"Shikata Ga-nai; It Can't Be Helped" Welcome to August 6, 1945. In a final attempt to end World War II, the United States of America drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a major industrial and military center. Temperatures are more sweltering than the surface of the sun. Light is resplendent. Air is thick and heavy with an enveloping radiation. John Hershey informs us of the experiences of six people that survived the planets’ first nuclear explosion in Hiroshima. Hiroshima begins by characterizing the situations of the six individuals just before and at the moment of the explosion that changed history. The book first introduces Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a personnel clerk in the East Asia Tin works, who had just turned to chat with her friend during a rest from work. Next, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a doctor at a private hospital, was introduced as relaxing on his clinic’s porch and reading the daily newspaper, a stone’s throw away from a calm river. At the same time, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura was watching her next door neighbor, who was making way for a larger fire escape route, through her kitchen window. Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest, was lying on a couch in his room reading a magazine, corresponding with the actions of Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a surgeon who was walking down a hospital corridor carrying blood specimens. Finally, Rev. Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, the pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, was in the process of tiredly moving the belongings of his house of worship. Unbeknownst to these innocent civilians as they were carrying out their daily tasks, a plane called the Enola Gay silently passed unnoticed overhead and quietly dropped the world’s deadliest bomb that altered the future. A noiseless flash of light was the only warning they received, a split-second which gave them just enough time to turn their heads. The bomb detonated at ground zero, and in seconds, hell unlike any other ki...
