Hiroshima

The final chapter covers the lives of the six characters from 1946 to 1985, with an emphasis on how their lives were impacted by the bomb, especially the evolution of their thoughts and actions. Hersey intersperses their stories with later information about radiation sickness and the development of nuclear weapons worldwide. Hersey begins with Mrs. Nakamura, who had her sewing machine repaired to take on tailoring jobs. When medical expenses forced her to sell it, she delivered bread and sold fish door-to-door, collected fees for newspaper subscriptions, and finally took a job in a factory packaging mothballs. The last became a steady job at which she worked for 13 years; she became popular among the workers as a beloved “auntie” figure.

The survivors of the bomb were called hibakusha in Japanese, meaning “explosion-affected persons” (92). Hersey explains that survivors received no special health benefits until 1955. A law then passed that provided free health care to hibakusha, and later a monthly cash stipend. At first Nakamura did not take advantage of this, as she—like many hibakusha—avoided political aspects of the bombing, but later she acquiesced. She retired from her factory job in 1966 and took up folk dancing and embroidery as hobbies. None of her three children showed serious effects of the bombing.

Dr. Sasaki continued working at the Red Cross Hospital for another five years after 1946, mostly removing keloid scars that grew from radiation sickness. Then he opened a clinic in his hometown, first in the house of his wife’s parents and later in a two-story building with 19 beds. In 1963, an image on a physical exam turned up a shadow on his left lung. He underwent a biopsy and then had his whole lung removed. A few hours later, a ligature holding one of his blood vessels broke and he experienced internal bleeding for almost a week. His family gathered as he weakened; he said goodbye “and died. Or, rather, he thought he died” (106). He recovered and from then on dedicated himself to helping others and being kind. He saw that event as even more significant than the bombing. In 1971, his wife died. Lonely and distraught, he worked harder than ever. He shifted focus to treating the elderly, building a whole new facility for that purpose. As of 1985, he was very rich and drove a BMW.

Father Kleinsorge exemplified the bomb’s effects:

“For the rest of his life, his was to be a classic case history of that vague, borderline form of A-bomb sickness in which a person’s body developed a rich repertory of symptoms, few of which could be positively attributed to radiation, but many of which turned up in hibakusha, in various combinations and degrees, so often as to be blamed by some doctors and almost all patients on the bomb” (110).

In 1948, he was assigned priest of a large church in Hiroshima that included a convent. His duties were many, and he paid a physical price, often collapsing in exhaustion. He was hospitalized in Tokyo again on two occasions and spent a whole year at the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima. Having grown to love Japan, he applied for and received Japanese citizenship, now calling himself Father Makoto Takakura. He served a couple of other small parishes in the late 1950s before retiring for good in 1961. He had many continued ailments in his later years, and his cook became his devoted companion, helping him with whatever he needed. In 1976, he fell on ice; from then until his death in November 1977 he was bedridden.

Toshiko Sasaki lived with her younger brother and sister in the suburb of Koi, caring for them since the bomb had killed their parents. Her fiancé from before the bombing returned from war and kept a distance; eventually, he broke things off entirely. She continued to take religious instruction from Father Kleinsorge and was baptized into the Catholic Church in September 1946. She later put her siblings in an orphanage in Hiroshima and worked there herself, as she needed income and couldn’t take on the responsibility of raising the children. After some time, she worked at another orphanage, in Kyushu, where she took university courses to become certified as a nursery schoolteacher. She was also hospitalized again for her leg, receiving three major operations followed by rehabilitation at hot springs. Her leg would always give her pain and never be perfectly flexible, but treatment made it the same length as her other leg and allowed her to walk normally.

Sasaki’s brother was in a life-threatening car accident; she thought she’d have to take care of him and took classes to qualify as a bookkeeper. However, her brother got much better and entered a music school with the money he received from the accident. Sasaki returned to the orphanage before entering a convent in 1954 to become a nun. Upon completion of her novitiate in 1957, she became Sister Dominique Sasaki. Afterward she became director of a home for the elderly in Kyushu and worked there for 20 years—supervising the construction of a badly needed new building. She found her strength in helping people die peacefully. Sasaki retired in 1978, but continued working other jobs, including as mother superior of the convent where she had trained and director of a women’s dorm at the music school her brother had attended. She was still alive in 1985, with both siblings living independently.

Dr. Masakazu Fujii lived well and made friends with some of the occupying Americans. He built a new clinic in 1948 and had no apparent physical damage from the bomb. Psychologically, he seemed to feel that “the best therapy was to follow the pleasure principle” (128). He drank, danced, played mahjong and golf, and took up photography. For 10 months in 1956, he accompanied a group of young women to New York City, where Rev. Tanimoto had arranged for them to get surgeries. When he returned, he wanted to build a house like one he had seen in New York; he had it built next to his existing home. He moved in alone—his wife didn’t want to live there—at end of 1963 and hosted a small gathering on New Year’s Eve. The next morning, he was found unconscious. The culprit was a gas heater that was on but not burning. He improved a bit in the hospital by mid-January, but suddenly worsened at the end of the month and slipped into a coma. He was cared for at home for over a decade and died in January 1973.

Rev. Tanimoto slowly worked to rebuild his church but had little money to do so. He and the parishioners worked on it themselves, making slow progress. Corresponding with an American classmate from theological school, he mentioned this work. The friend, Rev. Marvin Green, suggested he come to the States to raise funds, and arranged it with the Methodist Mission Board. Tanimoto went to New Jersey, staying at Green’s church parsonage while he traveled around the country for about a year.

For the rest of his life, Tanimoto was very active in trying to get medical care for bomb survivors. On his tour of the States, he came up with the idea for creating a center in Hiroshima to study peace to prevent future nuclear war. He discussed it with editor Norman Cousins, who agreed to help. Over time, however, Cousins’s own vision of the project took precedence and Tanimoto was pushed aside somewhat. Tanimoto undertook a project to help the young women of Hiroshima impacted by the bomb. A group of them had been working for the city clearing fire lanes and were fully exposed during the explosion. They came to be called the A-Bomb Maidens.

Tanimoto helped arrange sewing for them to earn some money and raised funds for surgery to remove their keloid scars. Initially, this took place in Japan, but later some of the women were able to go to New York for more advanced medical care. Some Japanese came to view Rev. Tanimoto with suspicion because he did so much; they thought he inserted himself too much in the picture. As a result, he was sidelined from both his peace efforts and the care for the A-Bomb Maidens. The book ends with him enjoying a modest but comfortable retirement in the 1980s.