How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Of all the important cities of Japan, only two, Kyoto and Hiroshima, had not been visited in strength by B-san, or Mr. B, as the Japanese, with a mixture of respect and unhappy familiarity, called the B-29; and Mr. Tanimoto, like all his neighbors and friends, was almost sick with anxiety. (1.2)
From early on in the book, Hersey establishes the mood of fear/paranoia that seems to have persisted in wartime Hiroshima.
Quote #2
The two men pulled and pushed the handcart through the city streets. Hiroshima was a fan-shaped city, lying mostly on the six islands formed by the seven estuarial rivers that branch out from the Ota River; its main commercial and residential districts, covering about four square miles in the center of the city, contained three-quarters of its population, which had been reduced by several evacuation programs from a wartime peak of 380,000 to about 245,000. (1.5)
Hersey definitely threads a lot of statistics regarding wartime Japan/Hiroshima and history into his accounts of the six subjects, and this is a great example of how he transitioned between those two different "modes," moving from the details of Mr. Tanimoto's trek to the burbs with a friend to the more general birds-eye of the city dealing with war.
Quote #3
The siren jarred her awake at about seven. She arose, dressed quickly, and hurried to the house of Mr. Nakamoto, the head of her Neighborhood Association, and asked him what she should do. He said that she should remain at home unless an urgent warning—a series of intermittent blasts of the siren—was sounded. She returned home, lit the stove in the kitchen, set some rice to cook, and sat down to read that morning's Hiroshima Chugoku. (1.11)
On the morning of the atomic bomb drop, everyone was reeling from a night of air raid warnings. Here, Hersey describes Mrs. Nakamura's reactions to the air raid siren that morning (after a night of being evacuated in response to other alerts).