How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything. (1.1)
Hersey describes where each of his subjects was during the blast in pretty painstaking detail, which really drives home how much pure luck/chance figured in ensuring their survival. This early passage really sets us up to think about this notion of chance and its importance as we read about those who survived—and those who didn't.
Quote #2
Dr. Fujii hardly had time to think that he was dying before he realized that he was alive, squeezed tightly by two long timbers in a V across his chest, like a morsel suspended between two huge chopsticks—held upright, so that he could not move, with his head miraculously above water and his torso and legs in it. (1.18)
Although you wouldn't typically think of being pinned between two beams as lucky, Dr. Fujii actually was pretty fortunate to get stuck with his head above water. Again, dumb luck seems to have contributed a fair amount to the survival of the six main subjects.
Quote #3
At the terminus, he caught a streetcar at once. (He later calculated that if he had taken his customary train that morning, and if he had had to wait a few minutes for the streetcar, as often happened, he would have been close to the center at the time of the explosion and would surely have perished.) (1.25)
Dr. Sasaki has his own tales (yes, plural) of near death. In his first "lucky" stroke, he didn't end up waiting long for a streetcar (as was often the case), which means he wasn't super close to the center of town when the bomb was dropped.