Sheftall’s “Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses” is a powerful and moving account of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Sheftall’s book is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable tragedy. The book is a collection of interviews conducted with survivors of the bombing, providing a firsthand account of their experiences.
This narrative journey is punctuated by moments of profound joy, moments of profound sadness, and moments of profound terror. These contrasting emotions serve as a testament to the reality of the Hiroshima bombing. The bombing’s impact wasn’t limited to the physical devastation of the city, but it also deeply affected the lives of those who were present and those left behind.
It’s that story heard, over and over again, from those who lived to tell it, although many more died, tens of thousands, in a flash. Oiwa, who was 2.1 kilometers (1.3 miles) from Japan’s Ground Zero, was in his futon bed “when everything suddenly turned white.” For a reporter assigned to Japan, with her fair share of hibakusha interviews, parts of the book meant to explain the cultural backdrops seemed a bit lengthy and painstakingly detailed. But this reporter was also reminded of how the story of Hiroshima is at risk of being forgotten. The hibakusha are now over 90 in age.
Sheftall devotes a whole chapter on debunking the idea of being “vaporized.” The heat and destruction from Little Boy and Fat Man did not make for “waving a magic wand over people, and then, presto change-o, watching them disappear with a nice, clean painless ‘poof,’” he wrote. Some people’s faces were literally gone. Others had eyeballs knocked out, dangling from their sockets. Charred black figures wandered through a flattened city, begging for water, “Mizu … mizu,” the title of one of the book’s chapters. Illnesses from radiation poisoning followed for years. They felt guilt and shame for not having died.
His book tells their stories, in all their ruthless violence and gory pathos, but, most important, as a cautionary tale about the perils of nuclear warfare. ___ Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://x.com/yurikageyama ___ AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
