Letters from the End of the World

This is a series of letters written by Toyofumi Ogura to his wife who, by that time, was dead from radiation sickness from the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. This was his way of working through his grief.

This is the type of book that at least some chapters should be used in high school history classes, and in college classes, to show young people some of the actual horrors of the results of an atomic bomb. Toyofumi did a lot of walking around Hiroshima, and the sights that he saw are truly horrible.

Innumerable women and children were killed in the bombing and many of the survivors were in terrible physical shape. His writing brings all this suffering to life and it is truly disturbing, but it is something that cannot be forgotten, ever. People must know what the effects of nuclear war really are and that, if a such a war would happen again, no one would truly be the winner.

A frightening, but still excellent work.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page