Next month there will be commemorations* for the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). One writer who is synonymous with that fateful day, which hastened the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II is John Hersey (1914-1993). This isn’t the blog’s first posting about Hersey, who is one of the more underrated and unheralded American writers of the 2oth century. He is best-known for his book Hiroshima (1946) where he used narrative techniques normally found in fiction (a precursor to New Journalism) to describe the accounts of six survivors of the blast. Equally impressive is the way Hersey captured the rhythms of the Japanese speech patterns in his prose. It reminds one of a Haruki Murakami novel.
Hersey was born in China to missionary parents before moving back to the United States at age 10. He spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese and was able to put himself through Yale University based on his intellect and hard work. He became a war correspondent for Time Magazine and spent time in Italy and the Pacific. In 1946, The New Yorker commissioned him to write a piece on Hiroshima.
In this book, Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (2011), the critic and scholar John Sutherland lists the authors who will still be read 100 years from now and why. One of those authors is John Hersey. In Hiroshima, Sutherland admired Hersey's ability to overturn, “ the monolithic image of the subhuman ‘Jap’ promulgated during hostilities. The description of physical effects of the ‘Bomb’ were horrific: melted eyeballs, bone-rotting radiation sickness, and -- the image that went around the world –- a victim whose only relic was a shadowy profile on a wall; the rest of him vaporized.”
In other words, at that time the book came out, many Americans still hated the Japanese for their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, but if you've read Hersey’s account of the grisly suffering and death you could not have had anything but the deepest sympathy for the civilian population of Japan.
A Bell for Adano
Based on his experiences while he was a war correspondent in Italy. Hersey wrote A Bell for Adano, which was published in 1944 while World War II still raged. Set in an Allied occupied coastal village in Sicily, an Italian-American major is assigned to be the head of the local government. The major must win the trust of the villagers who have been under Fascist rule for years. This is not a blood and guts kind of story at all, but one that focuses on the civilians that were caught between the retreating Fascists and the townspeople’s new conquerors – the Americans. The major has a tough job, especially dealing with his superiors (one based on General George S. Patton) but he is a decent man and goes the extra step to replace the local church’s prized bell that was removed for scrap metal earlier in the war.
Like Hiroshima, A Bell for Adano is a not a lengthy book as Hersey is economic with prose. The book was awarded the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1945.
Key West Tales
Hersey kept a winter home in Key West, Florida which was a popular hangout for many writers including Ernest Hemingway, who as a "celebrity" novelist, war correspondent, and macho man overshadowed Hersey. (Not that long ago, I reread Hemingway’s A Sun Also Rises and I much prefer Hersey's work.)
Hersey’s final book was a collection of short stories entitled Key West Tales (1994). His stories show tremendous range in subject matter with some measure of wit and since the collection is lighter in tone and subject matter Key West Tales is suitable for reading while on vacation. (See the posting “Better Book Trips of 2016"). One memorable story is “A Game of Anagrams” an account of a weekly word game between three egotistical poets and a novelist as they vie for word one-upmanship. In the story "To End the American Dream," Hersey pays "tribute" to Hemingway by portraying him as a bar brawler, but also balances his portrayal by showing how Hemingway cares about his sentences and his writing habits.
It is no surprise that Hersey went easy on his rival. The critic John Clute (who I believe wrote the entry in the Sutherland book) summarized in Hersey's life that in everything he did, had a "stylish decency if not a nobility."
* My longtime partner Denise Casey took the photos of Hiroshima when she visited Japan in 2005. The photo at the top of the posting are the ruins that were purposely left as a reminder for future generations and the photo at the end of the posting is Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. Thanks, Denise.
