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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happens to Mr. Tanimoto's health a few weeks after the bombing?

2. Who is the person Miss Sasaki thinks about while in the hospital?

3. The symptoms people came down with is a disease later to be known as...

4. What does Mr. Tanimoto have to keep consciously repeating to himself in order to get all the people across the river?

5. What does Miss Sasaki seem to draw physical strength from?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do the Nakamura children spend the night at Asano Park the day of the bombing?

2. What happens to Father Kleinsorge's physical condition a few weeks after the bombing?

3. What are the Japanese physicists' concern about the bomb and what do they do about it?

4. By midsummer, Mrs. Nakamura's savings are gone. How then does she survive?

5. What in particular makes Miss Sasaki uneasy when she sees the ruins of Hiroshima for the first time?

6. Who does Mr. Tanimoto keep trying to avoid at the park?

7. What happens to Mrs. Nakamura's physical condition a few weeks after the bombing?

8. How does President Truman describe the atomic bomb during his radio announcement?

9. Describe Mr. Tanaka.

10. In trying to rescue the 20 or so men and women in the sandpit, what makes Mr. Tanimoto sick?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

John Hersey mentions several times the Japanese's indifference towards the ethics of using the atomic bomb.

1) Discuss the roots of this Japanese attitude.

2) Is Hersey being objective about the subject of the Japanese's attitude towards the atomic bomb or is he telling only one side of it, keeping out the attitudes of those who feel otherwise?

Essay Topic 2

Hiroshima bomb victims experience various types of discrimination.

1. Discuss which characters suffered the most discrimination and describe the type of discrimination they experienced.

2. How did some of the characters overcome the discrimination shown to the atomic bomb victims?

3. Did the discrimination continue with the next generation, the victims' children, or did society change its views by then? Cite three examples that support your theory.

Essay Topic 3

The Japanese government's response to the bombing.

1) Why is the government slow to respond to the victims of the bombing? Cite three examples from the book.

2) When and why does the government begin to respond to the citizens of Hiroshima who were affected by the bomb?

3) How do the characters in the book view their government's response to the bomb? Do they blame their government for the Hiroshima bombing? What about the bombing of Nagasaki? Cite three examples from the book.

(see the answer keys)

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