Like any great piece of art or literature, John Hersay’s 1946 new journalism novel “Hiroshima” raises more questions than it answers. Mainly, it challenged the western view of the Japanese population at the time. To me, this asks: does the decimation of a mostly civilian, an arguably innocent, city justify the end of the bloodiest war in Human history? It is important to note I will not be looking at any type of alternatives anyone could have taken in history, only alternatives on how we look at this event and book now. Simply saying that there was an alternative that America could have taken that might have been more ethical does not constitute a good answer to the question, for it does not abide by Occam’s razor principle, which I will accept to be true for this critique.

Hersey paints the people of Hiroshima as just that: people. The people that lived in Hiroshima, aren’t directly attached to the military happenings of the war, that is to say, I believe Hersey wanted us to see them as individuals, not attached to the atrocities that the Japanese military were perpetrating onto parts of the world. One could argue, through instances like Nanking(link) in China, that the Japanese military were evil enough to deserve the same punishment that they gave innocent victims of war. Through this logic, stopping the war as fast as possible to prevent further heinous acts, dropping the bomb was the best option. This raises an unanswerable question that I do not wish to attempt to answer, is the amount of suffering that the military of Japan caused greater than the suffering caused by the atomic bombs dropped by America? I don’t believe this is the main question “Hiroshima” aimed to ask though, because this question asks to compare the west and Japan at standards of their own, instead of a more practical and less subjective bar to meet. This is why the first question is a better one to attempt to answer.

To me there are two main ways to look at Hiroshima when you are attempting to answer if it was right or justifiable in any manner. There is a fundamental difference found when looking at the people of Hiroshima as simply people, or looking at them as intrinsically attached to the military of their country. Depending on which way you look at the people constitutes an answer to the question; as part of a people or individuals? I believe that “Hiroshima” and Hersay encourage us to look at the historical event through the Individualistic perspective, he does this through making the peoples stories relatable, not only through virtue of telling the stories as a story (instead of a list of facts and events) but also through how he tells the story. His rare use of a strong diction towards the physical appearance of his characters paired with seldom reminding us that the people are in fact Japanese allows us to empathize with the people “There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books”, metaphors aside, Hersay blatantly refuses to attach the individual (Miss Sasaki) to the stigma of belonging to the collective of Japan, the use of referring to her as a human, is what makes a quote like this all that more powerful. Again, through telling a story, it allows us to see the people as individuals, and come to the conclusion that they are not responsible for the war and therefore it was wrong to put them through that suffering.

I’d like to make it clear that I don’t think, “Hiroshima” pushes an anti American perspective per say, Hersay even includes “It was war and we had to expect it.” From Mrs Nakurmara. I would instead propose, if it had to be anti something, it would be anti widespread collectivism (the opposite of individualism), specifically in the case of when we are judging others. The morals that “Hiroshima” argues through its style is that identity and virtue are decided by the individual, and in this vain I would come to the conclusion that the people of Hiroshima did not deserve to suffer to the extent they did.