To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives) Paperback – Illustrated, February 7, 2019

I read the older version of this book, and once the author cleared up the forgeries in his book, read it again. Not for the weak-stomached, Pellegrino does not spare the reader the visceral, graphic, no-holds barred descriptions of what an atomic blast does to a living body. We hear from the victims, people not directly involved with the blast or its after affects, the men who flew the missions to drop the bomb, and briefly what they and the Japanese people and government thought of the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Effects of the bomb rippled far and wide, in strange directons, effecting such seemingly unrelated things as manga, the Yakuza and Spiderman. Incredible coincidences and miraculous escapes abound. The book is a real page turner.While the victims of the blast and their families do speak through Pellegrino about the bomb and the morals of using it, and there is some mention of the memorials to the dead and anti-war sentiment and memoirs and memories of the victims years after, and while the book did elicit a lot of empathy and sympathy from me for the victims, I can't say that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made me forget the horrors of the Japanese Empire's atrocities. I've read about those too. I had a lot of sympathy for those victims as well. Innocent victims who had not started nor supported any wars. I wondered where the Japanese memorials to the people murdered by their past empire were. None exist. So while some of the Japanese were keen to keep reminding the world of what the bombs did (and also who dropped them), they completely omitted the atrocities of their own armies from their own history textbooks in their schools and basically let generations of their own children grow up unaware of what they'd done. So, unlike one of the arguments in the book about the futility of assigning blame, this book and the horrors depicted did not make me forget the OTHER victims. The victims of the Japanese.

This was a hard book to put down even though I had to take rest breaks from the subject matter occasionally. I read it to my husband while traveling in our car. We both loved the message but there are moments when the reading became difficult to get through without tears coming to our eyes. Still, the author did such a great job about being nonjudgmental on who was at fault it makes for fascinating but horrific reading. I agree with those that say, it is a must read book for the new generations coming up. I was born just after the war. My parents told stories of it. Hatred ran deep for the Japanese. To hear the Japanese side of the story is eye opening. People all over the world are being deceived by leaders even today. Propaganda is alive and well and it’s always the innocent citizens who pay a price. I highly recommend end this book for those who want to hear both sides of World War II.

I just finished reading The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pelligrino. What an interesting novel and a unique perspective of the critial last days of the Pacific Theater portion of the war. I was impressed with the author's accounts from witnesses although I am aware of the recent dispute regarding whether or not many of the "facts" are actually fiction. Hopefully this will be resolved through further research so that factual history can be preserved.As a reader this novel is very intriguing. If you want to read about the lives of real people (mostly Japanese civilians) and what they endured as a result of the two Atomic Bombs dropped days apart, then this is a must read. You will also learn about the atomic bomb development and details surrounding the atomic program. Whether or not the details are truely facts, destruction of this magnitude must never happen again, atomic or nuclear!!!!I am on a WWII kick and have read several good books, mostly about the imprisonment of our troops in the Philappines and the liberation. (My father was in the Navy during WWII and was part of many of these critical battles as well as the liberation of our troops). I would also recommend Ghost Soldiers, an epic account of the WWII's greatest rescue mission by Hampton Sides and Tears in The Darkness; The Bataan Death March and its Aftermath by Michael Norman. Both excellent books with historical accounts.