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1-Page Summary of Hiroshima

Overall Summary

Chapter 1

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. At that exact moment, six survivors were doing different things: a clerk was sitting at her desk; a doctor was reading the newspaper; a housewife was cooking breakfast in her kitchen; a priest and his wife were standing outside their home; and two men were walking through the hospital. A hundred thousand people died in the blast but these six survived.

Reverend Tanimoto gets up early at his parsonage. His wife and child are staying with a friend in Ushida, a northern suburb. Hiroshima is one of the only Japanese cities that hasn’t been bombed during the war with America—as a result, city dwellers are “sick with anxiety.” Rumors circulate that America is “saving something special for the city.” Tanimoto is an energetic man who moves most of his things to another district before the bombing occurs. Today he helps remove some belongings from Mr Matsuo’s daughter’s house because she has moved away after marrying someone else without her father’s consent, which caused him to cut off ties with her completely until now when she divorced her husband and returned home to ask forgiveness for her actions against him.

Tanimoto has studied theology and speaks English well. He has many American friends, so he is not suspected by the police of having ties to America. To compensate for this suspicion, Tanimoto volunteers to lead the neighborhood association in defense against attacks from Japan.

Early in the morning, Tanimoto leaves for Mr. Matsuo’s house to help him move a cabinet. When they arrive at his house, they find that the air-raid siren has gone off and planes are coming. Neither of them is worried because this happens often; however, they continue moving the cabinet through town until it reaches its final destination two miles away from ground zero where the bomb will detonate later that day. Hiroshima was home to about 245,000 people when the bomb dropped on August 6th 1945; it also had many factories working hard to keep up with wartime demands—all of which were destroyed by one atomic bomb blast during World War II.

Tanimoto rises from the rubble. There is dust in the air, making it seem like twilight. Soldiers are coming out of their dugouts with blood streaming down their heads.

The story shifts back to the night before the bomb drops. The radio is broadcasting that a fleet of B-29s is coming for Hiroshima and advises people to go to their “safe areas.” Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, gathers her three small children—a boy named Toshio, a girl named Yaeko, and a girl named Myeko—and walks them to East Parade Ground where other families have been evacuated. They lay out some mats and fall asleep until two in the morning when the planes fly over Hiroshima City. Afterwards she wakes up her children and brings them back home. Although there’s another warning on the radio telling people not to stay inside their homes at night due to possible bombing raids, she decides that they should sleep indoors so as not be bothered by insects outside or cold weather if it gets colder later on during the night.

Around seven in the morning, Nakamura wakes up to a siren. She goes to Mr. Nakamoto’s house and asks for advice about what she should do. He tells her to stay home, because there is no need to worry at this point in time. Around eight o’clock, the siren stops; therefore, she feels relieved that nothing bad happened yet. She feeds her children breakfast and notices that there is a man outside who is trying to build fire lanes so they can put out fires if any bombs fall nearby. Since her husband died during World War II, she has been working as a seamstress but isn’t very good at it; however, she doesn’t have much choice because of how poor their family was before he died.