Hiroshima Diary

The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945

Revised Edition

By Michihiko Hachiya, M.D.

Translated and edited by Warner Wells, M.D., with a new foreword by John W. Dower

266 pp., 5.5 x 8.25

Not for sale in the British Commonwealth (except Canada), Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4547-9
    Published: August 1995
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-7355-7
    Published: December 2011
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6446-8
    Published: December 2011

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The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. His compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was a surgical consultant to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and who became a friend of Dr. Hachiya. In a new foreword, John Dower reflects on the enduring importance of the diary fifty years after the bombing.

Reviews

"Comes closer to telling the real story than anything I have seen outside Japan." —Norman Cousins

"I have read it through at a sitting. . . . It is a simple and unpretentious account of compassion, sorrow, and great courage." —Robert Oppenheimer

"A book that we all ought to read in order that we may know what we have done and what will happen in the future if the atomic weapons continue to be used." —Pearl Buck