1a. Whom does Hersey identify in the opening paragraph? What was each person doing when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima?
2a. What difficulties did Father Kleinsorge face that the other survivors did not share? What did Father Kleinsorge do when the air raid sirens sound?
3a. What nightmare did Dr. Sasaki have the night before the bombing?
4a. Identify the images Hersey uses to describe the explosion of the atomic bomb, as seen by each of the survivors.
5a. Hersey observed that journalism "allows the reader to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it." Assess this statement in relation to the selection you have just read.
1b. Why does Hersey focus on six individuals? Why does he give the distance away from the city center of each of the survivors?
2b. Why did Father Kleinsorge change his clothes?
3b. What relieved Dr. Sasaki of his nightmare? Describe his new living nightmare.
4b. Hersey combines literary techniques with factual reporting to describe the impact of the nuclear blast on six survivors' lives. Many reporters would have contented themselves with factual reporting and a few quotes from survivors. Assess Hersey's use of literary techniques and their effect on his account.
5b. Dr. Fujii built rooms for patients' kinfolk to accommodate the Japanese custom of allowing for relatives to attend the sick. Make a cross-cultural comparison between how the sick are cared for in Japanese and U.S. hospitals.
Effect. What effect does this selection produce? How does the author achieve this effect? What emotions did you experience while reading this account?
Irony. Review the chart you made in Literary Tools. Which example of irony in the selection is the most powerful? Why?
1. Imagine that you are one of the survivors identified in this selection. Write a journal entry explaining what you have experienced.
2. Write a letter to the people of Hiroshima either justifying or apologizing for the nuclear attack on their city.
3. Write a paragraph discussing whether Hersey employs objective or subjective reporting in Hiroshima. Cite examples from the selection to support your assessment.
Appositive Phrases. Rewrite the following sentences and bracket the appositive phrases. Some sentences may have more than one appositive phrase.
1. When the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.
2. Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow, stood by the window of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-defense fire lane.
3. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order's three-story mission house, reading a Jesuit magazine, Stimmen der Zeit.
4. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city's large, modern Red Cross Hospital, walked along one of the hospital corridors with a blood specimen for a Wassermann test in his hand.
5. The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door of a rich man's house in Koi, the city's western suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full of things he had evacuated from town in fear of the massive B-29 raid which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer.
Newspaper Article. Write a newspaper article that a Japanese journalist might have written the day after the nuclear bomb exploded in Hiroshima. You will need to do research to provide accurate facts for your article. One site you will find useful is http://www.csi.ad.jp/hiroshima-live/.
Research the Hiroshima Bombing:
Sources Used:
