Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The pace of Walker's narrative replicates the frantic advance of August 1945. BBC filmmaker Walker won an Emmy for his documentary on the bombing of Hiroshima and brings precision jump-cuts to this synesthesic account of the 20th century's defining event. Beginning his story three weeks before August 6 (with the first test of a bomb some of its creators speculated might incinerate the earth's atmosphere), Walker takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the memories of American servicemen, Japanese soldiers and civilians, and the polyglot team of scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project under Gen. Leslie Groves. He establishes the doubts, fears and hopes of the bomb's designers, most of whom participated from a fear that Nazi Germany would break the nuclear threshold first. He nicely retells the story of Japan's selection months before as a target, reflecting the accelerated progress of the war in Europe, and growing concern among U.S. policymakers at the prospect of unthinkable casualties, Japanese as well as American, should an invasion of Japan's "Home Islands" be necessary. Walker conveys above all the bewilderment of Hiroshima's people, victims of a Japanese government controlled by men determined to continue fighting at all costs. Shockwave' s depiction of the consequences invite comparison with John Hershey's still-classic Hiroshima . (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* Every account of the destruction of Hiroshima is dramatic, but historian and filmmaker Walker has created an exceptionally taut and revealing chronicle. By beginning with the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and documenting with cinematic selectivity and flow the key events of the next three weeks leading up to August 6, 1945, the day Little Boy was detonated above Hiroshima, he captures the mix of fury and ambition that drove the decision to deploy this barely understood weapon against a civilian population. With an unerring sense of striking detail and ironic juxtaposition, Walker cuts from the tension at Los Alamos to Potsdam--where Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met to decide Japan's fate--to the top-secret airbase on the tiny Pacific island of Tinian, from which the Enola Gay took flight. Here are sharp and searching close-ups of the bomb makers and the bomb's victims, including Taeko Nakamae, then a girl soldier, and a doctor, Shuntaro Hida, who both survived the apocalypse and share their horrific memories 60 years later. Walker brings a fresh, judicious perspective to the eternally shocking story of Hiroshima, which must be told and retold so that its terrible lessons are never forgotten. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Dramatic ... an important page-turner ... admirably evenhanded and smoothly written.” — Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A-) “A meticulous, emotionally devastating portrait of both sides … [Walker] creates an arresting feeling of suspense.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Like John Hersey’s HIROSHIMA, SHOCKWAVE brings to life one of history’s most profound events. Don’t miss it.” — Arizona Republic “Electrifying . . .The tension and concentration of Walker’s thriller-like prose elicits a visceral response.” — Chicago Tribune “Gripping...takes us back to 1945, allowing readers to appreciate the spectacular scientific effort that created this tool of doom.” — Raleigh News & Observer “Shockwave is a stunning book, among the most immediate and thrilling works of history I have ever read.” — Irish Times “Uniquely readable, immediate, and human . . . an exceptionally taut and revealing chronicle.” — Booklist (starred review) “Walker takes readers on a roller-coaster ride ... invite[s] comparison with John Hersey’s still-classic Hiroshima.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Superb. . . . Walker writes with a sense of urgency and high drama . . . engrossing [and] saddening.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Highly recommended … [Walker] lends a rapid pace and cinematic air to the narrative.” — Library Journal At 31,000 feet above Japan, Tom Ferebee sits hunched over his bombsight. Below him lies the primary target of an operation called "Special Mission Number 13" by the few military personnel aware of its existence -- Hiroshima, a city of over 300,000. He waits until the aiming point is directly below the crosshairs and releases his cargo -- a five-ton bomb known as Little Boy by the scientists who built it. If all goes as theorized, the resulting destruction will lead to Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. But right now, a very real question occupies the minds of everyone involved: Will it work? The historical record is clear: It did work. On a quiet Monday morning in August 1945, the bomb detonated as expected, resulting in the deaths of nearly 100,000 people.The Japanese Supreme Council surrendered nine days later, after a second bomb, to similarly devastating effect, had leveled Nagasaki. But if, in retrospect, the bombing of Hiroshima represents the climax of one of the signal events of the twentieth century -- indeed, in the history of mankind -- at the time it was but another episode in an unprecedented drama whose final act had begun three weeks earlier, at Los Alamos, a secret laboratory in the high plains of New Mexico. Shockwave is the story of those terrible three weeks, as seen through the eyes of the pilots, victims, scientists, and world leaders at the center of the drama. Extraordinary interviews with American and Japanese witnesses tell the story of the bombing of Hiroshima with unparalleled immediacy and veracity -- including the story of the copilot, who writes a minute-by-minute diary on board the Enola Gay; the atomic scientist who arms the bomb in midair, equipped with a screwdriver; and the Japanese student desperately searching for his lover in the ruins of the city. Combining a brilliant gift for storytelling and a keen eye for detail, Walker constructs a shocking and unforgettably moving portrait of an event that changed the world forever. Stephen Walker was born in London. He has a BA in History from Oxford and an MA in the History of Science from Harvard. His previous book was Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima, a New York Times bestseller. As well as being a writer he is also an award-winning documentary director. His films have won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Rose d’Or, Europe’s most prestigious documentary award. From The Washington Post Those who revere John Hersey's Hiroshima as a classic piece of reporting about an act unprecedented in human history -- the instantaneous annihilation of tens of thousands of civilians by human agency -- may approach a new book on the subject with lowered expectations. But in Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima (HarperCollins, $26.95), Stephen Walker has painted on a larger canvas, beginning this tale of both ghastly destruction and a gamble to end a protracted war by visiting the site in the New Mexico desert where the atomic bomb was first tested. From then on, he switches back and forth from the United States to the doomed Japanese city, from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo to the so-called "Little White House" near Potsdam, Germany, where President Harry Truman got a briefing on the new weapon's progress in late July 1945. In Hiroshima, Walker zeroes in on the experience of a soldier named Toshiaki Tanaka. Separated from his wife and child by his military duties when the bomb fell, Tanaka went searching for them the next day but knew there was no hope once he found a neighbor, recognizable only by a telltale belt buckle he had worn. Then Tanaka saw "two figures, like charcoal sticks, fused together on the ground, facing what was once the doorway [to the family-owned liquor store]. One of the figures was much smaller than the other, a tiny, shapeless bundle pressed against the other's back, as if somehow clinging to it. He knew immediately this was his wife and baby daughter. "He stood perfectly still, staring at them. Despite the terrible burns their bones stood out. They were extraordinarily white. He could not understand how it was possible they were so white. He bent down beside them. Then he picked up the bones, placing them one by one in his handkerchief. . . . He walked out into the street that no longer existed and took the bones of his wife and child all the way back to the barracks in Ujina. There he placed them, still in their handkerchief, on a shelf above his bed in his quarters. It was the only home he had left." Countdown to Hiroshima Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. Read more