What do you think?
Rate this book
Eyewitness Testimonies: Appeals From The A-bomb Survivors
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 30, 2013
قراءة هذا الكتاب واجب على كل إنسان يعيش في العصر النووي.
أدركتُ أنني مهددٌ بالنسف في أي لحظة، بتواجدي في عالمٍ يعجّ بهذه الأسلحة الشيطانية.
أدركتُ أنني مهددٌ بالنسف في أي لحظة، بتواجدي في عالمٍ يعجّ بهذه الأسلحة الشيطانية.
July 30, 2024
Writing a review for this book is strange. This book cannot be rated. It should be read by everyone. Especially idiotic politicians. Each story is pure horror. And proves humans cannot co-exist with nuclear weapons. The survivors all give a clear message: Never again!
August 6, 2018
“Peace will not simply be handed to us as a gift; it will not come walking up to greet us; and, finally, it will not arrive if we simply sit and wait. Peace is something we must create.”
I’m still deeply shaken from my experience today in Hiroshima at the Hiroshima Peace Museum and memorial. Today marks 73 years since the first atomic bombing - it’s a horror that we should never forget.
I’m still deeply shaken from my experience today in Hiroshima at the Hiroshima Peace Museum and memorial. Today marks 73 years since the first atomic bombing - it’s a horror that we should never forget.
July 2, 2020
First off, I feel the need to say that it feels strange to give a star rating to a book with this kind of content.
The individual accounts of the 15 survivors are all heartbreaking and hard to read - some because of the descriptions of what they saw and some because of what they felt, and sometimes still feel. Within some of the accounts a drawing is included that was drawn by a survivor (sometimes but not always by the same person who is telling what they remember from that time) and a lot of them have text that the artist wrote on the drawing, however, none of that is translated and I feel this is something that would have been good to do so that readers had the full context.
The survivor accounts are bookended by more factual accounts: the beginning explaining about the atomic bombs that were dropped. The ending talking about non-Japanese survivors. Taking into account the particular scope and length of the book, the amount of detail they gave was probably appropriate, however, I wish they had some accounts from non-Japanese survivors in here as well.
However, all that aside, I think reading this or books similar is important so that we can understand what atomic weapons actually do so that we can remain vigilant to not let something like this happen again.
The individual accounts of the 15 survivors are all heartbreaking and hard to read - some because of the descriptions of what they saw and some because of what they felt, and sometimes still feel. Within some of the accounts a drawing is included that was drawn by a survivor (sometimes but not always by the same person who is telling what they remember from that time) and a lot of them have text that the artist wrote on the drawing, however, none of that is translated and I feel this is something that would have been good to do so that readers had the full context.
The survivor accounts are bookended by more factual accounts: the beginning explaining about the atomic bombs that were dropped. The ending talking about non-Japanese survivors. Taking into account the particular scope and length of the book, the amount of detail they gave was probably appropriate, however, I wish they had some accounts from non-Japanese survivors in here as well.
However, all that aside, I think reading this or books similar is important so that we can understand what atomic weapons actually do so that we can remain vigilant to not let something like this happen again.
October 30, 2023
Reading these accounts from Hiroshima atomic-bomb survivors, in their own words, is truly a punch in the stomach. Some descriptions are so horrific that they are almost hard to consubstantiate as something that indeed happened. But they did! It should be a duty of every single individual, no matter how hard it is, to read about what happened, or if possible, to visit places or museums related to atrocities of war. Not with a morbid intent, but because one cannot call oneself a truly informed citizen making the right choices if we forget the mistakes from the past. Norito Ueda, one of the survivors who told her story in this book, said it perfectly: “I want young people to hear as many stories as possible (…) and use that knowledge to guide the generations to come. Nothing is more dangerous than ignorance. I want everyone to study many things, to learn many things, and to become people who can judge situations for themselves and say “This is wrong!”.”
December 30, 2018
Having recently visited Hiroshima I thought I would really like this book but I was a little mistaken. It is a collection of personal accounts of survivors from the dropping of the A bomb on Hiroshima. The stories became very similar and as a result they lost their affect and I found myself, unwittingly becoming blasé about it. I am sure this is the complete opposite of what they were trying to achieve when they wrote this book. I agree entirely with their sentiment about no nuclear weapons and what happened to innocent victims was horrendous. There is an obvious anti american sentiment which I understand but there is also very little (with some exceptions) of any self reflection as to why it was dropped or the role of the Japanese Government at the time.
December 1, 2019
I bought this book from the museum itself. The museum has better repository of the tragic event. The testimonials in this book can get pretty repetitive, but haunting. No doubt the Japanese had caused vast destruction during the World War 2. But two wrongs don’t make a right. I hope their testimonials will serve as a reminder of the catastrophe brought upon by the nuclear bombs. Let’s pray for a peaceful world!
November 16, 2022
Horrifying tales of the true carnage in Hiroshima. Clearly the pictures and words can't go any distance towards expressing this great injustice but it does illuminate what the situation on the ground was like for those civilians suffering.
It's almost impossible to read at times and hits powerfully but I think it's worth it to try and push past the sadness and pain in order to understand the full extent that humanity can go and how imperative it is to advocate against anything of any similar scale or nature.
It's almost impossible to read at times and hits powerfully but I think it's worth it to try and push past the sadness and pain in order to understand the full extent that humanity can go and how imperative it is to advocate against anything of any similar scale or nature.
June 20, 2021
Everybody should read this. Such horror should never happen again.
July 22, 2021
Horrific and terrifying testimonials of survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
September 21, 2024
4 ⭐️ Culturally enriching, but very depressing.
November 27, 2025
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for people all over the world to read this book (if you can get a hold of it). Yes, the testimonies are grim, even gruesome, but every horrible detail helps to drive home their message of peace.
People with their skin hanging in tatters, burned into unrecognizable ghosts... people taking months or even years to die from radiation poisoning... mothers crying for dead children... babies trying to nurse from their dead mothers... what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must not be repeated.
Humanity has GOT to learn. It's the difference between life and death. Between this (my trip to Hiroshima in 2005, a city of peace)... and this (a photo essay on the bombing from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. WARNING: GRAPHIC).
My husband asked me why I read about such "morbid" things. I told him that I want to have even more compassion for other people. I want to be able to understand, on a deep level, why peace is so necessary. It's easy just to say "war is bad." It's different to be aware of the excruciatingly unfair reasons why. If we don't fully understand what human beings are capable of doing to each other, how can we care when it's not necessarily going on in our back yard? Sooner or later, it will come to our back yards if we do not actively promote peace.
I want to end with Pope John Paul II's Appeal for Peace. Some of his words were engraved on a monument in Hiroshima:
"War is the work of man.
War is destruction of human life.
War is death.
To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.
To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war.
To remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace."
People with their skin hanging in tatters, burned into unrecognizable ghosts... people taking months or even years to die from radiation poisoning... mothers crying for dead children... babies trying to nurse from their dead mothers... what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must not be repeated.
Humanity has GOT to learn. It's the difference between life and death. Between this (my trip to Hiroshima in 2005, a city of peace)... and this (a photo essay on the bombing from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. WARNING: GRAPHIC).
My husband asked me why I read about such "morbid" things. I told him that I want to have even more compassion for other people. I want to be able to understand, on a deep level, why peace is so necessary. It's easy just to say "war is bad." It's different to be aware of the excruciatingly unfair reasons why. If we don't fully understand what human beings are capable of doing to each other, how can we care when it's not necessarily going on in our back yard? Sooner or later, it will come to our back yards if we do not actively promote peace.
I want to end with Pope John Paul II's Appeal for Peace. Some of his words were engraved on a monument in Hiroshima:
"War is the work of man.
War is destruction of human life.
War is death.
To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.
To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war.
To remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace."
November 10, 2019
This book is exactly what it sounds like. It's a collection of stories from people who survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima during World War II. There's no way their stories couldn't have been powerful.
As many of the survivors have now passed away, it's incredibly important that their stories be collected while they're alive, and I'm glad that there's a book like this to serve as a record. (I bought this at the museum in Hiroshima where you can also watch countless recorded interviews with survivors that are perhaps even more powerful as you can hear their emotions as they speak.) I think this book holds tremendous value, and I'm thankful to have picked it up at the souvenir shop.
Many of the stories contain similar details (as you could imagine), but there is also a large diversity in the stories, as some were farther from the epicenter than others, were different ages, were with people or alone, etc. As you read, you feel as if you're getting an idea of the scope of the devastation as you read now just the survivor's story but the story of those around them too.
It's a heartbreaking book, but it's an incredibly important book.
As many of the survivors have now passed away, it's incredibly important that their stories be collected while they're alive, and I'm glad that there's a book like this to serve as a record. (I bought this at the museum in Hiroshima where you can also watch countless recorded interviews with survivors that are perhaps even more powerful as you can hear their emotions as they speak.) I think this book holds tremendous value, and I'm thankful to have picked it up at the souvenir shop.
Many of the stories contain similar details (as you could imagine), but there is also a large diversity in the stories, as some were farther from the epicenter than others, were different ages, were with people or alone, etc. As you read, you feel as if you're getting an idea of the scope of the devastation as you read now just the survivor's story but the story of those around them too.
It's a heartbreaking book, but it's an incredibly important book.
August 2, 2014
I bought this book at the Peace Park Museum in Hiroshima. It is a very moving oral history of 6 August 1945 in Hiroshima and the aftermath. The tales are told very manner-of-factly and effectively convey the hellish immediate aftermath of the bombing and the terrible scenes many of the writers witnessed.
August 11, 2012
Absoultely a must read for anyone. The stories are so vivid, so real and the emotions deep and painful. I think it will help anyone understand the depth and devastation caused from the Atomic Bomb, something everyone should further understand.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews