and he turned away without finishing his sentence, angry now with himself.
Hersey, 1989: 50 Another example of meaningful dialogue in Hersey’s Hiroshima is between
one out of six main characters, Father Kleinsorge, and Mr. Fukai, who apparently had been hopeless and just wanted to die.
[…] “Leave me here.” Father Kleinsorge went into the room and took Mr. Fukai by
the collar of his coat and said, “Come with me or you’ll die.” Mr. Fukai said, “Leave me here to die.”
Father Kleinsorge began to shove and haul Mr. Fukai out of the room. Then the theological student came up and grabbed Mr.
Fukai’s feet, and Father Kleinsorge took his shoulders, and together they carried him downstairs and outdoors.
“I can’t walk” Mr. Fukai cried. “Leave me here” Father Kleinsorge got his paper suitcase with the money in it
and took Mr. Fukai up pickaback, and the party started for the East Parade Ground, their district’s ‘safe area’. As they went out of the
gate, Mr. Fukai, quite childlike now, beat on Father Kleinsorge’s shoulders and said, “I won’t leave. I won’t leave.” […]
Hersey, 1989: 27
4.2.1.4 Image
According to Aziez and Hasim 2010: 80, image is usually presented as a concrete quality. Image visualizes material object and immaterial object such as
taste, smell, and sound. It is quite the same with what people called as description, and Hersey’s Hiroshima is full with it. Image or description helps reader to really
feel or see or contemplate with the situation that has been told in the story. It makes reader to feel like they are really being there, watching the situation by their own
eyes. Several parts in Hersey’s Hiroshima have images of how awfully wounded
the victims are. Hersey uses simple diction and straight forward writing style. But, it does not make the story on the state where it is brutal or vulgar. If anything it would
be, it is heartbreaking.
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[…] When he had penetrated the bushes, he saw there were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state:
their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. They must
have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel. Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-
covered wounds, which they could not bare to stretch enough to admit the spout of the teapot. […]
Hersey, 1989: 51 The passage above shows an excruciating image of some soldiers with melted
eyes and other heavy wounds. Readers supposedly are able to catch the image of them easily with that kind of description. Hersey adds a note in the brackets to
elaborate how the soldiers could end up by the melted eyes.
4.2.2 Narrative Makes the Story Longer Hersey’s Hiroshima is first published as an article in The New Yorker
magazine in August 31
st
1946. The editors for this article are William Shawn and Harold Ross. They decided to deliver the story in one edition. By that, the edition of
The New Yorker in August 31
st
1946 consisted of Hersey’s article only, from the first until the last page. This breakthrough article is opened by one editorial
paragraph entitled ‘To Our Readers’. The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space
to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does
so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone
might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. –The Editors
Hersey, August 1945 Hersey’s Hiroshima consists of more than thirty thousand words. In
Indonesia, most of journalists used to write news in a thousand or two thousand words per story Harsono and Setiyono, 2008: ix. Literary journalism is long
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because it is full of details and covers what mainstream journalism does not cover. Details help create images and building the story. Below is one example out from
many of details that clearly create image, until readers feel like they watch a movie. Immediately after the explosion, the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi
Tanimoto, having run wildly out of the Matsui estate and having looked in wonderment at the bloody soldiers at the mouth of the
dugout they had been digging, attached himself sympathetically to an old lady was walking along in a daze, holding her head with her
left hand, supporting a small boy of three or four on her back with her right, and crying, “I’m hurt I’m hurt” Mr. Tanimoto transferred
the child to his own back and led the woman by the hand down the street, which was darkened by what seemed to be a local column of
dust. […]
Hersey, 1989: 17 Those sentences begin the second chapter in Hersey’s Hiroshima, ‘The Fire’.
It is movie-like because the details are really tiny. Even the narrator states which hand that holds the old woman’s own head and which hand that holds the boy. These
kind of details are scary because it is all true. In Hersey’s Hiroshima, reader will not find the details about the exact
number of victim, no information about the planes that dropped the bomb, and no
explanation of the bomb itself. Hersey’s Hiroshima only tells about the fates of six people in Hiroshima that experienced same tragedy. Hersey covers their story from
before, during, and after the bomb fell. That is all. Hersey’s Hiroshima indeed covers unusual things that are not usually be covered by mainstream journalistic works.
Hersey describes the feelings of the characters, works on extreme details, focuses on humanity aspects rather than the World War II itself.
The passage below is one example of things that any other form of journalistic may not consider to write in their news. It tells about Dr. Sasaki who lost
his glasses then took glasses of a wounded nurse.
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[…] He grabbed up some bandages and an unbroken bottle of Mercurochrome, hurried back to the chief surgeon, and bandaged
his cuts. Then he went into the corridor and began patching up the wounded patients and the doctors and nurses there. He blundered so
without his glasses that he took a pair off the face of a wounded nurse, and although they only approximately compensated for the
errors of his vision, they were better than nothing. […]
Hersey, 1989: 25 The phrase ‘they were better than nothing’ expresses how the distress that
may occur in that state of situation. It describes the surviving action in a rush and chaos situation.
4.2.3 Narrative Elaborates the Character’s Personality The power of Hersey’s Hiroshima is placed on its detail in narrating the six
main characters. Hersey covers their story from before, during, and after the bomb fell.
Hersey’s Hiroshima is divided in five chapters. Each of them focuses into six parts which elaborates the six characters. Hersey managed to describe the situation of
each character until the smallest details. Although the story background is World War II, Hersey focuses on delivering the humanity side rather than the detail on
World War II itself. Reader will get attached to these six main characters by reading Hersey’s Hiroshima page by page. They will know less about the war and more
about each character personality.
4.2.3.1 Dr. Masakazu Fujii
