米国では1946年8月「ニューヨーカー」誌に発表、まもなく単行本化。日本では1949年4月に邦訳(初版)出版。
Hendrik Hertzberg, Obituary, "John Hersey,"
The New Yorker, April 5, 1993, p. 111
April 5, 1993 Issue
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http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/04/05/1993_04_05_111_TNY_CARDS_000365222〉
Obit of John Hersey, who died on March 24th at the age of 78. He had a distinguished career as a novelist and another as a teacher, but he was above all a reporter. "Hiroshima," his account of the experiences of six people who lived through the world's first atomic attack, may be the most famous magazine article ever published. It was the first and last article to ever occupy all the editorial space of an entire issue of "The New YorkerO--that of August 31, 1946-- and after, when it appeared as a book, it sold some 3 1/2 million copies, in many editions, and is still in print. Perhaps more astonishingly, its success was deserved. If ever there was a subject calculated to make a writer overwrought and a piece overwritten, it was the bombing of Hiroshima; yet Hersey's reporting was so meticulous, his sentences and paragraphs were so clear, calm, and restrained, that the horror of the story he had to tell came through all the more chillingly. Mentions his piece on P.T. 109 and J.F.K. Nevertheless, "HiroshimaO remains his crowning achievement. Though it is imbued with a profound moral sense, it does not preach. It does not hector. It simply tells. The power if it, and of its author, is in the reporting.
(法政大学出版会 2003年7月増補版第1刷)