Hiroshima, and How Did People

Hiroshima, and how did people live with the devastation afterwards? Some people were dedicated to help others and to ensure that this kind of war will never happen to human kind. John Hersey, born in China to American missionaries in 1914, a journalist and writer published his novel "Hiroshima" in 1946 in the New Yorker Magazine, and released the latest edition in 1985 in memory of the 40th anniversary of the bombing. In his novel Hersey followed 6 people from Hiroshima which survived the bombing. He showed the life and suffering of Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and also of Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, and wrote about the bombing and the aftermath.

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a Jesuit priest, was very close to the center of the impact at August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima. For him life changed from this moment on forward. This is not meant to say that he started with special activities to help people, more that due to radiation illness his health did fade away. While he was following his calling and helped the wounded as good as he could, he made a great impression on all these people and specifically on Mrs. Toshiko Sasaki, which he convinced to follow her calling and become a nun.

In the years after the bombing, Father Kleinsorge worked mostly with the survivors in a very unselfish manner. He put his health aside to help others and he did this for many years. He performed many religious ceremonies such as baptism, weddings, and even religious conversion, in which he met and converted Toshiko Sasaki. He insured himself in 1976 when he fall and was bed ridden since. He then died in 1977 of his illnesses.

Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister with his parish in Hiroshima, is a more cautious and thoughtful man. He, as Father Kleinsorge, also gives all he has to help the survivors after the bombing. He has U.S. Education and visited the U.S. after the bombing to raise money for the victims of the bombing. The reverend did hard work during the after math of the bombing and was dedicated to help the survivors. He later on became a peace activist and traveled to the U.S. To give speeches and have TV appearances and raised money for the surviving victim's treatments.

Mr. Tanimoto is a more complex and complicated person in this novel and shows that he has ties to the U.S. He is acting upon them and this created suspicion to other Japanese people. He is spending so much time traveling to the U.S. that he misses out in the creation of a Japanese Peace movement in which he has no saying. Mr. Tanimoto has spend great time with survivors, yet due to his actions long after the bombing he appears not in good light to most Japanese people. His involvement and steady traveling to the U.S. made him not creditable to the Japanese government and raised suspicion there too.