08/06/2026
81 years ago today, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb. A hundred thousand people were killed. John Hersey's pioneering piece, "Hiroshima," tells the stories of six who lived. A young woman working in a tin plant, a doctor at a private hospital, a widow, a German missionary, a young surgeon, and a local reverend—all wondered why they had survived the blast, which arrived as a soundless flash. "It seemed a sheet of sun," one recalled. Revisit Hersey's intimate, deeply reported piece following those survivors through the deadly day, and the ruin and recovery that followed: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashsocial.com%2Fnewyorkermag%2Flibrary%2Fmedia%2F706172176
