3. Preserving the Horrors of Hiroshima

Sudeshna Chowdhury writes about different projects that are dedicated to documenting the accounts of witnesses of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Chowdhury begins with the story of Shoso Hirai, a man of 83 who has a picture of his brother and father he lost to the bomb. The author explains that witnesses like Hirai are people who are growing older and soon will be gone. However, many projects keep their stories alive. Chowdhury also comments that at times, doing so is not always easy. Many projects have issues with financial aid. Some others are financed by large institutions. The author concludes with Hirai’s description/memory of the bombing day.

Chowdhury does a great job using narration, information, and examples. The author narrates a conversation with a witness in the beginning – Hirai. That is used as a great attention getter for the article. The rest of the article is filled with background information of different types of projects. Links to some of them are also given. Though, it is not clear why the author chose to comment on their financial issue, given that the thesis is that stories of witnesses are not lost due to projects that preserve them. The story of Hirai concludes the article and leaves the reader with a last glimpse of what happened on the day of the bombing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/preserving-the-horrors-of-hiroshima/278213/