor by helping Matsuo move some things.