The publication of the article placed Hiroshima and the atomic bomb at the heart of the nuclear war debate. In Hiroshima in History and Memory, Michael J. Hogan writes that Hiroshima created a realization of the magnitude of the event and an entrance into the analysis of the event.[28] It put forward three issues that before had not been faced: the force of modern science, the bomb and the future of nuclear weapons.[28]
The events of the dropping of the atomic bomb live in the psyche of everyone and were brought to gruesome light by Hersey.[28] Hiroshima has and will continue to be "part of our ceaseless thinking about world wars and nuclear holocaust".[29] The effects of the radiation sickness have continued to be a concern for the world and the safety of nuclear power.[30] These concerns have resurfaced since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor incident.[30] The images brought to the public after the publishing of Hiroshima were revived in the world's eyes.[30][31]
In his essay From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey's "Hiroshima", Patrick B. Sharp also saw Hiroshima as a counterpoint to "Yellow Peril" fiction like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, which were "narrated from the point of view of an 'everyman' who witnesses the invasion of his country first hand. As the narrators struggle to survive, we get to witness the horror of the attack through their eyes, and come to loathe the enemy aliens that have so cruelly and unjustly invaded their country." While in Yellow Peril fiction scientists and soldiers who defeat the invaders are portrayed as heroes, Hersey portrays Japanese and German clergymen, doctors, and other ordinary citizens as heroes.[2]
Essays on the Red Circle Authors website included Hiroshima in the Atomic Bomb Literature cycle.[32] Still, relevant anthologies like Nihon no Genbaku Bungaku or The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath are confined solely to Japanese writers. In her 1953 short story Fireflies, writer Yōko Ōta, a representative of the Atomic Bomb Literature, repeatedly refers to Hersey's report and Dr. Sasaki, whom she calls Dr. X in her story, "the young doctor that John Hersey had written about in Hiroshima".[33]
In 1999, the original article was ranked as the finest piece of American journalism of the 20th century by a panel of experts assembled by New York University's journalism department. [34]
The book was featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read in November 2020.[35]
