He was hailed as a writer who “ let ‘Hiroshima’ speak for itself”. His omniscient, controlled voice felt godlike and all-knowing, free from authorial editorializing. Hersey introduced me to Mr Tanimoto, a man who wore his hair parted down the middle and moved through crowds of mangled, dying people, bringing water and apologizing: “Excuse me for having no burden like yours.” At a time when Japanese people were roundly excoriated in the US, portrayed as demons, yellow monkeys, and savages deserving of death, one historian claimed Hersey’s book transformed “subhuman Japs back into Japanese human beings”.
