The Ash Garden

Dennis Bock’s debut novel, The Ash Garden (2001), utilizes a non-linear timeline and several distinct points-of-view to explore the experiences of three people before, during, and after the Atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima in 1945.

On August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan, the young girl Emiko is playing with her brother, Mitsuo, painting her grandfather’s face onto his back in mud, when they see a foreign plane flying high above the city. Emiko attempts to convince her brother to come back home with her, as they have been instructed to do whenever they see a foreign aircraft, but Mitsuo doesn’t come. The plane drops a bomb—the atomic bomb that destroys most of the city. Emiko describes the intense explosion that follows in poetic language.

In 1995, Anton Böll, a professor at Columbia University, gives a lecture on his experience working with Dr. Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, the top-secret work that produced the atomic bomb and led to the bombing of Hiroshima. Emiko approaches him, asking him to participate in a documentary about the bombing. Böll is initially reluctant, suspecting that Emiko plans to paint him as a monster in an anti-nuclear work, but Emiko assures him she has no agenda. Böll goes home to wife, Sophie, who is very ill, and tells her about the invitation. She encourages him to participate, and so, he calls Emiko, agreeing to be interviewed. He tells her that he has some old films she will find interesting and sets up a meeting time.



Emiko relates her story. After the bombing, her parents are dead, but she and her brother survive with severe burns—in fact, the portrait of her grandfather is seared onto Mitsuo’s skin. Mitsuo dies shortly afterward. An American helps alongside her grandfather in the hospital, and Emiko is selected to be among a group of Japanese girls who travel to the United States to receive reconstructive surgery on their wounds. Emiko is surprised to find that the American press takes an interest in the girls. This leads to several stories being written about them. Emiko participates in an episode of the game show This Is Your Life. She thanks America on the air for helping her and her fellow children.

Emiko grows up and is educated in America. She chooses to pursue the career of a filmmaker, Naturally, she fascinated by the Hiroshima bombing, which becomes the main focus of her work. When she conceives of a film about it, she seeks out Dr. Böll for an interview. Böll invites her to his home, where Sophie has refused further treatment for her Lupus and is slowly dying.

Böll reflects on his own life. A German, he was a successful scientist in Nazi Germany during the war, assigned to work on the Nazis’ program to develop an atomic bomb. Frustrated, Böll flees Germany to France, making his way to the United States where he is eagerly recruited into the Manhattan Project. Böll assists with this work, convinced that the bombing of Hiroshima is necessary to end the war and thus save lives. After the bombing, he travels to Hiroshima to record the aftermath, secretly making a series of haunting films capturing the misery and destruction. Filled with regret and self-blame, he remains convinced that it was necessary.



Böll meets Sophie in a refugee camp in Canada, falls in love, and marries her, becoming a professor at Columbia and settling in a small Canadian town.

Sophie tells her story. A Jew, she fled Austria and the Nazis and found herself in Canada, where she meets Böll. The day the bomb falls on Hiroshima, she develops the telltale rash that indicates Lupus. The disease leaves her weak, but she struggles on, taking on complex gardening projects every year. She feels Böll’s intense guilt very sharply and works hard to help him deal with it, although she is also conflicted by the heavy toll that peace extracted. Finally, she wearies of the constant fight against her disease and gives up.

After Sophie’s funeral, Böll meets with Emiko and reveals the truth to her: He knew who she was and had been waiting for her to find him. He was the American volunteering in the hospital after the bombing. He had met her as a child while he was suffering intense regret for his part in bringing this fate to the people of Japan. He then made certain she was selected to go to the U.S.A. for surgery and treatment. He kept tabs on her life, filming her several times at events, and helping her when he could.