Hiroshima

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 sleepÐ'--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. Miss Toshiko Sasaki is a twenty-year-old clerk at the East Asia Tin Works, working to support her brother and parents. She is sitting in her office when the bomb strikes. The blast topples a bookcase on top of her, crushing her leg, and she loses consciousness.

At first Mr. Tanimoto believes that the damage is limited to the area around him, but he climbs to get a view and realizes the extent of the destruction. A cloud of smoke, dust, and heat has arisen from the center of the city, and the wind is rapidly spreading the fire. He runs toward the center of the city in a frantic search for his wife and baby daughter, seeing hundreds of severely injured and burned people traveling in the opposite direction. As he runs, he passes ruins of buildings, where he hears people cry for help from under the rubble of wrecked houses. Mr. Tanimoto is ashamed that he is not injured as well and often asks the pardon of people whom he passes. Miraculously, he finds his wife with the baby, both unhurt, while he is running through the streets.

Mrs. Nakamura digs her three children out of the rubble of her house and discovers that they are unharmed. She gathers them up and then deposits her sewing machineÐ'--her sole means of livelihoodÐ'--into a cement water tank. At a neighbor's suggestion they head for Asano Park, an estate on the outskirts of the city designated as an evacuation area, while passing many people trapped in fallen buildings.

At the mission house, Father Kleinsorge is slightly injured, but one of the other priests, Father Schiffer, is bleeding from the head and requires immediate medical attention. While some of the other priests attempt to take the man to a doctor and dig victims out from nearby houses, Father Kleinsorge collects some of his belongings. Although his quarters are in total disarray, he finds that his papier-mÐ"ÑžchÐ"© suitcase, which contains some of his important papers and money, is completely unscratched and stands upright in the doorway. Father Kleinsorge believes God saved it from the wreckage. The other priests are unable to reach a doctor because of the fire, and so the group heads for Asano Park. Mr. Fukai, the secretary of the diocese, is unwilling to leave the mission house, and Father Kleinsorge must forcefully carry him on his back along the road. Father Kleinsorge, still weakened from diarrhea, cannot carry his burden for long, and when he stumbles, Mr. Fukai runs back into the fire, never to be seen again.

Both Dr. Sasaki and Dr. Fujii survive the blast, but Dr. Fujii is hurt and his clinic has completely collapsed, killing four nurses and his only two patients. As the fire spreads, he and many others take refuge in the river. Dr. Sasaki is one of the few doctors in all of Hiroshima who have not been killed or injured. About 10,000 wounded people crowd into and outside of his hospital, which has only 600 beds. Wearing someone else's glasses and completely confused, Dr. Sasaki works frantically to help as many of the badly wounded patients as he can. Dr. Fujii later makes his way to his parents' house in the suburbs. He is puzzled about what weapon could have caused such destruction.

Miss Sasaki, at the tin works factory, has been severely injuredÐ'--her leg is so badly broken below the knee that she believes it has been cut off. For a long time, she is pinned below the bookcase, barely conscious, until she is finally pulled from the wreckage and put under a makeshift shelter in the company of two severely injured people.

Asano Park survives the explosion relatively intact, and serves for a time as a safe haven for many of the citizens of Hiroshima, who lay suffering in silence. Many, including Mrs. Nakamura and her children, drink river water to quell their burning thirst, and they spend the rest of the day vomiting by the riverbanks as a result. The spreading fire soon threatens the park, and the overcrowding of the riverbanks forces a number of people into the river to drown.