Pellegrino dissects the complex political and military strategies that went into the atomic detonations and the untold suffering heaped upon countless Japanese civilians, weaving all of the book’s many elements into a wise, informed protest against any further use of these terrible weapons. As we should be.Ī tragic cautionary tale as well as a celebration of human resilience. gives us, instead, a glimpse of their horror. nations join an expanding nuclear ‘club,’ we are in danger, as MacArthur's committee was, of thinking of nuclear weapons as nothing but more sophisticated bows and arrows. We have now lived long enough with the bomb to begin to take it for granted. This book offers more than just effective popular history. Charles Pellegrino's account about what it was actually like to be on the ground in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, culled from survivors’ memories and his own work in forensic archaeology, is the most powerful and detailed I have ever read. The tragedies and atrocities of World War II now belong to history, while Hiroshima is still part of our world, our continuing present, maybe our dreaded future. In short, those who survived the bomb were, if not merely lucky, in a greater or lesser degree selfish, self-centered-guided by instinct and not by civilization. He writes about one doctor who recalled that, ‘Those who survived the atomic bomb were, in general, the people who ignored others crying out in extremis or who stayed away from the flames, even when patients and colleagues shrieked from within them. certainly studies every kind of fallout and does not neglect the spiritual variety. Sober and authoritative: This is gleaming, popular wartime history, John Hersey infused with Richard Preston and a fleck of Michael Crichton. Filmed by the author during his research in Japan, these 18 videos are placed throughout the text, taking readers beyond the page and offering an eye-opening and personal way to understand how the effects of the atomic bombs are still felt 70 years after detonation. Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the “official report,” showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki-and why.Īlso available from compatible vendors is an enhanced e-book version containing never-before-seen video clips of the survivors, their descendants, and the cities as they are today. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell behind which Yamaguchi’s office conference was convened-placing him and few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection while the entire building disappeared around them.
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One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of both cataclysms within Ground Zero.
Pellegrino gives equal weight to the bombing of Nagasaki, symbolized by the thirty people who are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki-where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb.
As the first city targeted, Hiroshima is the focus of most histories. Charles Pellegrino’s scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.Īt the narrative’s core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand-the Japanese civilians on the ground. To Hell and Back offers readers a stunning, “you are there” time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Drawing on the voices of atomic bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and the aftermath of two days in August when nuclear devices, detonated over Japan, changed life on Earth forever.
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