In John Hersey's Hiroshima, he based his book upon the one perspective that, the bombing of Hiroshima was an act of inhumanity. What Hersey failed to do was to give the perspective of the Americans. Hersey did not account for the Pearl Harbor bombing of 1941 or the death march in the Japanese Bataan Camps in 1942. Without giving both perspectives, Hersey does not give the reader a fair chance to form their own opinion; instead, the reader is swayed into Hersey's bias beliefs of the event. Hersey's Hiroshima was originally an article written for The New Yorker Magazine in order to help a "reader identity with deceased and survivors of the Hiroshima's bombing" (The New Yorker). He accomplished this by recapping the suffering of the victims of the atomic bomb. He wrote of the burn victims, "their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their checks" (Hersey 51). "On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns of undershirt straps and suspenders" (Hersey 29). He also wrote of the sicknesses that the radiation brought upon the Hiroshima victims, such as vomiting, abnormal growths on their skin and the list goes on. Mrs. Nakamura, "after one stroke, her comb carried with it a whole handful of hair" (Hersey 68). Mr. Tanimoto, "fell suddenly ill with a general malaise weariness, and feverishness" (Hersey 68). Father Kleinsorge, his wounds, "had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed" (Hersey 68). These are only a few of the many effects that the Japanese experienced due to the radiation of the atomic bomb. Just hearing something like this is enough to persuade any reader to believe that America is a heartless country to drop a bomb of this power on an innocent civilization who will now be scared for life. One scientist from the Manhattan Project, the creators of the atomic bomb, in response to Hersey's article in the New Yorker wrote, "I a...
