These stories are of a very sober nature: every person describes where
he or she was, what he or she was doing and in which position his or
her body was during the sudden flash and explosion.
By describing how
they were sheltered by random objects such as tables, roofs and fences,
these persons explain to SHIZUMA the horrible state of their bodies,
of which some parts are unaffected but other parts totally destroyed or
no longer existing.
Usually SHIZUMA then adds the remark that later he
heard that the person telling the story died a few days after they met.
SHIZUMA's (and therefore, IBUSE's) story never becomes sentimental or
sensational.
Whenever words are insufficient to describe the horror, he uses no
words at all.
The book ends with the interweaving of SHIZUMA's diary of the past and
his description of his current life, which is full of stories of how
the explosion of the atomic bomb still affects the lifes of himself and
other people who survived.
After 25 years, his cousin finally becomes affected by radiation illness
and her body starts to deteriorate.
What is most striking about IBUSE's book is that he succeeded in describing the undescribable, by letting the reader experience through the minds and eyes of the people that he met in the days immediately after the explosion. Each person's different reconstruction of the event unfolds yet an another aspect of it, and each new aspect which is revealed makes the reader realize even more that the real event of the explosion of the atomic bomb seems to be beyond human understanding.
It seems as if, by releasing its tremendous energy on August 6, 1945,
the atomic bomb split itself up into millions of fragments of horror
intruding directly into the lifes of hundred thousands of people, affecting
individual fates randomly, depending on body postures and positions
at the moment of explosion.
The invention of the atomic bomb, and the gaining of the knowledge of
how to release this tremendous amount of energy, can't be made undone.
From 1945 on, the danger connected to this knowledge has become a part
of the fates of all future generations on earth.