Hiroshima Maidens Read online

  “And have you ever heard of This Is Your Life?”

  “No. This is the first time.”

  The audience packing the studio tittered and the Reverend threw a confused glance their way, as if he had missed something. His puzzled expression seemed to shrink his diminutive stature a size smaller.

  Edwards showed his foreign guest a large album with his name inscribed on the cover. “We have been working for weeks with your friends Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, John Hersey, author of the best-selling book Hiroshima, and many others to bring you to our stage tonight so we could retell the story of your life. The facts are between the covers of this book. You will meet many people who have helped shape your destiny, and we hope that at the end of this half-hour you will have had some pleasant moments.” Turning to the camera, Edwards added, “And that you, ladies and gentlemen, will have a better understanding of what it is to look into the face of atomic power — to survive and die. Now we will pick up the threads of your life in a moment, Reverend Tanimoto, after this word from Bob Warren, our announcer, who has something very special to tell the girls in our audience. Bob?”

  Over the next sixty seconds, a dapper male of the fifties guided a vivacious blonde through the Metal Scouring Pad Test. After Hazel Bishop long-lasting nail polish proved it could take a scrubbing that raked dirt and grime off a filthy frying pan without scratching or chipping, the show resumed.

  While an overhead shot of the map of Japan, in shadow, gradually brightened in a rising-sun effect, Edwards read from the album. “The morning is perfectly clear and as the warm summer sun rises above the mountains which run around three sides of the city, it awakens a sprawling community of 245,000 people. The time is 6:00 a.m. What were you doing at 6:00 a.m., Reverend Tanimoto?”

  Tanimoto answered that a friend was helping him move furniture from his church in the city center to the safety of the suburbs.

  “So at six in the morning a member of your parish is lending you a helping hand, when suddenly —”

  Midsentence an air-raid siren began to wail, like the one that had warned the people of Hiroshima early that August morning that enemy planes were approaching the city. But following the lead of Edwards’s questions, the Japanese clergyman admitted that the siren did not send him running for cover. At this late stage of the war the Japanese people were accustomed to seeing American planes buzzing through the skies, he explained, and weather reconnaissance planes passed frequently in the morning.

  “So, as might happen even today in any typical American community, the sound of an air-raid siren, even at six in the morning, is not taken too seriously?”

  At that moment an offstage voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “At zero six hundred on the morning of August 6, 1945, I was in a B-29 flying over the Pacific. Destination, Hiroshima.” The camera switched to a full-figured silhouette of a man standing behind a curtain, then zoomed in to a close-up of Tanimoto glancing around for the source of the voice. The business of special effects was part of the way Edwards packaged a story, but it was obviously new to the Japanese minister.

  “A voice of a man whose life is destined to be woven up in the threads of your own, Reverend Tanimoto. We’ll meet him later on in your story. Right now, it’s after eight. The all-clear has sounded and you and your friend have reached your destination. Tired from climbing the hill, you pause to rest for a moment in the garden of Mr. Satow’s house. Looking out, you can see Hiroshima lying before you, the silvery threads of the seven river branches which divide the city into six islands, the commercial and residential districts, the docks to the south, and the Inland Sea. You could be looking at Buffalo, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; St. Louis, Missouri; but this is Hiroshima, Japan, and the morning is quiet and very peaceful.”

  At the instant the hands on the ticking clock reached 8:15, footage from an authentic United States military film showing the city of Hiroshima disappearing in a puff was broadcast over the air, and forty million atomic bombs exploded on forty million television sets across America. The orchestra erupted in musical pandemonium. The camera switched to a tight head shot of the Reverend Tanimoto. A newspaper report the next morning would describe the look on his face: “Rarely have you ever seen such pain in a man’s eyes.”

  The orchestra segued to a broad Japanese mood-theme as Edwards said, “The time has come — that split-second of eternity which comes in one way or another to every man in his lifetime. Will you tell us what you saw in your second, Reverend Tanimoto?”

  In his own words Tanimoto told about a tremendous flash of light that traveled from east to west like a sheet of sun. Instinctively, he threw himself between two big rocks in the garden, certain that his friend’s house had received a direct hit from a bomb.

  Edwards stopped him at this point, leaving him tucked between two boulders, covered with bits of board and tile. “Lying there, your mind must have lived through a lifetime,” he said, rolling the action back to present the Reverend’s conversion to Christianity.

  It was orchestrated to appear like memories passing before the mind’s eye. To the musical accompaniment of a harp, a frail elderly lady, Miss Bertha Sparkey, the Methodist missionary who had been responsible for introducing the young Kiyoshi Tanimoto to Christianity, hobbled through the This Is Your Life Archway to relate the details of the tragic family break-up that occurred when he crossed faiths with his stern Buddhist father. A violent argument erupted that so upset his mother she suffered a fatal stroke. Kneeling beside her body, he vowed to carry his Christian faith throughout his life as a blessing on her death. The story moved to the United States with the introduction of a portly pastor of a New Jersey Methodist church who was a former classmate of Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which Tanimoto attended on an international scholarship from the Methodist Mission Board. With folksy humor, the Reverend Marvin Green reminisced about the American education his Japanese friend received outside the classroom. “One of the boys told Tani that the phrase ‘bats in your belfry’ was a term of affection when speaking to lovely young ladies, so at the first opportunity he said just that to a coed and almost created an international incident.” In 1940, Kiyoshi Tanimoto was ordained a Methodist minister and took a temporary ministry at a church for Japanese-Americans in Hollywood, California. “Not far from where we are sitting right now,’ Edwards commented, and directed Tanimoto’s attention to the studio audience where a group of his former congregation at the Hollywood Independent Church sat waving from seats in the front row.

  Now Edwards switched time forward to December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, and found the Reverend serving as a minister on the island of Okinawa; to the pulpit of the Nagarekawa Methodist Church in Hiroshima, where he was transferred in 1943 as part of a general retreat from advancing Allied Forces; and at last back to “where we started your story, on August 6, 1945”.

  “Time is standing still as our earth shakes to an explosion never before equaled. In a daze, you pull yourself from your position between the two garden rocks. From your vantage point you again look out over the city. What did you see?”

  A moment before, there had been nothing to distinguish Hiroshima from other cities of the world. An instant later, it seemed to blow apart from the center. Now Tanimoto had to force himself to look. He had not even heard a big bang, but something had struck from the sky. Smoke and flames were drawing the entire city into a monstrous black cloud that surged upward thousands of feet.

  “Did you know Hiroshima had been the first city to feel the force of atomic power?” Edwards asked.

  “I didn’t know what happened,” Tanimoto replied. What he did know was that he belonged with his wife and baby, his home, his church and parishoners, and all were down below. Calling on God to help him, he started running — the only person making his way into the city.

  Back came the voice of the mystery guest who had spoken earlier: “And looking down from thousands of feet over Hiros
hima, all I could think of was, ‘My God, what have we done.’”

  “The voice again of a man whose second of eternity was woven up with yours, Reverend Tanimoto. Now you have never met him, but he’s here tonight to clasp your hand in friendship. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Robert Lewis, United States Air Force, who along with Paul Tibbetts piloted the plane from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.”

  A tall, heavy-set man walked stiffly onto the stage and stood beside the Japanese clergyman. After an awkward hesitation, they shook hands. Edwards asked Lewis to move a step closer and tell about his experience on August 6, 1945. In a trembling voice, Lewis said he had taken off from the island of Tinian at 2:00 a.m. that morning, flying a B-29. He said there were three prospective targets: Hiroshima, Konkura, and Nagasaki. About an hour before they reached the coastline of Japan they were notified that the weather was clear in Hiroshima. “Therefore, Hiroshima was our target.”

  For a long, strange moment Lewis faltered. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, more as if he were fighting back tears than as if he were trying to recall his lines. But a deep breath steadied him and he continued. “At 8:15 promptly the bomb was dropped. We turned to get out of the way. Shortly after, we turned back to see what happened...and in front of our eyes the city of Hiroshima had disappeared.”

  Tanimoto remained silent and very still, listening closely to the flyer, nodding his head from time to time. But nothing in his face showed a reaction, and when Lewis had finished he did not respond.

  “Did you write something in your log at that time?” Edwards prompted.

  “I wrote down the words, ‘My God, what have we done.’”

  “And so, Reverend Tanimoto, you on the ground, and you on your military mission, Captain Lewis, in the air, both appeal to a power greater than your own. Almost at the same moment you both utter the same words: My God. Thank you, Robert Lewis, now personnel manager at Henry Heide Incorporated (candymakers) in New York City.”

  As he walked to his place at one side of the stage, Lewis received a big hand from the audience. Edwards turned the page and read aloud. “In that split-second when one atom bomb exploded, one hundred thousand people were either killed or destined to die. One hundred thousand more were hurt. Were you hurt, Reverend Tanimoto?”

  The Reverend said he was not, and confessed that indeed he was ashamed he was unhurt. As he ran into the city he apologized to the endless lines of gravely wounded people streaming out of the city.

  When Edwards came to the part where Tanimoto doubted whether his wife could possibly have survived, he staged the entrance of Mrs. Tanimoto, flown all the way from Hiroshima just for this occasion, to coincide with the miraculous discovery that she had lived through the blast. With their wailing baby in her arms, she was wandering through the streets in a daze when she met her husband coming for her; and you could tell by the way his eyes rounded suddenly when his wife materialized in the This Is Your Life Archway that his surprise now was almost as great as it had been then. Costumed in a striped kimono, her features similar enough to her husband’s to pass as his sister, Chisa Tanimoto pattered to his side, grinning shyly, her head slightly bowed. Edwards smiled over the reunited couple while the audience clapped.

  Assured that his family was safe, Tanimoto began making himself useful to those not so fortunate. He brought water to the thirsty unable to move. He ferried wounded people across a river to safety. He read verses from a Japanese Bible over those he could do nothing else for.

  “It’s a week before news begins to leak out from official Japanese headquarters that the city had been destroyed by the energy released by the splitting of an atom...Then Nagasaki feels the terror of the second bomb...and on August 15 the Emperor of Japan broadcasts to the nation that the war is over...and out of the carnage that was Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the Japanese people have built a new city...But ten years later all is not forgotten. There are still very visible reminders of what atomic power can do.”

  “Visible reminders” was Marvin Green’s cue to step forward and speak in behalf of the Reverend Tanimoto’s crusading spirit to rebuild, physically and spiritually, the lives of suffering survivors of the blast. “He came to this country in 1951 and told me that he wanted to find some help for many of the young girls in Hiroshima who had survived the atomic bombing, but who had been so badly disfigured that they had withdrawn completely from society. He told me that they desperately needed plastic surgery, and could I help him find the wherewithal to bring them to the United States so that the work could be done here.”

  Edwards took over. “Ladies and gentlemen, on Monday, May 8, twenty-five girls from Hiroshima arrived in New York City via U.S. Army transport. They are being treated surgically at Mount Sinai Hospital at absolutely no cost. Tonight we would like you to meet two of these girls. Both have lived through the terror of an atomic bombing. Both are badly disfigured.” He pointed to a glass door at one side of the stage and his voice lowered. “To avoid causing them any embarrassment, we will not show you their faces. May I present Miss Toyoko Minowa and Miss Tadako Emori.”

  The silhouettes of two women standing on either side of a floor microphone was all that could be seen. First one girl spoke in Japanese, then the other. Marvin Green translated: They were happy to be in America and thanked everyone for what the United States was doing for them. The camera lingered on their images, in some way more frightfully expressive than a detailed focus, suggesting visages so awful that the audience had to be spared.

  Almost for relief, Edwards brought on the kids. Tanimoto’s brood of four young children came bouncing onto the stage and started climbing their father like a backyard tree.

  The orchestra floated a Well-That’s-the-Story-Folks tune over a Ralph Edwards benediction. “This is your life, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a man of God who looked into the face of eternity in that awful moment when the world stood still, and who is now courageously building a monument to peace out of the ashes that were Hiroshima. Hold on, Reverend Tanimoto, and we will look into your future, which you, ladies and gentlemen, can share. But first, here is Bob Warren again.”

  This time, Warren supported a spiel about Hazel Bishop nail polish with testimony from a Missouri housewife who said she had been amazed that after hours at the sink washing dishes, her fingernails came out looking the same as when they went in.

  It had been a memorable evening for the Japanese clergyman, and in order that he might be able to relive it again and again, Edwards announced that Hazel Bishop was giving him a 16-mm print of the show and a Bell & Howell projector to view it on back in Japan. For Mrs. Tanimoto they had a 14-carat gold charm bracelet specially designed by a New York jeweler to commemorate the happy moments in her life.

  “Reverend Tanimoto, we know how you have worked hard to make it possible for these twenty-five girls to come to the United States for medical aid. We know too there are many people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were children in 1945 who have reached maturity now and will never know a happy life without immediate medical and surgical help. Now we’re sure that there are many among our viewers tonight who want to share in your dedicated life.” Edwards turned to look the camera square in the eye. “And you can do so by sending your contribution, right now, large or small, to: Maidens, Box 200, New York 1, New York. You will be making it possible for a team of American and Japanese doctors to work together and provide necessary treatment.”

  So there, on prime-time national television, Edwards passed the plate, asking the American people to give to the cause of the Hiroshima Maidens. And first in line, Robert Lewis walked forward, handing Edwards a $50 check that he said represented his and his fellow crew members’ contribution to the fund. Edwards thanked him, added that two $500 checks would be forthcoming from the show’s sponsors, Hazel Bishop and Prell Shampoo, and urged the audience to be just as generous, “for this is the American way.”

  Part One – Hiroshima

  Chapter One

  A
t the mouth of the River Ota, where the muddy currents meet the lapping tides of the Inland Sea, a delta of four grassy islands gradually formed, fanning into a shallow bay like ribs on the back of a shell With a range of pine-green mountains sloping up sharp as fins to the north and the sea merging with the sky to the south as if there were no horizon, it was a scenic spot — but people came to live there for the richness of the soil and the catches of the sea. In the sixteenth century, a medieval feudal lord consolidated the original settlements that sprang up on the riverbanks when he constructed a baroque, live-storied castle that jutted over the thatched roofs like the ornament on an ancient helmet, and crowned Hiroshima, meaning “broad island,” the capital of his domain.

  Over the next three hundred years this new castle town grew into a bustling coastal community. It was controlled by different family clans according to the rise and fall of various shoguns, but overall its history was remarkably free of military disturbances, characterized more by the development of rich cultural traditions. Its direction as a city was determined in the late nineteenth century by two major construction projects. An area of shoals that hindered navigation was filled in to create a harbor that would accommodate shipping; and at about the same time, a national railway line linking Kyoto to Kyushu and passing through Hiroshima was completed. As a land-and-water gateway, Hiroshima was poised to become an important commercial center; but with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, followed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, Hiroshima was pressed into service as the staging area for troops embarking for the mainland front. After that it became a military city, growing more prosperous and populous as wars and “incidents” occurred.

  Then came the Pacific War, a land grab by Japanese military forces to expand the boundaries of the Japanese Empire, which left sun-flags rising over the Philippine Islands, the China coast, and much of Southeast Asia. When a series of combined Allied operations pushed the South Pacific front back to the point where the home islands lay within the flying range of U.S. bombers, American military planners, who had devised a special prescription for the destruction of Japan’s tinderbox cities (incendiary bombs made up of magnesium and jellied gasoline), ordered the systematic firebombing of major urban areas, one after the other.