Fate and the desperate efforts of the rescuers saved some, but many lives literally disintegrated in seconds, minutes, days, and years after the bombs were dropped. Pellegrino depicts dazed “ant-trails” of survivors threading through the instantaneously blasted landscapes and past heaps of the dead, dying, and horrifically maimed in the shadow of an eight-mile high radioactive cloud. The bombings were titanic, apocalyptic events that mock human scale and comprehension. There are few opportunities amid the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for inspiring “triumph of the human spirit” narratives. I have the heart of a dried-up raisin but even I got a little teary in places. Pellegrino’s book is a moving and grueling close-up look at the horrors experienced by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki both on the day of the bombing and in the days and years afterward. It’s also the title of a book by Charles Pellegrino ( To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). president, and featuring a guaranteed non-apology. “ To Hell and Back” is a phrase that can bear a pretty heavy metaphorical load when it comes to talking about the atomic bombings of Japan, and President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, the first by a sitting U.S.
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