Hiroshima - The Blog Post

With fewer and fewer of its veterans still with us, study of the Second World War is becoming more and more important lately. I have always been an avid student of war history, but must confess that I had never heard of John Hersey’s Hiroshima.

I purchased a newer edition of Hiroshima, originally an article that took up an entire edition of The New Yorker in 1946 but was later turned into a book format, a couple weeks ago for my journalism class. I found it to be an interesting, if not exactly uplifting read.

The book works because of how vividly it portrays the total destruction of the Japanese city after the dropping of the atomic bomb that essentially ended the war. Hersey is very careful not to provide any sort of opinion on the events. He simply uses a reportorial style to lay a staggering amount of facts out on the table and allows the reader to provide the emotion. Hersey has said this style was deliberate and that he wanted the readers experience to be as direct as possible. While he does not use flowery language or tug on your heartstrings in any way, the book is still very powerful. Hersey speaks of death, mutilation but also uncommon human kindness. The sheer amount of detail that Hersey is able to include is impressive.

With that said, there is something that is clearly missing from the book and that is the American perspective on the events. The book focuses entirely on six people who were in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing and how it affects them. There is no mention at all of any Americans and we do not learn of any context about the war or how they came to their decision. At least a few mentions of this in the piece would have made it stronger and a bit more balanced, in my opinion, but the counter argument of it being refreshing to see a perspective of a side other than the Americans in a war time piece also has merit.

Despite this small complaint, journalists can learn a number of things from the book. First, we can learn the importance of not putting yourself into a story where you do not have a place. It may have seemed forced or trite has Hersey included himself, it is often best to just leave yourself out of it altogether.

We can also learn the value of taking careful notes, as Hersey must have to get all of these facts into the book. A final lesson is how impactful it can be to tell the other side of a story where most of your readers have only heard one point of view. It is likely that most Americans knew little of the suffering after the bomb dropped, certainly not anything this personal.

I think the book can be compared favourably to a Canadian/Japanese television movie that I saw a few years ago in my high school history class. The movie, also called Hiroshima primarily tells the other side of the story as it looks at the American’s decision to use the bomb and it’s impact. I really liked the movie and it did get positive reviews, despite not being well known. It was interesting to see how the book version of the story basically picks off where the movie ends, showing the devastation caused by the decision. It is interesting to note that while the movie tells a largely American story, it has almost no American involvement and while the book is told through the Japanese point of view, an American writes it.

In researching the reception received by the article upon its release, it is clear that the article has quite an impact. Multiple sources say that the magazine sold out within hours and that is was commented on by other magazines and outlets. The text of the article was read on the radio in multiple countries and free copies of the book were sent to book club members. The New York Times and The New Republic both lauded the article and I could find very little criticism of the article. It seems that, with the article being published at the start of the Cold War, some said the article seemed too critical of nuclear weapons or too sympathetic to the victims. The only other complaints seemed to be from people who simply missed their usual dash of humour in the magazine.

In closing, I would just say that the book had quite a strong effect on me as a reader. I found it to be very powerful and a highly informative look into the aftermath of one of the most deadly events of our time. While I might have preferred a slightly less fact based and more emotional style of writing, I still got a lot out of the book and even found myself a bit choked up a certain points.

After reading this, I hope even more so that the study of war history does not leave us with the veterans who fought in them.

A legend dies

This past Friday Nov. 19, the sport of Hockey lost one of its true greats in coaching legend Pat Burns.

Burns started his career in the NHL by coaching his hometown Montreal Canadiens before moving to Toronto, Boston and finally winning his Stanley Cup in 2003 in the New Jersey swamp.

Burns had beaten cancer twice and was even falsely pronounced dead earlier this year, before losing this last battle with lung cancer. Tributes have been flying in from across the hockey world and most have featured one question:

How and why was burns not elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame before his passing?

The HHOF induction ceremony for this year was less than one month ago and would have been such a fitting send off for Burns. The voters knew he had a terminal illness and for them not to vote him in this year ahead of some, frankly, below par inductees is disgraceful. Burns will surely be inducted next year but by then it will be too late and the damage to the league has already been done.

Bitterness aside, here is a great video tribute to Burns from an October edition of Coaches Corner, finally Don Cherry gets something right. The Burns stuff starts about half way through.

Everyone should also give this poignant obituary from the Toronto Star a read. Obituary writing must be very difficult, but this writer captures the emotion well, while also telling a story.

RIP Pat.

My inspiration

As a lot of you probably know because Kevin brings it up every oral presentation class, my grandpa was the Sports Editor at the Winnipeg Tribune for many years. He was a sportswriter is entire adult life and earned a big following here in the city through his words.

His skill at the craft has always served as an inspiration to me in trying to get my start and he has always been willing to help and encourage me on my way.

He is pretty sick right now, and is in the hospital but it's great to see that my inspiration has been an inspiration to other sports writers as well. Here is an article from Friday's Winnipeg Sun about my grandpa. I personally think it is a bit overly dramatic in places, but thanks very much to Paul Friesen, a terrific writer himself, for taking the time to do it.


He’s the single biggest reason I’m sitting at this keyboard right now, my early inspiration.

The man who brought the Canadian Football League, especially the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, to life like nobody else could, simply with words.

As a kid, every day I’d rush to get the newspaper, the Winnipeg Tribune, to gaze at the latest pictures Jack Matheson had painted.

In those days you were either a Tribune family or a Free Press family, and those of us lucky enough to be in a Tribune family knew we had something the other kids in town didn’t.

I’d read his words, often a few times over, and although I didn’t know it at the time, they’d stick with me, landing like seeds in a fertile spot in my brain, where occasionally they continue to sprout, decades later.

I also didn’t know at the time that Matty was, quite simply, as good as it got in Canadian sports writing. A master of the written word.

That’s why it’s so hard to hear he can no longer read or write. Time has snatched those gifts away.

At 86, the great sportswriter is confined to a hospital bed, his body and mind failing him.

“Every once in a while he’ll kiss my hand,” his wife, Peggy, told me. “Unless a miracle happens, he’s not going to come home.”

The LGIW, as Matty always called her — the luckiest girl in the world — doesn’t feel so lucky these days.

But while it doesn’t look good for her husband, when she and son Jim, the oldest of three kids, begin to reminisce about better days with Matty, you quickly realize how lucky they’ve been.

“The softest father in the world,” the LGIW called him.

While Matty could be hard as nails in print, he was apparently a marshmallow at home. She’d be busy doling out the discipline, but he’d prefer to dole out the ice cream, or take the kids out to toss the football around.

How many kids have a putting green on their front lawn?

Matty’s did.

And while he taught Jim how to play golf, he passed down a more precious gift to his No. 1 son.

The kid became a sportswriter.

“I’d have to write and my dad would be looking over my shoulder,” Jim recalled of his early days as a scribe-in-training. “That was more pressure than actually going to the game and figuring out what I had to ask to write the story.”

Of course, when you eventually get the stamp of approval from Matty, you know you’re on your way.

The man, simply, was never boring in print.

With Matty, a receiver didn’t make great catches, he made catches he had no business making. He wasn’t wide open, he had enough time to make a speech before the ball came down.

A player didn’t punch another, he played the tom-toms on him. A quarterback didn’t get good protection, he had enough time to scribble the recipe for meat loaf on the football.

I’d even eat up his annual Christmas column, which began with “Merry Christmas to...” and ended with a few hundred names.

And to think, after serving two years in the navy, it took Matty a few months to work up the nerve to go to the Trib to ask for a job in 1946.

“The job he had (before that), they fired him,” the LGIW said. “He worked in an office, pushing a pencil. And you know that wasn’t Jack.”

No, he wasn’t at home unless he was at a game, talking to players and coaches, then banging away at his manual typewriter, where that day’s clack-clack-clack would become the next day’s must-read.

As a sports editor, I imagine he could be intimidating to the young writers.

Word is he never chewed them out, though. At least, not so they heard it.

“But, boy, did he write nasty notes,” the LGIW said. “He was a writer right to his fingertips.”

As passionate as he was about the Bombers, curling was “the love of his life.”

“It was a tossup who he loved more — me or his job,” Peggy cracked. “Sometimes I thought it was his job. He got up in the morning wanting to go to work. He was the only person I knew who wanted his holiday to end so he could go back to work.”

Lucky for us. Because a day without Matty in the Trib was a day you should have hung onto your 25 cents.

It turns out Matty had his own inspiration as a kid, huddling around the radio for Hockey Night In Canada broadcasts. He’d listen to Foster Hewitt, then write the story — at nine or 10 years old.

Even then, it was all about the words.

“He didn’t read comic books,” the LGIW said. “He read the dictionary.”

Don’t kid yourself, though. Matty knew how to have fun. If it wasn’t singing around the piano, it was with a drink and a cigar in a smoky hotel room, preferably during Brier or Grey Cup week.

“Or the hospitality suite,” said Jim.

Usually with his wife at his side.

Peggy often travelled with her husband, making it to 39 Grey Cups. No wonder he called her the LGIW.

“We’ve had a good 63 years,” she said.

What she and the kids wouldn’t give, though, for one more hour of lucidity. One more chance to say a few words to the man whose life was words.

And if they got that chance, which ones would they choose?

“Just that I love him,” Jim managed.

If you feel compelled to contact the family, they ask you don’t call or visit.

Write some words down on paper, and send it their way, instead.

Matty, no doubt, would prefer it that way.

End of an Era...

...Well not really.

But the 2010 CFL season mercifully came to an end for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers last night and, as my classmate and friend Sean Angus said nicely, it was a game that summed up the entire season as the Bombers lost by four points or less for a shocking 9th time this season.

They say it's the mark of a bad team to lose close games but that is just ridiculous. Turn even three of those nine games around and we would likely be getting ready for the playoffs.

I was watching, often from the press box, for all of these losses because I covered the team this year as the official game reporter for winnipegbluebombers.com. It was definitely an honour and a great experience so thank you to former CreComm Dave Turnbull for hooking me up.

Covering a team is one of the biggest parts, if not the biggest part of sports reporting and covering the Bombers for a full season is essentially as big as it gets here in Winnipeg. I learned a lot about sports writing including how to cover a losing team, how to network with professional writers and how to wrangle an extra free meal in the press box.

Here is one of my game stories for you all to check out. You can read the rest on the Bomber website, if you like stories that will depress you.

keith