Why did john hersey write hiroshima
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John Hersey
American journalist, novelist and academic (1914-1993)
John Richard Hersey (June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993) was an American writer and journalist. He is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reportage.[1] In 1999, Hiroshima, Hersey's account of the aftermath of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was adjudged the finest work of American journalism of the 20th century by a 36-member panel associated with New York University's journalism department.[2]
Background
Hersey was born in Tianjin, China,[3] the son of Grace Baird and Roscoe Hersey, Protestantmissionaries for the YMCA in Tianjin. Hersey learned to speak Chinese before he spoke English. Later he based his novel, The Call (1985), on the lives of his parents and several other missionaries of their generation.[4]
John Hersey was a descendant of William Hersey (or Hercy, as the family name was then spelled) of Reading, Berkshire, Engl
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On August 31, 1946, the editors of The New Yorker announced that the most recent edition “will be devoted entirely to just one article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb.” Though President Harry S. Truman had ordered the use of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a year earlier, the staff at The New Yorker believed that “few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use.”
Theirs was a weighty introduction to wartime reporter John Hersey’s four-chapter account of the wreckage of the atomic bomb, but such a warning was necessary for the stories of human suffering The New Yorker’s readers would be exposed to.
Hersey was certainly not the first journalist to report on the aftermath of the bombs. Stories and newsreels provided details of the attacks: the numbers wounded and dead, the staggering estimated costs—numerically and culturally—of property lost, and some of the visual horrors. But Hersey’s a
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A Life in Writing
John Hersey, 1914–1993
October 1993
by Carter Wiseman ’68, Editor
When John Hersey ’36 died on March 24, the nation lost one of its most admired writers. The author of 25 books, including A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima, and The Wall, and numerous articles for the New Yorker and other magazines, Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize and set a daunting standard for moral concern delivered with high literary grace.
But if Hersey was unique as a writer, he was also distinctly a product of Yale. Born the son of missionaries in Tientsin, China, he came to Yale in 1932. While at the College, he played on the varsity football team, wrote music criticism for the Yale Daily News, and served as class secretary. During the years following graduation, he maintained close links with the University, and from 1965 to 1970 was master of Pierson College, the first nonacademic to hold such a post. Hersey’s mastership coincided with some of Yale’s most turbulent years, and in 1970 he summed up his feelings about them in
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