I am just finishing this mammoth book. Another case of the audio book possibly being the best way (for someone like me) to read it. Why? The author seamlessly weaves the stories of those who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Urikama (better known as the bigger area of Nagasaki) and at least one or two dozen survivors' experiences. But keeping in mind all but one of the survivors written about included are Japanese (if you exclude those in the US planes who dropped and monitored the bombs), their names are one thing to get used to and keep track of. And the detailed, graphic and incredible descriptions (especially in the first chapter) of the physics of the fission in an atomic bomb, broken down into nanoseconds of what happens in the atmosphere, air and organic materials, how the flash comes, the heat waves, the shock waves (and the intense energy of those), shock cocoons, gamma rays...it was a lot to hear and take in and for me, might've been too hard to comprehend if reading it. Kind of the way Lord of the Rings Trilogy can be laborious. It is horrific, I won't lie, but also fascinating (like the way forensics in crime solving is gruesome yet captivating).
I was also struck by how the slightest little moments of "chance" meant the difference between life and death. For example, there is a story of two friends, little boys playing outside before school began. They were playing in front of a low brick/cement fence. Because one little boy dropped a coin, I think it was, he bent down to pick it up and therefore for a brief moment was shadowed by the short wall. Only his shoulder was exposed. At that exact moment that the flash of the bomb occurred, the little boy next to him ceased to be and was carbonized in a flash. However, the boy who had bent down at that exact moment survived the initial flash with burns only on his shoulder. Loads of little examples like that. It doesn't end happily, the heat wave and radiation meant his life was very short, but there were some miraculous survivors, including one man who survived Hiroshima only to rush home to wife and children in Nagasaki and survive that blast (and lived a long life, though his children suffered with leukemia).
While it's not a major theme, the indoctrination of the Japanese of honor in death, fight to the end etc, is touched upon and one can't help but wonder if the dropping of the bombs did prevent an extremely brutal and extracted war in Japan itself. I don't have an opinion on that, who I am to have one? I wasn't there and I'm not a historian, but it did occur to me as I read it. And so attached to Dr. Akizuki and Dr. Nagai, as well as Tomiko Yamaguchi (the double-bomb survivor) I became, I googled them to find out more. NPR did a 30 minute peace on the book, which I recently listed to, on Talk of the Nation. If you want to listen to it, click here. Not sure if it does it justice, as I listened to it after reading the book. New phrases like "fire worms" "ant people" and "flash print" as well as the hope you are wearing white clothing if in the vicinity of the heat rays of an atomic bomb are forever etched into my brain.
I think...it is not light but still excellent and worthwhile reading.
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