John Hersey

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John Hersey : biography

June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993

Reporting from Hiroshima

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Soon afterward John Hersey began discussions with William Shawn, an editor for The New Yorker, about a lengthy piece about the previous summer’s bombing. Hersey proposed a story that would convey the cataclysmic narrative through individuals who survived. The next May, 1946, Hersey traveled to Japan, where he spent three weeks doing research and interviewing survivors. He returned to America during late June and began writing about six Hiroshima survivors: a German Jesuit priest, a widowed seamstress, two doctors, a minister, and a young woman who worked in a factory.

The result was his most notable work, the 31,000-word article "Hiroshima", which was published in the August 31, 1946 issue of The New Yorker. The story dealt with the atomic bomb dropped on that Japanese city on August 6, 1945, and its effects on the six Japanese citizens. The article occupied almost the entire issue of the magazine – something The New Yorker had never done before, nor has it since.

Early life

Born in Tientsin, China,After their graduation from Syracuse University, Roscoe and Grace Hersey traveled to China to teach basketball and accounting, as well as Western medicine, education, science and agronomy. to Roscoe and Grace Baird Hersey (Protestant missionaries for the Young Men’s Christian Association in Japan), John Hersey learned to speak Chinese before he spoke English (Hersey’s 1985 novel, The Call, is based on the lives of his parents and several other missionaries of their generation). John Hersey was a descendant of William Hersey (or Hercy, as the family name was spelled in Reading, Berkshire, England, the birthplace of William Hersey). William Hersey was one of the first settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts during 1635.William Hersey was later town selectman and a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and died at Hingham during 1658. There is a monument to him in the Old Ship Burying Ground in Hingham.

Hersey returned to the United States with his family when he was ten years old. Later he attended the Hotchkiss School, followed by Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones Society. Hersey lettered in football at Yale, was coached by Ducky Pond, Greasy Neale and Gerald Ford, and was a teammate of Yale’s two Heisman Trophy winners, Larry Kelley and Clint Frank. He subsequently was a graduate student at the University of Cambridge as a Mellon Fellow. After his time at Cambridge, Hersey got a summer job as private secretary and driver for author Sinclair Lewis during 1937, but he chafed at his duties, and that autumn he began work for Time, for which he was hired after writing an essay on the magazine’s dismal quality. Two years later he was transferred to Time’s Chongqing bureau.

During World War II, newsweekly correspondent Hersey covered fighting in Europe as well as Asia, writing articles for Time as well as Life magazine. He accompanied Allied troops on their invasion of Sicily, survived four airplane crashes, and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for his role in helping evacuate wounded soldiers from Guadalcanal.

After the war, during the winter of 1945–46, Hersey was in Japan, reporting for The New Yorker on the reconstruction of the devastated country, when he found a document written by a Jesuit missionary who had survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The journalist visited the missionary, who introduced him to other survivors.

Books

  • Men on Bataan, 1942
  • Into the Valley, 1943
  • A Bell for Adano, 1944
  • Hiroshima, 1946
  • The Wall, 1950
  • The Marmot Drive, 1953
  • A Single Pebble, 1956
  • The War Lover, 1959
  • The Child Buyer, 1960
  • White Lotus, 1965
  • Too Far To Walk, 1966
  • Under the Eye of the Storm, 1967
  • The Algiers Motel Incident, 1968
  • Letter to the Alumni, 1970
  • The Conspiracy, 1972
  • My Petition for More Space, 1974
  • The Walnut Door, 1977
  • Aspects of the Presidency, 1980
  • The Call, 1985
  • Blues, 1987
  • Life Sketches, 1989
  • Fling and Other Stories, 1990
  • Antonietta, 1991
  • Key West Tales, 1994