To me Father Kleinsorge has been the most interesting and impactful to me so far. He has been battling through a stomach condition that has been making him weak and not feeling the best yet he pushes on. This situation has showed Father Kleinsorges true character. He is not worrying about his own condition and is only going to worry about those hurt from the bombing. He has even gone to the depths of lying to soldiers just to give them false hope so that they would push on. The bombing made those who lived hope that they didn't. It made them feel somewhat bad for living and I believe it helped them have the power to help those in need. I great quote about Father Kleinsorge that I really emjoyed reading comes from page 51 "Father Kleinsorge went to fetch water for the wounded in a battle and a teapot he had borrowed. He had heard that it was possible to get fresh tap water outside of Asano Park. Going through the rock gardens, he had to climb over and crawl under the trunks of fallen pine trees: he found he was weak.". This to me showed how he continued to fight for the injured even though himself was suffering from an illness. His courage was truly unmatched in my opinion, he is in one of the most difficult positions and is doing in my opinion just as much work as any of the other characters.
My research question that I wanted to explore the most is "Are there any people currently being affected in Hiroshima or Nagasaki from the atom bomb we dropped?". The research results that I found were truly amazing, people have been studying the area and those effected since the day we dropped the bomb. I found there were over 850 cases of cancerous tumors that were attributed directly to the dropping of the bomb. Also from the bombing, it was estimated that people who were affected received over 100 times more radiation than a person gets from a CT scan. The effects of the radiation from the bomb were far greater than anyone could have anticipated. One of my favorite points that the researchers made was about how roughly 150,000 to 246,000 people were killed but the psychological effects of being bombed and having this happen to these people is completely unmeasurable. If you want to check out where I got my research here is the link https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-still-inform-health-today-180956185/. Total word count: 417
I completely agree with your statement that the psychological effects of being bombed are immeasurable to the people of Japan. I think these psychological effects take two main forms: in the minds of individuals and on Japanese culture as a whole. An interesting observation I remember hearing about one of the many, many ways the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected Japanese culture as a whole is in the presence of radiation in fiction. In Japanese fiction, radiation is often used as the creation arc for monsters (the most famous example being Godzilla). In the United States, however, radiation is often involved in the creation arc for heroes (spider-man, the hulk, etc). Which makes sense. In the United States the bomb was persevered as kind of a heroic thing at the time many superheroes were created. It was a symbol of American ingenuity and strength. In Japan, however, it was a symbol of evil and devastation. It's an interesting, nuanced difference that comes out of the ways the two cultures as a whole perceive radiation.
ReplyDelete