John Hersey

Background

• Son of U.S. missionary parents, was born in China on June 17, 1914.
• After graduating from Yale, he became correspondent in the Far East for Time
• During World War II wrote for Life and the New Yorker

World War II

• He accompanied the U.S. Army in the invasion of Sicily and Italy.
• He used some of the information he gathered as a war journalist for his best-selling novel, A Bell for Adano (1944).
• The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945.
• Hersey covered the war in the Pacific. His articles included one detailing the heroism of Lt. John F. Kennedy when his boat, PT109, was sunk near the Soloman Islands.
• His articles included one detailing the heroism of Lt. John F. Kennedy when his boat, PT109, was sunk near the Soloman Islands.

Hiroshima

• Hersey’s original intention was to write a piece about Hiroshima based on what he could see and interviews.
• In Tokyo, he met Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, the German priest of his book.
• Hersey soon added five more survivors to the book by interviewing people Kleinsorge knew, as well as by screening many other Japanese survivors.
• Hiroshima published in its entirety in the New Yorker on August 31, 1946, and later as a book in October.

1950s-60s

• 1950: The Wall about the German concentration camps in eastern Europe
• 1960s: Turned his efforts to education, racism, and the disenchantment of 1960s students
• 1963: Here to Stay, a series of articles about people who survived in the face of natural disasters

1980s-Death

• 1981: Visited Chinese sites that he had not seen since 1946
• 1985: The highly personal novel The Call and a new edition of Hiroshima with an epilog on the fortieth anniversary of the bombing were published.
• Died on March 24, 1993, at the age of 78