Panic Grass and Feverfew
- This chapter starts out with a health update on four of the six people who are at the center of Hersey's story.
- Twelve days after the bomb dropped, on August 18, Father Kleinsorge went into Hiroshima to deposit some of the mission's money in the bank On the way, he started to feel pretty tired, and a couple of days later he couldn't get through mass. Also, his "minor" wounds had suddenly opened up and become inflamed.
- Mrs. Nakamura, meanwhile, found that her hair had started to fall out by late August. A few days later, she and her daughter, Myeko, started to feel kind of sick and exhausted.
- Mr. Tanimoto, too, started to feel badly at around this time.
- It turns out that all of these people were suffering from various degrees of radiation sickness.
- While all that was going on, Miss Sasaki was still in poor shape, and still getting bounced around from hospital to hospital. She ended up going to the Red Cross Hospital, where she was put under Dr. Sasaki's care.
- Dr. Fujii, meanwhile, was recuperating in the house of his friend Mr. Okuma. In September, during some heavy rains, the area flooded, and the house got washed away with the overflowing river. Luckily, he and Mr. Okuma had fled before that happened. For those keeping score at home: Yes, that's the second of Dr. Fujii's homes that got washed away in a river in the course of the story.
- Hersey then offers us some information about the scientific exploration/analysis of Hiroshima during that time. Rumors spread that the area wasn't going to be inhabitable for a while.
- Once that rumor had been debunked, Mrs. Nakamura sent her brother-in-law for her sewing machine. It was rusted from being in the water that long.
- Father Kleinsorge was still sick in September, so he went to a hospital in Tokyo for treatment. The doctor told him he'd be out in two weeks, but then Father Kleinsorge heard that same doctor tell the nurse that he would surely die.
- However, defying everyone's expectations, he improved.
- Mrs. Nakamura and Myeko, meanwhile, were too poor to see a doctor, but resting eventually seemed to help them. The other Nakamura children were fine, aside from some headaches and nightmares.
- Unfortunately, Mr. Tanimoto was sick and laid up in bed in Ushida. He ended up spending a month in bed and then went to live with his father in Shikoku, where he rested another month.
- We then learn a bit more, generally speaking, about radiation poisoning and its effects/treatments.
- Now we're back with Dr. Fujii, who decided to buy a vacant clinic in the suburb of Kaitaichi. He recovered and was soon back in fine form, hosting "members of the occupying forces" and practicing his English.
- Back at the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki was trying to help Miss Sasaki, but she was still in a ton of pain. A guy she'd met at a previous hospital came to visit her and seemed inclined to come again, but she wasn't that interested—she was too preoccupied with her pain.
- She was also wondering what had become of her fiancé, who apparently had returned to town without visiting her so far. Hmm…
- In December, Father Kleinsorge was released from the Tokyo hospital and headed back to Hiroshima. On the train, he ran into Dr. Fujii.
- Meanwhile, reconstruction of Hiroshima began. Statisticians tried to figure out how many had been killed/injured, and scientists tried to analyze the wreckage to figure out how big and hot the bomb had been. Apparently, Americans were trying to keep the details about the bomb away from Japanese ears.
- In February 1946, a friend of Miss Sasaki's asked Father Kleinsorge to visit her, apparently concerned about her state of mind. He went to see her several times, and they ended up talking about religion, even though Miss Sasaki did not start out religious…
- When they became available, Mrs. Nakamura rented a shanty in Hiroshima and got the kids enrolled in school. However, money was very tight and she was having trouble getting by.
- Mr. Tanimoto returned from Shikoku and started thinking about reopening his church.
- Meanwhile, Father Kleinsorge was in the process of rebuilding his mission with some assistance from Father Laderman, who had just joined him. He soon tired himself out and had to go back to the hospital in Tokyo for a rest.
- Miss Sasaki seemed to get stronger under the influence of Father Kleinsorge and was soon on the mend and discharged. She prepared for conversion to Catholicism. Her fiancé never turned up.
- As the Red Cross Hospital slowly got back to normal, Dr. Sasaki started to focus on his life a bit more. He got married and gained some weight back.
- Here, Hersey inserts a letter from Mr. Tanimoto to "an American" (Hersey? We don't know…) describing his sentiments a year after the dropping of the bomb and reflections about its impact.
- Then there's some discussion of the ethics of using the bomb and the whole concept of "total war" wherein civilians end up being targets in addition to soldiers.
- The chapter ends with Toshio Nakamura's essay about the bomb, written a year later, which was "matter-of-fact" in Hersey's estimation.