Hiroshima

Hiroshima is filled with the descriptions of six main characters and how they managed to get by during devastating times in Hiroshima. It begins by telling what each of the six characters is doing at the exact moment the bomb was dropped. It then goes into how they were affected by it, and how a few of them assisted the wounded and the ill.

Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk at The East Asia Tin Works Factory had just sat down for a break from her work at the office and was about to converse with one of her co-workers. At the instant the bomb was dropped bookcases crashed behind her and fell on her leg, crushing it. Ms. Sasaki fell unconscious

Dr. Masakazu Fujii worked a physician. He was resting on the porch of the clinic before the bomb. The impact of the bomb caused him to fly into the river by his porch and destroyed his clinic, which flew into the water as well. He was lodged between two pieces of wood lying on his chest. Luckily his head was above the water.

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura was the widow with three children. She was watching the neighbor next door to her tear down his house in order to make a fire escape means. When the bomb flashed and hit she was tossed and rubble covered her. She finally freed herself from the junk and went to fetch her children who were buried but unharmed.

Father Kleinsorge was a thirty-eight year old German missionary priest. He was reading in his room wearing nothing but his underwear. When Father Kleinsorge first saw the flash he was frightened, panicked and in some way that he was unable to account for, ended up in the vegetable garden walking without a certain destination. He was also bleeding from some minute cuts.

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, no relation to Ms. Sasaki, was a surgeon at Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. He was carrying a blood sample to his laboratory when the bomb hit. He was nearly struck by the bomb but amazingly it missed him by a hair. The bomb caused severe damage to many of the patience, and people working there. He helped to nurse the wounded, and hurt people in the hospital since he was the only one unharmed.

The Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto helped his friend move furniture from the city in the morning. The bomb struck when he and his friend got to their destination. Parts of their house fell upon him but he was fine.

All six of the main characters thought that the damage caused by the bomb was localized but in actuality the entire city was affected. People everywhere were wounded, terribly burned and some even trapped under building but hardly anyone stopped to help. Eventually the burns of the mass of people began to give off a terrible rankness. People were also vomiting. They