The two characters that I will hold onto are, Miss Nakamura and Dr. Sasaki. I chose these two characters because they are opposites. They show two very different sides of the same story. Miss Nakamura spent her entire life trying to play catch up. She always worked hard, despite her side effects from the bomb. Although, she never made much money. She made enough to feed her family and then eventually her son began to take care of her. What strikes me about this is that she was trying to succeed. Sometimes people are their own issue but that was not the case for Miss Nakamura. She was trying to work hard and keep a job but life just was not going to hand her any favors. Dr. Sasaki was a completely different story. He was originally not supposed to inherit his family's money because his older brother was the first born and therefore the inheritor of the family money. His brother dies which means that Dr. Sasaki gets the family fortune. With that, he starts his own clinic and then prospers throughout the rest of his life. Every venture he tries, turns to gold. This is not to say that he didn’t deserve his wealth. I am just trying to explain how differently these people were affected. I think these two characters can show us the value of continuing forward with your life, no matter what. There will always be people in the world that have it worse than you and there will always be people that have it better than you. Life is an ever changing experience. Dr. Sasaki was blessed monetarily but that doesn’t mean he didn’t face his own trials. Miss Nakamura could have given up hope because of all the pain she went through, but she continued to do her best. Her children must have appreciated her because her son cared for her in her older years. Her children’s loyalty shows that her work payed off.
2. I would like to always remember the pain that these people felt. Not just their pain, but how they responded to it. Time and time again throughout the story, the Japanese people showed true forgiveness. We dropped an atomic bomb on them and still they chose to look at what they could do differently in their own lives. They felt like their country should have not rushed into war. Speaking for myself, I think it would be extremely hard to act with the grace that they did. Mr. Tanimoto gave a prayer at the Senate, and said “We thank Thee, that our people have been given the gift of freedom, enabling them to rise from the ashes of ruin and be reborn...God bless all members of this Senate..”. If those words do not spark the slightest bit of emotion in you then please read it again. A man, who was a victim of an atomic bomb went to the very people that put his country in that peril and blessed them. His character speaks volumes and I think we can all learn from that.
3.”He was one step beyond an open window when the light of the bomb was reflected. like a gigantic photographic flash, in the corridor” (Hersey, 14). I think this is important because every person explained the bomb in the exact same way. They all said it was a flash of light. The next passage I liked was, “At least ten thousand of the wounded made their way to the best hospital in town, which was altogether unequal to such a trampling, since it had only six hundred beds, and they had all been occupied” (Hersey, 25-26). This passage shows the magnitude of Hiroshima. I cannot imagine how scary that was. The last passage I would like to talk about is, “Of a hundred and fifty doctors in the city, sixty-five were already dead and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were dead or too badly hurt to work” (Hersey, 24). No one could help these people. They did the best they could to take care of those around them but these casualties were too many to maintain.
4. This book shows us the importance of understanding the consequences that people experience due to our actions. This atomic bomb may have been beneficial for our country as a whole, but it was mass destruction to another country. We didn’t experience the after effects of Hiroshima like those that lived there. There are consequences for every action and we should always teach people that and make sure they understand.
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