"There are no extraordinary men...just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to face."Admiral William Frederick Halsey Jr . (Bull) (American Naval Officer who led vigorous campaigns during World War II, 1882-1959) Kindness Forged by WarOften we find ourselves confronted with dramatic events in our lives that force us to re-evaluate and rethink ourselves. redefine ourselves. Such extraordinary circumstances attempt to crush the core of human nature within us. It is at that moment, like carbon under pressure, that the humanity within us shatters, revealing our primordial nature, or transforms into a powerful, crystal-clear brilliance of compassion and self-sacrifice. The books Night by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima by John Hersey illustrate how the usual way of life could change in unexpected ways and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books show how civilian lives were cut short by World War II, what devastation these people had to endure, and how the horrible circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people. In the book Hiroshima, the author depicts the picture of the city and the breaking point in the lives of its inhabitants: before and after the fall of the "Fat Boy". Six people, six different lives, all shattered by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of one hundred thousand people is expressed through the prism of six stories as seen by the author. The lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and Dr. Masakazu Fujii are two contrasting examples of the opposite directions the victims' lives took after the disaster. In his “past life,” Toshiko was a personnel department clerk; she had a family and a fiancé. At a quarter past eight on August 6, 1945, the bombing took away her parents and a little brother, left her partially disabled and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii owned a small private hospital and led a peaceful and joyful life, quietly enjoying the fruits of his labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion nearly a kilometer and a half from the epicenter. These two people survived the hell of the atomic bomb, but the disaster affected them differently. Somehow, escaping certain death made Dr. Fujii much more concerned and selfish. He began to drown in self-indulgence and completely lost all compassion and responsibility towards his patients..