Journal 7: Lily Eldadah

The character profiled that has been the most interesting to me so far is Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto because he plays a crucial role in staying calm and helping out not only those close to him (like relatives and near by neighbors) but everyone in the community. In chapter one of Hiroshima, John Hershey states, “Mr. Tanimoto is a small man, quick to talk, laugh and cry,” (3), which helps the reader understand Mr. Tanimoto’s character who is very emotional guy with a light personality before the bomb. During and after the bombing, Mr. Tanimoto, in my opinion, is the most heroic. He starts by transferring people by boat across he river, brings water to all the burnt people who were begging for water, and searches for his wife and child to make sure they are safe. The situation reveals that Mr. Tanimoto is truly makes him such a courageous man because he puts everyone’s safety above his own. “They did not move and he realized they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glove like pieces. He was so sickened by this that he had to sit down for a moment. Then he got out into the water and, though a small mad, lifted several of the men and women, who were naked, into his boat” (45). In this quote you could what kind of character Mr. Tanimoto is. Although the sight of the people was gruesome, Mr. Tanimoto went out of his comfort zone just to help all the people he could because he felt bad that he was lucky enough to not be injured after the bomb dropped.

One topic that was really intriguing to me was the burns caused by the heat from the atomic bomb. People wearing black clothes were burnt, while people  wearing white, the heat was repelled off of them.

In this picture taken of a women after the atomic bomb, you can see how that since she was wearing a Kimono, that was black, when the bomb dropped, the black burnt into her skin.

This boy, who was burned to death with his hands placed on his chest, leaving an impression of agony, is believed to have been a mobilized student exposed to the A-bomb in Iwakana township, which is about 700 meters from the hypocenter.

    

In Hiroshima, Hershey says, “Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns– of undershirt straps and suspenders, and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos”

On the Trinity Atomic Web Site, they stated, “A number of instances were recorded in which persons wearing clothing of various colors received burns greatly varying in degree, the degree of burn depending upon the color of the fabric over the skin in question”, so the question is why did the color of clothing affect the degree of the burn? The Trinity Atomic Web Site continues by giving examples of different burns due to color of clothing: “For example a shirt of alternate light and dark gray stripes, each about 1/8 of an inch wide, had the dark stripes completely burned out but the light stripes were undamaged; and a piece of Japanese paper exposed nearly 1 1/2 miles from X had the characters which were written in black ink neatly burned out” ("Trinity Atomic Web Site."). There were two different types of burns that were caused: flame or fire burns (also known as flash burns). Flash burns were characterized or identified as, “Marked redness of the affected skin areas appeared almost immediately, according to the Japanese, with progressive changes in the skin taking place over a period of a few hours” stated in the Trinity Atomic Website ("Trinity Atomic Web Site.").

http://www.abomb1.org/hiroshim/hiro_med.html "Trinity Atomic Web Site." THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI. GREGORY WALKER, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.