Hiroshima
...faced with a situation like that I would be praying and trying to figure a way out, but I would not have been singing our national anthem. I might be almost considered something like a communist for saying this, but I am not that loyal to the United States as they were to their country. Another very touching part in the story to me was how Dr. Sasaki worked endlessly to help the wounded even though he himself had been through the same ordeal but just was not hurt. “By nightfall, ten thousand victims of the explosion had invaded the Red Cross Hospital, and Dr. Sasaki, worn out, was moving aimlessly and dully up and down the stinking corridors with wads of bandages and bottles of Mercurochrome, still wearing the borrowed glasses he had taken from the wounded nurse, binding up the worst cuts as he came to them. After dark, they worked by the light of the city’s fires and by candles the ten remaining nurses held for them. Dr. Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so terrible and so compelling that it had not occurred to him to ask any questions about what had happened beyond the windows and doors. By three o’clock the next morning, after nineteen straight hours of his gruesome work, Dr. Sasaki was in capable of dressing another wound. He and some other survivors of the hospital staff got straw mats and went outdoors-thousands of patients and hundreds of dead were in the yard and on the driveway – and hurried around behind the hospital and lay down in hiding to snatch some sleep. But within an hour wounded people had found them; a complaining circle formed around them: ‘Doctors! Help us! How can you sleep?’ Dr. Sasaki got up again and went back to work,” (46 Hersey). To me this act was almost astonishing. This man did not have to stay and work and continue to help and serve this people as he did. He too had family and friends that he wanted to see about, but due to his loyalty to others he stayed and worked on without food, sleep, or anything to sustain him. Many doctors, especially here in the United States, would have probably worked for a while, but would have snuck out to at least see if he could locate the whereabouts and conditions of some of his family and friends. For this, I believe that Dr. Sasaki was a great man. Once again, another situation where the people exhibited their loyalty towards their emperor and country occurred between a man and his son. ‘ Dr. Y. Hiraiwa, professor of Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, and one of my church members, was buried by the bomb under the two storied house with his son, a student of Tokyo University. Both of them could not move and inch under tremendously heavy pressure. And the house already caught fir. His son said, “ Father, we can do nothing except make our mind up to consecrate our lives for the country. Let us give Banzia to our Emperor.” Then the father followed after his son, “Tenno-heika, Banzia, Banzia, Banzia!” In the result, Dr. Hiraiwa said, “Strange to say, I felt calm and bright and peaceful spirit in my heart, when I chanted Banzai to Tenno.” Afterward his son got out and digged down and pulled out his father and thus they were saved. In thinking of their experience of that time Dr. Hiraiwa repeated, “ What a fortunate that we are Japanese! It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decide to die for our Emperor,” (88 Hersey). ’ I have never known, experienced, or heard of a people being that dedicated to there country or Emperor unless they were a soldier, or the crazy people of today doing suicide bombings and things like that. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that there are some die hard Americans ou...