Healing Amidst Chaos: Dr. Hachiya's Journey in Hiroshima

I stumbled upon this book by pure chance. One day in a bookstore, I saw the title, felt an instant connection, and bought it without any prior knowledge of what I was getting into. I started reading it the very next day, and from then on, I knew this was a find worth cherishing.

💡In short it is: A Glimpse into History

The book is the diary of Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, the director of a hospital in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing in 1945. Starting on August 6, 1945, the day the bomb was dropped, and continuing until the end of September that same year, Dr. Hachiya chronologically describes the devastating impact of the bomb, the medical struggles, and the emotional weight that came with it.

It's more than just a diary—it's an emotional rollercoaster that weaves together personal tragedy and medical discovery. As I read, I found myself drawn not only to the personal experiences he described but also to his evolving understanding of radiation sickness, a disease that was completely unknown at the time.

Who Should Read This Book❓

I believe this book will deeply resonate with two groups of readers:

- 🏥Medical professionals: those within the medical discipline to understand that medicine is more than just a science that we study. It is truly a humanitarian message that we should carry on from past generations. It shows clinical reasoning and progressive analysis of a new disease of that time. It discusses rumors that started spreading and how he managed to contain the fear at least in his hospital and city.

- 📜History Enthusiasts: Anyone interested in history, ethics, or Japanese culture will gain a unique perspective on Hiroshima's aftermath. It sheds light on the social, political, and personal struggles faced by the Japanese in the wake of the bombing, including the difficult emotions surrounding Japan’s surrender and the presence of American forces on Japanese soil.

Dr Michihiko Hachia

He was a doctor who worked as a director in Hiroshima Hospital during world war II. He witnessed the atomic bombing and was injured together with his wife who stayed with him at that time, dedicating himself to understand the effects of atomic bomb.

After receiving treatment for a week he continued his duty of taking care of patients. He described the hospital as a shattered refuge, where many sought only shelter for the night, while others arrived with devastating injuries.

Although many opportunities arose for him to flee from this city into a safer one, he remained loyal and decided to feed his scientific curiosity to study radiation effects on human.

This diary is very emotional and talks about many tragedies which he saw or were described to him. As he had an important official rule, he was visited and given presents by many people who know him and then got a chance to ask multiple people about their tragedies during the pika (atomic bomb as people called it in Japan).

🥼Medical perspective

This is the core of the book for any medical professionals who bought it.

It describes in detail how the radiation effect was, how they did not understand it at the beginning thinking it was some kind of gas that would make Hiroshima uninhabitable for 75 years.

A chart was made as they finally could correlate the symptoms severity with the distance from the hypocenter, concluding that the closest people to the bomb site were most severely affected, but if there was any concrete barrier they were not injured at all.

A tragedy started happening by the end of August as the death toll began to rise again after being relatively stable, with rumors spreading that patients who developed epilation (baldness) and petechial rash (a type of rash attributed to the low Platelets count caused by radiation) are at risk of dying. Which was true at the beginning, and a fear started roaming until Dr Hachia managed to understand some of the effects of radiation and reassure people about their safety in the city.

He also noted some hematological findings after getting a working microscope 3 weeks after Pika, and at about the same time ordered to do Autopsies on those who passed away to understand the underlying diseases. Also, he documented some open end questions of things he could not explain, such as why there were no tetanus infections although most patients had open wounds in contact with broken windows, doors and metal objects, or why many healthy looking patients suddenly developed purpura and epilation weeks after the bombing whereas they were not severely injured initially .

This book is rich with multiple medical entries and academic style reports using the tools available. For example categorizing the patients according to disease severity, their distance from the blast, and their common symptoms.

He repeatedly thanked all his medical staff from the janitors, secreteraries, nurses, students and to doctors and professors. Especially nurses were, as he described, like guardian angels, tirelessly keeping the hospital running amidst the chaos, offering care, comfort, and stability when everything else seemed to fall apart.

✍️Narrative style of Dr. Hachia

These diaries where intended to be for himself or to show for some of his close friends. But 10 years later a doctor persuaded him to publish it to the UN to keep record of people’s thoughts and challenges during the tragedy.

He used a language that made me engaged with his narration and sequence of actions. Even though this diary is written chronologically and with minimal edits to mirror the reality at its closest scale, but he managed to add a tinge of mystery and excitement with its already tragic script.

I personally used his narration style to structure a blog post depicting a tragic moment when I witnessed a 7 year old girl with her family receiving the heart breaking news that she was diagnosed with leukemia. I noticed a great change in my writing skills after posting this blog immediately after finishing the book. I could notice using more emotional expression in writing and story telling.

I always thought the goal of the story or a diary is to document important moments, memories or experiences. I always wanted to reach the core of the story as fast as I could as the details around it felt irrelevant and deviating from the core. However, I gained an important lesson in that details and story telling sequence is what keeps people engaged in a writing, otherwise it would only be an instruction manual (if it was non fictional category) or a memory relevant to the author only (if it was diary structured).

Cultural Insights and Personal Touches 🗾

Beyond the medical and historical aspects, the diary gives readers a window into Japanese culture. Since the diary was translated much later for a Western audience, some of the Japanese traditions and expressions that Hachiya includes remain true to their original context. The emotional weight of this book is heightened by these cultural insights, allowing readers to connect with the Japanese perspective during one of the most harrowing moments in history

📝 Memorable moments

📍"A doctor is never good in treating his own family."

This is a shared quote also told by Sir William Osler. Although, he also states that a doctor should never treat himself also but rather visit another doctor to prevent the bias.

📍 First encounter with an American soldier entering the hospital. He could not speak japanese and the doctor could not speak english. It was a weird fist interaction, but did not have any consequences. In the second time, he prepared a whiteboard to help in communication with the Americans as he only knew how to write English not speak it.

📍 The mystery of no tetanus cases- How come the patients that suffered from diffuse open wounds and injuries, but surprisingly no one was presented with tetanus nor gas gangrene. Tetanus should have increased dramatically and killed many, but no cases were reported. He did not answer this question and left it to the reader to figure out.

📍The first time after the bombing, about 3 weeks after, he got his first microscope and could finally examine blood specimens. It was very exciting how he was slowly figuring out what have happened and describing the findings and linking them to symptoms.

📍The first performed autopsy, revealed some strange findings. Like the first encounter for me of petechiae in internal organs. How it linked to the internal bleeding.

📍When the doctor was debunking numerous spreading rumors among the hospital and in town. It was informative to understand how this process works and how facts should be presented. He made a single mistake though, in denying any new radiation effects from the same bomb, but according to his resources at that time and the patients’ cases he recorded, this would be reasonable to conclude.