Hersey's Hiroshima

Our latest journalism assignment was to read Hiroshima, John Hersey’s classic piece still read in high schools around the world, more than 64 years after it was written.

The piece was first published in the Aug. 31, 1946 issue of New Yorker. It was the first and last piece to take up the whole issue of the New Yorker. The piece was extremely well-received. According to the article “Hersey and History”, published in the July 31, 1995 issue of the New Yorker, the magazine sold out within hours and newspapers everywhere published sections of the book in their editorials. ABC even had the piece read aloud over national radio across four successive evenings.

The article was quickly made into a book, as requests for reprints poured into the magazine. The Book of the Month Club sent free copies of the book to its members. By 1995, more than 3.5 million copies had been sold. It’s still on bookstore shelves today - the latest issue was reprinted in 1989 in North America.

The book was criticized by some. It was released as the Cold War was heating up, and some felt because it was so sympathetic to the victims, it was inherently critical of the possible use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Other criticized its dry, journalistic style.

I remember reading the book when I was in school, but I don’t remember much of it, nor do I remember my reaction to reading it the first time.

But this time, I was very engrossed in the book. It impacted me emotionally and made the devastation of the atomic bombings in the Second World War seem more than just history. It humanized these important historical events, grounding me and making me realize how lucky I am and how unlucky others have been.




What worked

What surprised me the most was how Hersey’s objective, reportorial style was able to evoke such emotion in me, the reader. I think this become a major strength of the book.

Hersey doesn’t try to overdo it. He reports the facts, and because of the horrific circumstances (melting eyeballs, skin peeling off peoples’ arms, death and destruction everywhere), the facts are all that is needed.

The understated style defends the book against possible critics who would say Hersey empathizes too much with the reader. But he does not embellish. He does not tell us how horrible a tragedy this was. He just reports what happened, and there’s no arguing with the truth.

What journalists can learn

Therefore I think journalists can learn a lot about style from this book. Hersey’s sentences are all very clear. The book is not difficult to read. Because the reader isn’t struggling through the book, the horror of the story comes through uninhibited.

Another style point — journalists can also learn how to effectively fuse story-telling narrative with reportage. Hersey tells his story through six Hiroshima citizens whose lives were devastated by the bombs. Telling the story through these people keeps the piece from ending up a boring historical account of dates, facts and details. Hersey incorporates those dates, facts and details into six gripping narratives, pulling the reader along through the days following the bombing.



Criticisms

I really have very few criticisms of this piece.

Perhaps what I would like to have seen in the book were some pictures. I think it would have enhanced the reality of the story without taking anything away from the writing. I couldn’t find a reason as to why pictures weren’t published in the New Yorker edition devoted entirely to the piece.

I think they would have helped capture readers’ interest and help them picture the devastation. If I were the editor of the New Yorker and had those images available to me, I would have used them – not necessarily images of the main characters themselves because I think it helps to keep them as symbolic representations, but definitely images of the devastation on a broader scale.

I recently watched a documentary called "Getting Away with Murder" about the investigation into the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

While I think the television documentary and the non-fiction written piece both work well to get across facts, and while both made me emotionally invested in the stories (either out of anger form the TV doc or sadness from Hersey’s piece), I do think the book was missing some context without visual images — context that the television non-fiction medium always provides through video and pictures.

Watching the documentary put me in Lebanon. I got a feel for the climate and how the people lived. While I have seen photos and video from Hiroshima, having them with me in the book while I was reading would have helped me visualize the scenarios in my head.

What is missing

The American point-of-view is missing from Hiroshima, but I’m glad it is. At the time of its release, Americans had heard plenty of the American point-of-view on the bombings. It would have tainted the book for those of us reading it more than 50 years later.

Plus, to those six people, and others in Hiroshima, did it matter to them when the bomb was dropped?

To conclude

I am not a big history buff. I don’t like reading history textbooks or sitting through lectures on World War II. But I do like well-told stories about people. And that is what Hiroshima provides.

(Images from longitudebooks.com fromthevaultradio.org and nowfroth.blogspot.com)