Surviving Hiroshima, Anthony Drago
Surviving Hiroshima, Anthony Drago
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Surviving Hiroshima
A Young Woman's Story

Author: Anthony Drago, Douglas Wellman

Narrator: Douglas Wellman

Unabridged: 7 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/06/2021


Synopsis

On August 6, 1945, 22-year-old Kaleria Pachikoff was doing pre-breakfast chores when a blinding flash lit the sky over Hiroshima, Japan. A moment later, everything went black as the house collapsed on her and her family. Their world, and everyone else's, changed as the first atomic bomb was detonated over a city.

From Russian nobility, the Palchikoff's barely escaped death at the hands of Bolshevik revolutionaries until her father, a White Russian officer, hijacked a ship to take them to safety in Hiroshima. Safety was short lived. Her father, a talented musician, established a new life for the family, but the outbreak of World War II created a cloud of suspicion that led to his imprisonment and years of deprivation for his family.

After the bombing, trapped in the center of previously unimagined devastation, Kaleria summoned her strength to come to the aid of bomb victims, treating the never-before seen effects of radiation.

Fluent in English, Kaleria was soon recruited to work with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces in a number of secretarial positions until the family found a new life in the United States.

Heavily based on quotes from Kaleria's memoirs written immediately after World War II, and transcripts of United States Army Air Force interviews with her, her story is an emotional, and sometime chilling, story of courage and survival in the face of one of history’s greatest catastrophes.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on December 27, 2020

This is an account of the author’s mother’s incredible life. Fleeing Russia with her family as a baby, she is brought up in Japan and survives the atomic bomb. Interspersed with her story is the factual history of the war against Japan. I was fascinated by it all but disappointed there wasn’t more a......more

Goodreads review by David on February 14, 2022

The beginning story in Surviving Hiroshima is fascinating. The Palchikoff’s are an aristocratic family that are living a happy life in Czarist Russia. In the mid to late 1800s is considered the Golden Age of Arts in Russia. It’s the age of Anton Chekov, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Tchaikovs......more

Goodreads review by The Ravishing on March 17, 2021

3.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐* While I agree it is an important story to be told, I did not like the format in which it was told. I felt like the story jumped back and forth a lot and at times it became difficult to follow what was going on. Also the first 60% of the book was very slow and painfully hard to get thr......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on September 09, 2020

Surviving Hiroshima A Young Woman's Story by Anthony Drago; Douglas Wellman BQB Publishing WriteLife Publishing Biographies & Memoirs Pub Date 01 Sep 2020 I am reviewing a copy of Surviving Hiroshima through BQB Publishing and Netgalley: Twenty two year old Kaleria Palchikoff was doing pre breakfast chor......more

Goodreads review by Cosmic on March 12, 2023

This was so well written. It told the story and the history in such a understandable way. It made me cry. It gave me such love for their family and the Japanese. I am felt the courage that this family went through and the miracles that were given to them. A blessing to read.......more