slept for seventeen hours. The following day, he went back to the Red Cross Hospital and worked for another three straight days without much rest.
The ambitious side of Dr. Sasaki is showed when the narrator describes how Dr. Sasaki fights over a woman who later became his wife. The father of the woman
was wary because Dr. Sasaki had a reputation of having been a very bad boy when he was young. He also knew about the illegal treatment patients Dr. Sasaki had done.
But Dr. Sasaki was persistent and eventually won the parent over. Dr. Sasaki was also ambitious to open his private clinic in his country town,
so he decided to quit working for the hospital. The way he went through to complete his ambition was long and rough, but in the end, he became a successful wealthy
man, still with the strong idealism. Every morning, Dr. Sasaki met with the entire staff of the
clinic. He had a favorite lecture: Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money followed; our life is
short, we don’t live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.
Hersey, 1989: 108
4.2.3.3 Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge Father Makoto Takakura
He loved Japan with all his heart and was a thirty eight years old German priest at that time. In Hersey’s Hiroshima, reader may find his main personality was
his habit to help people even until he forgets his limit, until the state which eventually suffers himself. He also felt insecure as a foreigner in Japan.
Father Kleinsorge’s rather self-destructive habit can be concluded after reading some actions that Father Kleinsorge did in Hersey’s Hiroshima. Before the
bomb was dropped, he was in a rather frail condition because of diarrhea. After the bomb fell, his body, especially his back, was badly wounded. With all that slacking
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health, he still managed to carry Mr. Fukai piggyback. Mr. Fukai was his fellow in church that was hopeless and refused to be saved.
Even with his constant hospitalizing in the hospital in Tokyo, back in Hiroshima, he would do too much works he actually could not handle as a
hibakusha. His German Jesuit colleagues were on the opinion that he was a little too much concerned for others, and not enough for himself. They thought he might kill
himself with kindness to others. Apparently, Father Kleinsorge had taken on himself the Japanese spirit of enryo, means to set the self apart, putting the wishes of others
first. Father Kleinsorge was in love with Japanese and their ways. However, he
could not ignore his feeling of strain of being a foreigner in an increasingly xenophobic Japan. Hersey made it clear in several scenes in Hiroshima.
[…] Father Kleinsorge had, at thirty-eight the look of a boy growing too fast—thin in the face, with a prominent Adam’s apple, a hollow
chest, dangling hands, big feet. He walked clumsily, leaning forward a little. […]
Hersey, 1989: 11 The quotation above shows the image of Father Kleinsorge’s figure that quite
opposite from most Japanese figure. The phrase ‘leaning forward a little’ shows how Father Kleinsorge was self-conscious with his height and unconfident about that.
Another obvious remark for his uneasiness for being a foreigner also shows in this following passage.
[…] A little before noon, he saw a Japanese woman handing something out. Soon she came to him and said in a kindly voice,
“These are tea leaves. Chew them, young man, and you won’t feel thirsty.” The woman’s gentleness made Father Kleinsorge suddenly
want to cry. For weeks, he had been feeling oppressed by the hatred of foreigners that the Japanese seemed increasingly show, and he
had been uneasy even with his Japanese friends. This stranger’s gesture made him a little hysterical. […]
Hersey, 1989: 53
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Later on the last chapter of Hiroshima, Hersey told reader that Father Kleinsorge decided to change his nationality into Japanese and henceforth bear as
Father Makoto Takakura until he died on November 19, 1977.
4.2.3.4 Miss Toshiko Sasaki Sister Dominique Sasaki
