Historical Fiction to Follow Up Oppenheimer

Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a city that doesn’t officially exist. There, in a city that has been created in the course of months, young women like June work massive machines that they know play some role in the war effort. But what exactly they’re doing, they don’t know. Security is everywhere. Secrecy is paramount. It’s only when the bombs fall in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that June will realize the role she’s played. Now, confronted with the truth, she’ll have to reckon with the costs of unquestioned patriotism and war.

This is a book for middle grade readers, but I wanted to include it both because I’m a firm believer that good books transcend their target audience and also because it tells an important story, from a perspective often lacking in historical fiction. Loosely based on the memories of her mother, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima, Burkinshaw shares a glimpse into Japanese culture and life during WWII as well as the horrors that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl.

First serialized in 1965, Black Rain recounts the devastation of the atomic bombs through the eyes of historical accounts. Told through the eyes of an uncle worrying about his niece’s prospects one year after the bombings, Shigematsu sets out to disprove the rumors she was in Hiroshima on the day the nuclear bomb was dropped on the city. Her diaries from those days, recounting the horrors of the explosion and nuclear fallout, will either cement her prospects or ruin her chances of marriage forever.