HIROSHIMA

The first in a planned two-book series offering a comprehensive, moving mix of history, science, and interviews with the last hibakusha (“atomic bomb survivor/victim”).

“What were those tens of thousands of people doing when they died?” So asked Abe Spitzer, B-29 radio operator on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. That question serves as the motivation and epigraph for this deeply researched work by Sheftall, a professor of modern Japanese cultural history at Shizuoka University. The author has lived in Japan since 1987, teaching in the university system and writing about the Japanese American experience during World War II, including a book about the kamikaze, Blossoms in the Wind. He bases this compassionate, wide-ranging work on interviews with hibakusha, witnesses to the first atomic conflagration on Aug. 6, 1945 (only a handful are still alive). Sheftall uses a moment-to-moment approach to situate a diverse cast of characters—including military officials, all-girl volunteer units, students, and families—on that summer day in Hiroshima, a samurai castle town that had become a rail depot and military port, somehow spared from Curtis LeMay’s firebombing campaign over the prior six months. Although there had been sightings of Col. Paul Tibbets’ Enola Gay and its accompanying weather planes that morning, Japanese officials did not sound the air sirens. Sheftall also examines the development of atomic energy and its massively destructive power. “The bombs’ hundred-meter detonation heights…guaranteed that every one of their victims suffered at least a second or so of (literally) searing agony,” writes the author. These grisly details are often painful to read but necessary in order to understand how survivors sought aid, cremated the dead, and built a lasting peace memorial. Significantly, Sheftall writes about the overlooked Korean and Taiwanese survivors and the guilt trauma of survivors afterward.

A major contribution to our understanding of and reckoning with a catastrophic event.