Hospital Dr Terufumi Sasaki example essay topic

In John Hersey's novel, Hiroshima, he follows the accounts of six people before, immediately after and long-term actions of the people when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. One person whose accounts he followed was Dr. Terufumi Sasaki. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was a young surgeon at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital during the time of the bomb drop. He was only twenty-five years old and had just completed his medical training at the Eastern Medical University in Tsingtao, China. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was an idealist and helped people in a small town, where his mother lived, without a private medicine license. He had a strong will to help sick and injured people, which is the reason why he went into Hiroshima to work at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital when the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945.

The morning of August 6, 1945, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was going to work at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. He had got on an early train to commute to Hiroshima from Mukiahara and a streetcar to take him to the hospital. If Dr. Terufumi Sasaki had left at his normal time to go to work at the hospital that morning he would have been closer to the center of the blast than he really was. When the bomb went off over Hiroshima, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was 1,650 yards from the bomb's epicenter.

He reported the chief surgeon when he went to the hospital and then went to get a patient's blood sample for a Wassermann test. As Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was heading down the main corridor to the third floor of the hospital, the atomic bomb detonated. He was one step past the windows in the corridor when the bomb flash reflected into the corridor. Dr Terufumi Sasaki dropped to one knee and said, "Sasaki, gamb are! Be brave!" (14) The blast from the bomb ripped through the hospital, causing Dr. Terufumi Sasaki's glasses and slippers to fly and the blood sample to crash against the wall. Thinkin that the bomb had only hit the hospital Dr. Terufumi Sasaki started to bandage up the nurses and the other surgeons in the hospital not knowing that many of Hiroshima's citizens were making their way to be treated a the hospital.

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was busy taking care of the hospital staff's injuries when hundreds of Hiroshima's citizens started to pour into the hospital. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was the only uninjured person in the hospital. Out of thirty doctors in the hospital only six were able to work and only ten out of over two hundred nurses were able to work. As Dr. Sasaki was treating the victims in the hospital he noticed that the hospital was increasingly getting more crowded. He later realized that injured citizens were piling into the hospital. Dr. Sasaki took a pair of glasses from an injured nurse and used them to be able see a little better while treating the victims of the bomb blast.

As the day progressed more and more bomb victims came to the hospital to receive treatment. The doctors and nurses who were busy treating the victims started to skip over the slightly injured and went directly to the heavily injured people. As the day continued Dr. Sasaki quit working as a professional surgeon but as "an automaton, mechanically wiping, daubing, winding, wiping, daubing, winding". (26) At one point the nurses and the doctors tried to go outside and take a break from the work, at this time the staff had been working for over ten hours straight. Eventually other doctors, nurses, and materials were sent to the hospital to help the staff that was already working in the hospital. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki stayed and helped at the hospital until the majority of the victims were taken care of.

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki went to get his private medical license to start a private clinic in Mukiahara. It took him ten years to go through school to get his license. Once he got his license he went to the Bank of Hiroshima to start a clinic. At first he could not get his loan, but eventually he got his loan and built his clinic. As the years passed he built many services to help the people in Mukiahara.

He was criticized for developing all of the services. People thought he was creating them for his own personal gain. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki saw the destruction that the atomic bomb created and helped the people of Hiroshima survive the incidents. He followed in his grandfather's steps and started a private clinic in Mukiahara. He survived the atomic and lived to tell his tale many people through the times that have passed.