Hiroshima Maidens Read online

  Before long she came to a place in the road that was blocked with fallen telephone poles and tangled wires. Some people were attempting to pick their way around the obstacles, and some were trying to turn back. Shigeko followed the lead of those who detoured to the Motoyasu River, where she waded in until she was submerged up to her shoulders. Thinking she was safe for the time being, she luxuriated in the wet relief from the heat; but suddenly there was screaming and splashing behind her. When she looked all she saw were hands thrusting out of the water. It took only a second to figure out what was happening; there were so many people seeking refuge in the river that those who stood in the shallows were being driven deeper until they could no longer touch bottom. Clawing back toward shore, Shigeko ran for her life along the river’s edge.

  Of the hours that followed she remembers very little. Her movements were automatic, her eyes half-closed, and everything there was to see was beyond her brain’s understanding. Her only thought now was to get back to her school, which she knew had been designated as a medical center in times of emergency. She dimly recalls staggering into a schoolyard where she fainted in the grass.

  When she regained consciousness, she was lying in an auditorium. She tried to rise and fell weakly back. An insane thirst intensified the pain of her injuries, and quietly she wept, dreaming of a black mountain and a big white waterfall, falling, falling, so close and cool...but she could not reach it though it made a noise like thunder in her ears.

  In the morning she doubted she would live until sunset, and that evening she was sure she would die before dawn. Every so often someone searching among the wounded would pass by, and although it was agonizing, she would raise her body slightly, whisper her name and address, and beg them to contact her parents. Once she heard someone say, “That poor child is going to die,” and from then on she tried her best to stay awake, afraid if she let herself doze off it would be her last sleep.

  On the evening of the fourth day after the bombing of Hiroshima, she heard her mother’s voice in the distance calling her name, and a joyous cry rose in her throat, “Here I am, mother.” But the hoarse sounds that came out were barely audible over the dirge of sighs and whimpers that had become a constant background noise, and a dreadfully suspenseful minute passed before her mother’s voice came again, this time just above her.

  “Shigeko?” There was a pause, and then in an altered tone of voice, as if her mother couldn’t tell for sure or was reluctant to have it confirmed, she asked, “Is your name Shigeko?”

  Blubbering yes, yes, Shigeko’s relief was so vast that a second after she felt herself cradled in her mother’s arms, she was asleep.

  *

  When student workers around her began chattering about an airplane, Toyoko Morita looked up; the next thing she knew she was waking up on the ground and it was utterly quiet, as though she had fallen asleep in a forest. She had no idea how much time had elapsed, and at first the only indication that something eventful had happened was that a cloudless summer sky had turned into an overcast day. But when she moved to stand up, with a start she discovered her clothes were torn and she was naked from the waist up. And when modesty caused her to look quickly about, she saw that all the houses around were leveled as though the demolition crews had completed their work while she slept, and not a single member of the student work force remained — she was alone.

  She did not know what to make of it, but as she stood staring at the disarray in disbelief, a faint and faraway fluting sound reached her, and she found herself drawn toward it. Block after block she walked through what seemed like a dream — no streetcars were running, stores were empty, there was no one on the streets. It was as if she had the whole city to herself. Then, turning a corner, she saw a crowd of people in the distance and it quickened her step; but as she drew closer she slowed to a stop. A parade of men, women, and children dressed in rags and visibly injured filled the street. They were wailing in chorus as they trudged along. It was a quivering mongrel of a cry that crossed a moan with a whine, and because it could have been the protest of people marching toward their doom rather than away from it, she wanted to ask where they all were going. But in their mass movement was the presumption everyone knew more than she did, and lacking an argument to go a different way, Toyoko fell into step.

  The rest of that day is lost for her. Only now and then some incident stood out clearly: She recalls taking pity on a woman walking beside her who was struggling under the weight of a newborn baby and offering to carry it for her, only to find her own physical strength completely drained and having to hand the child back. After that, she does not remember clearly anything more.

  It was late afternoon by the time she passed out of the devastated area and came to a hospital on the outskirts of the city, only to find the facility was already overflowing with the wounded. Medical orderlies were directing people to other first-aid stations. By this time, Toyoko’s sight was going and she had difficulty standing, so she lay down on the lawn and stayed there until morning, when she was taken by truck to a suburban elementary school that had been designated a medical center in times of emergency. But there were few qualified medical personnel to tend to the multitude of patients, no other medicine than Mercurochrome, and all she could do was lie and wait to be found and pray that death would not claim her first.

  For three horrible days, Toyoko listened to people die slowly and painfully around her, one after the other. Their misery would mount in intensity, peak in feverish supplications for help; then suddenly they would quiet down and the attendants would come. She did not need to ask what had happened or where they were being taken — she could hear the thud of bodies hitting the ground outside and the acrid stench of burning flesh was unmistakable. At night it was chilly and sometimes she found comfort in the warmth of the crematoriums.

  On the evening of the fourth day she felt a hand touch her shoulder and thought surely it was her turn. Not until she heard her sister whisper, “Thank heaven, you’re alive,” did she realize she had been given a reprieve.

  Chapter Two

  Although Hiroko Tasaka’s grandparents lived several miles outside the ring of fire, the blast from the bomb had made a wreck of their suburban residence so they had moved to a vineyard across the street and set up a camp under a tent of mosquito netting. Without hospitals or medication to turn to, Hiroko’s mother, who was a trained nurse, was forced to resort to home remedies, and in the shade of the grape vines she dressed the blistering portions of Hiroko’s face and arms with a concoction of herbs and oils.

  Hiroko’s convalescence was gradual because her burns festered as though they never intended to form scabs. But it was the long strands of hair that stuck to the bristles of her brush that had her family worried the most. Knowing nothing about the special nature of the bomb that had obliterated Hiroshima, Hiroko was unaware that hair loss was an early symptom of the dreadful “atomic disease” that was continuing to kill people. She felt no great sense of alarm until whole tufts came dislodged from her scalp while brushing. During the war she had received instructions to follow in case of injury, but nothing had been mentioned about loss of hair.

  “Don’t worry. It’s happening to everyone,” her mother tried to reassure her. And yanking hard, she managed to uproot a few hairs from her own temples to prove it.

  Hiroko found the bizarre twists of her brutal fate mystifying. Her very presence in Hiroshima seemed part of her destiny, or doom. Just two years earlier, after receiving notice that her father had been killed in action in New Guinea, she, her mother, and her younger brother and sister had moved from Osaka to her grandparents’ home so she could attend the highly regarded Hiroshima Commercial High School. And there had been more than a hint of the miraculous in the lifesaving apparition of the old man. If she had stumbled off in the opposite direction, it would have taken her into the city center and certain death. She was convinced that there was too much luck and coincidence involved for it all to be a matter of accident; and th
ough she had no idea of the purpose, she had no doubt that her descent into hell, as well as her escape, had gone according to the will of the gods. With this encompassing view, the poignancy of her misfortune receded.

  As the months went on, it was left to Hiroko’s mother to worry — first, that pillaging and rape by American soldiers would bloody the wake of defeat; and second, when that didn’t happen but a series of drastic reformations were enacted that pushed Japan through centuries of social change almost overnight, that the Tasaka family would be hurled into instant poverty. She had been living off the income generated by tenant farmers who were cultivating her late husband’s estate on a small island in the Inland Sea, and a land reform law was about to be passed by the Occupation authorities giving ownership rights to those were working the estates of absentee landlords.

  Faced with the prospect of losing their large holdings, Mrs. Tasaka made plans to return to the island. She intended to take all her children with her and was startled when her oldest daughter expressed a different desire. Hiroko was beginning to feel that her strength was almost back to normal again, and she seemed to be cured of that other strange affliction — her hair was growing back. But more than that, word had reached her that her school was going to reopen in the spring, and she had resolved within herself to proceed with her education. After all, that was the reason she had come to Hiroshima.

  When she announced her intention at a family conference, her grandparents were outspoken in their concern that school-work would be too much of a strain for her, suggesting she should wait another year. They said they were worried about her health, but Hiroko heard something else. She felt that their real objection was a protective anxiety about what was going to happen to her when she ventured outside the family circle and would be forced to endure indignities for the grisly way her burns had healed.

  Hiroko was fourteen years old — an age when the slightest irregularity in an otherwise clear complexion could be disconcerting — so the first time she assessed the damage to her face in a mirror she wanted to die. The brim on the hiking cap she had worn that morning had spared the high cheekbones and wide eyes that opened her face with a placid prettiness, but the features on the lower half of her face looked as if they had been wholly reshaped. Her neat snub nose could have been smudged by a heavy thumb: Two tiny holes peeked out of mashed cartilage. Her rosebud mouth was a memory; the lipless opening that passed for a mouth now was more like a thin tear in an overlay of angry red scar tissue that stretched over her chin and clutched her throat, cocking her head awkwardly to one side, and made such ordinary functions as eating, sipping, kissing, or smiling utterly graceless if not impossible.

  Of course, she too knew the severity of her deformity meant there would be trouble ahead. But it was a corollary to the creed that one’s life was decided elsewhere that certain problems could be overcome if met with serious determination, and Hiroko was a girl of stronger than average will. She realized that sentimental grieving would be futile; she would just have to work harder than others to make herself happy.

  When her mother saw how much it meant to her to take up her life again where she had left off, she let Hiroko have her way, and in April she resumed classes in an abandoned military barracks. All but ten of the fifty-three girls in her original class were dead, so most of the students with whom she attended school were newcomers, daughters of demobilized soldiers who had been raised in other parts of Japan and had no notion of the terrible things that had happened in Hiroshima. Some snickered when they saw her, others blanched, and a few looked away grimacing. Only one ever said anything, and that was, “If I looked like you, I could not bear to go on living.”

  Her retort, “Yes, it’s hard to live like this, but dying isn’t any easier,” had been less than satisfying, for she was a girl as sensitive to the feelings of others as to her own. And even though her attitude was that, come what may, it was her life to live not take, she decided to do something about the face she showed the world. In the privacy of her home she tried powdering her cheeks and painting on lips, but rather than smoothing the defects the makeup exaggerated them like warpaint, and she felt like she had put on some tribal mask. She thought she would be better off wearing a real mask, which gave her the idea of shrouding her disfigurement with a large gauze mask of the kind worn throughout Japan by people suffering from colds who did not want to pass their germs on; such a mask would cover her face from below her eyes to her neckline, and people would no longer have to look away from her in disgust.

  From that day on, Hiroko never left home without tying on her mask first, which settled one problem created by her injuries but left another. Her thin arms, bared to the elbow that day, had been severely burned, and the contracting scar formation, like a cable strung between the biceps and forearms, had locked them at right angles. The result was that she walked around with her hands held rigidly out in front of her as if she were carrying something, making such simple tasks as dressing very laborious. It was her most inconvenient injury, and when the newspapers carried a story about surgeons at one of the hospitals who were conducting “reconstructive surgery” on physically handicapped victims of the A-bomb, Hiroko made an appointment to see if it could be fixed.

  She would never forget the initial reaction of the doctor who examined her. Upon seeing her disrobed and without her mask on, he had gasped and rather than saying, “You’re lucky to be alive,” his comment was, “It’s unfortunate you didn’t die.”

  She had stepped lightly as she entered the examination room and shown a brave face when she exposed herself; but his remark was piercingly hurtful. Trying not to show what was churning inside and afraid if she tried to speak at that moment she would begin to cry, Hiroko said nothing. And after observing her injured expression, he must have realized the callousness of his comment because the doctor went on to look at her wounds closely and tenderly; when he was finished he said that although she was a serious case, he thought plastic surgery would do her good.

  When school broke for summer vacation, Hiroko entered the hospital, but from start to finish it was all wrong. The hospital was poorly stocked with medical supplies and there was no anesthesia, so several orderlies held her down while the doctor began to cut. Her eyes brightened in pain as he excised a massive scar on the inside of her right arm, then sliced a series of thin strips of skin from the inside of her right thigh which he sewed over the open wound in patchwork fashion. Then he moved to her left arm, cutting sharply down through the band of scar tissue that bound her forearm to her upper arm, and she screamed and screamed and screamed. There was blood spurting everywhere, and Hiroko was thrashing on the operating table and kicking and begging them to stop. Her mother, who had accompanied her into the operating room so she would not have to go through it alone, fled into the corridor so she would not have to listen to her daughter plead for help.

  The violence of the procedures left Hiroko terrified, and the surgeons came back the next day to finish the job. Inch by inch, snapping tendons and ripping muscle tissue, they wrenched her arm straight and tied it down to a wooden splint. When she was discharged several weeks later, they called the surgery a success; but by the end of summer her arms were back at angles, and the best reason they could give was that it must be another pernicious phenomenon peculiar to the A-bomb.

  Hiroko devoted a kind of ascetic energy to her schoolwork, and when she was rewarded with the high school diploma it had been so important for her to get, she joined her family on the island. Her mother’s efforts to hold onto the rights of the family estate had failed, but a sizable parcel of land with enough orange groves on it to provide her with a modest income had been deeded over to her by an uncle. The same uncle gave Hiroko a job in the office of his shipping company.

  Considering her handicap, she knew she should have felt fortunate. She was putting her education to use and contributing to the family expenses. But it did not take long before Hiroko overheard nasty comments whispered by her co-workers: “Is la
bor so short they have to hire a girl like her?” And although filing and typing was fine for now, she knew it was not the kind of work she would be content to do for the rest of her life.

  For as long as she could remember she had wanted to be a schoolteacher. She could no longer picture herself standing in front of a classroom full of students, but she was still interested in providing some sort of service to others. She came up with the idea of designing clothes, which seemed to perfectly order her feelings; rendering beauty to others would compensate in some personal way for the outrage inflicted on her. Hiroko had a long talk with her mother, who understood her desire to make something more of herself and tried to help by contacting an old friend in Hiroshima who had recently opened a sewing school. When the woman wrote back to say not only that there was an opening but that Hiroko could work off part of her tuition by handling the bookkeeping chores in the administrative office, she departed for Hiroshima to further her education once again.

  As it happened, she returned at a time when the people of Hiroshima were preoccupied with the atomic bomb and its delayed effects. Within a year after the bombing, the “atomic disease” appeared to have run its course. Indeed, after her hair had grown back, Hiroko had exhibited no other symptoms of exposure to radiation. But the horrible enigma of an atomic bomb was that its secrets revealed themselves over time, and disclosures in 1950 that leukemia was epidemic in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been supplemented by the admission by scientists researching the aftereffects that the risks of contracting a variety of cancers was high among irradiated survivors. They could not say what diseases would turn up next.