✔ An American journalist went to Hiroshima days after the atomic bomb was dropped ✔ There is no staged drama, it depicts how normal people were killed instantly, or slowly ✔ He's on the side if people who couldn't even cry, a masterpiece in journalism
★★★★★ There is no staged drama, it depicts how normal people were killed instantly leaving nothing but their shadows behind, or slowly with their melting skin or by radiation. His calm words are actually his screams, and obviously he's on the side if people who couldn't even cry.
A very, very important book. It was how I had imagined but the shock was something greater than I had imagined.
An American journalist went to Hiroshima days after the atomic bomb was dropped and he followed lives of 6 people, from that fatal morning for a year. A great piece of journalism as it's rightly recognised as, because there is no staged drama (as if it needs anything to add, it was one of the worst disaster in human history) it depicts how normal people were killed instantly leaving nothing but their shadows behind, or slowly with their melting skin or by radiation. Any sort of emotions are not depicted here, deliberately, because telling it in a calmly manner you offer the horror in the most effective way. And also, how can you depict the feeling of a mother who's carrying her dead baby for 4 days in her arms, looking for her missing husband?
Though it's not staged, though the journalist sticks to the facts and no speculations, and though he's an American, it is clear that he's against this act of evil and he's on the side of the destroyed community of Hiroshima. He's on the side if people who couldn't even cry. His calm words are actually screaming at the horrific act, and it reached millions of American back then, they were not happy with the government who were telling them it was "the right thing".
I read that this book is used in American schools to learn history. If so are we learning anything from it? Are we learning that sadly we are capable of performing such evil act on another human, at this scale, if we wanted to, instantly? Here we are today, it's time we stop targeting the mass, the regular folks and innocent kids, and claiming it "the right thing"
赤パンの本棚 akapan's bookshelf 