The Bells of Nagasaki

Book excerpt: Witness the best and the worst of humanity in The Bells of Nagasaki. . . On 9th August 1945, the Japanese city of Nagasaki is hit by an atomic bomb. Forty thousand people are killed instantly. Doctor Takashi Nagai is not one of them. Pulling himself, broken and bloodied, from the wreckage that was once the city’s university hospital, Takashi bundles together a tattered group of survivors. Doctors, nurses, students, each with their own injuries and losses, their own bone-chilling fears for the future, they work tirelessly at the impossible task of aiding the countless wounded and easing the deaths of the dying. They remain determined to heal their fallen city, to find solace and hope among the rubble, even as a strange and growing sickness begins to claim them, one by one. Eyewitness to one of the most fatal events in human history, this is Takashi’s record, written from his sickbed – a chilling historical document, and undeniable evidence of the capacity for human kindness. ‘A book that everyone should read’ The Times