Hiroshima Maidens Read online

  Likewise, it seemed each girl had seriously considered killing herself. Michiko Yamaoka told how her mother had saved her life twice. Once, after the blast from the bomb had buried her alive under a collapsed stone wall, her mother had stayed behind while everyone fled to lift, one by one, the rocks that would have been her daughter’s grave. The second time came several months later. They had evacuated to a coastal resort that was now occupied by Hiroshima refugees and were staying in a reed shack that had once served as the dressing room for bathers, when Michiko saw her ruined reflection in the mirror for the first time. Her pale scalp had been visible through thin, shedding hair; an eruption of scar tissue seemed to spurt out of her left cheek, flowing lava-like down the side of her face, over her jaw, and into her shoulder, where it had hardened; and when her hands came up in a gesture of horror, the webbed fingers completed the portrait of something better off dead. She had been crawling across the white sand of the beach toward the sea to drown herself when her mother found her and dragged her back.

  So many times Toyoko had felt the need to unburden herself, but there was no one she felt she could talk to. She had not been able to relate to any of her schoolmates, and her sisters accused her of feeling sorry for herself when she complained to them. Besides, she had never felt she could reveal the complex feelings churning inside her to anyone, for apart from the pain it caused her to talk about the past, she was unable to believe that anyone could comprehend her feelings without having lived through the same. Now, among these other scarred girls, she felt an instant kinship. As she heard them talk about the bombing and what they had experienced, their ordeals and frustrations in the years since, the humiliations and heartbreaks, Toyoko found herself thinking that the very experiences that set the members of this group apart from the rest of society bound them to each other, and they were, in a vital way, closer than family.

  Chapter Three

  Among the thousands who survived that fateful August morning, the thinly clad, young schoolgirls were the un-luckiest. In a fraction of a second their lives took a tragic turn. Many had witnessed the atomic flash with their faces lifted, and the intense heat charred exposed flesh and left scars that wrenched their facial features into grotesquely symbolic expressions. One could not smile because the contractions tugged her lips over her teeth into a permanent snarl. Another had her right eyelid seared away; unprotected, the eye watered steadily as though possessed with a grief of its very own.

  A society that placed such great emphasis upon aesthetic presentation and losing face in every sense offered no place for their kind. Some were kept in back rooms for years by parents ashamed of them, while others were so afraid of public ridicule that whenever they ventured out in daylight they scurried down side streets with shawls wrapped tightly around their bent heads. Employers refused to hire them because, they said, it would be too demoralizing to have them around, and marriage was out of the question because it was roundly believed they would give birth to a generation of genetic monstrosities.

  The first time the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto set eyes on them was when he was distributing clothes and medicine at a relief center in the years shortly after the war. Only a few showed up, just long enough to fetch their goods and go. They woke such a deep sorrow in him that he visited them at home. All had lived for a period of time after the bombing under a mosquito netting to keep the flies away from festering wounds, and in some of the homes he entered he found the gauze still draped over the beds in which they slept. In the dark of their rooms it had come to serve as another kind of shelter behind which they lived like shadows.

  Somehow it seemed unjust that they had suffered so terribly, while he had come through without so much as a scratch. As a minister he was ashamed that he had no such cross to bear, and he wanted to do all in his power to help. But at the time he was not in a position to do anything more for them, and it would be five years later before his circumstances changed.

  It began with an interview he gave to a young American journalist that was published as part of a long article in the New Yorker magazine. John Hersey’s account of the atomic bombing as told through the prism of six Hiroshima citizens became a literary sensation when it was put between covers and released as Hiroshima. For the Reverend Tanimoto, whose daredevil dash into the fiery city to rescue the wounded was cast in a heroic light, the publicity stimulated a variety of Hiroshima Projects in church organizations, schools, and community groups across America. But nowhere was his popularity greater than among his fellow ministers from the Class of ’39 at the Candler School of Theology. They were well placed in respectable churches throughout the country, and when they read about the Reverend Tanimoto and how he was struggling to resurrect his ministry from the atomic ashes, they petitioned the Overseas Methodist Mission Board to invite him to the United States for a speaking tour.

  He hit the sawdust trail, speaking at crossroads churches in every state in the nation, chilling congregations with a first-hand account of the day Hiroshima erupted into a flaming hell, but leaving them with an inspirational conclusion: Seeing an atomic bomb explode over a city had been an experience almost religious in nature; it had convinced him that the promise of peace offered by Christianity was the only hope for the world, and his thinking was reflected in the attitude of the people of Hiroshima itself. When asked what they thought of the atomic bomb, they replied, “I hope it will bring peace to the world.” To be sure, many found it impossible to believe that animosity toward America was not the primary reaction (particularly in southern states where stories of Sherman’s March were still told to children), but it made a great testimonial on behalf of Christian brotherhood, and the people in the pews gave generously when a free-will offering was requested.

  A year and a half of evangelical barnstorming netted the Reverend more than ten thousand dollars, enough to rebuild his church from the ruins. But the most promising aspect of his tour was the success he had in interesting a group of world-minded literary figures in joining with him in an ambitious enterprise intended to reconstruct Hiroshima in a larger sense. In response to a proposal he drafted for the establishment of a Hiroshima Peace Center Foundation that would attempt to dress the wounds of atomic warfare and “explore the ways of peace,” he had enlisted the support of John Hersey, Pearl Buck, and Norman Cousins. Cousins had been impressed enough by the idea to give it space on the editorial page of his magazine, the Saturday Review.

  Six months after returning to Hiroshima with the good news, Tanimoto flew back to the States at the invitation of Norman Cousins to raise funds for the newly incorporated organization. In terms of the money, the friends, and the impression he made, his second speaking tour was even more profitable than his first. The highlight would have to be his visit to Washington, where he was received like a distinguished statesman. A luncheon was given in his honor by the members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and later that afternoon he delivered the opening prayer as guest chaplain at the United States Senate, the first foreign clergyman upon whom that honor had been bestowed since the war, and the first Japanese ever. But the most important issue was the formation of a Hiroshima Peace Center Associates, with a Board of Directors chaired by Norman Cousins, whose purpose was to coordinate charity benefits in America with humanitarian projects undertaken by the Reverend’s Hiroshima Peace Center Foundation. When he returned to Hiroshima he was now in a position to initiate programs to help the walking wounded.

  He began with the innocent victims of the bombing — the orphaned children, the widowed women — placing them in homes and organizing classes that would give them practical knowledge to earn their own livelihood. He helped found an Atomic Bomb Victims Association that launched a campaign for a national medical treatment bill, for as he saw it the survivors of the atomic bombing were being systematically neglected by the government that had placed them in jeopardy in the first place by continuing the war to a disastrous conclusion. And when the idea of forming a separate group of scarred single wo
men was suggested, he arranged, out of deference to their sensitivities, for them to meet in the basement of his church.

  Though he quoted passages from the scriptures and led them through chorus after chorus of Christian hymns, all the women came from Buddhist backgrounds and most were there for the fellowship rather than the faith. Only a few knelt before the altar to be baptized. Coming together gave them a chance to experience a unity of spirit, and him the chance to lighten their burden by offering fresh ways of thinking about the violence done them. Consistent with his personal philosophy that private tragedies should be used for great spiritual ends, he saw something larger in their bereavement than any of them did. He talked of an ongoing connection between the survivors of the bombing and those who were killed that brought an exciting new nuance to that experience. It was his contention that those who died were sacrificed, and the only way their souls would rest in peace was if what happened to them never happened to another ever again.

  He was trying to give them a new basis for dignity and self-worth; as message-bearers telling the nightmare truth of an atomic bomb they could find meaning for their lives and redemption for their losses. And a measure of success could be found in the ending of an essay written by little Shigeko Niimoto, who had become Exhibit A: “The scars will remain always on my hands and face, but I think that’s all right. I am sure that at the sight of me those who feel sorry for me and those who do not wish another girl to endure the same will want to cry out, ‘No more Hiroshimas!’ I am crying to each and every one of you for Peace in order to prevent the making of people like me again.”

  As important as it was to maintain a positive attitude, it was only a first step toward rehabilitation. Before long it became apparent that what these women needed was practical feelings of self-worth that would only come if they were able to feel useful, maybe even manage their own livelihoods, for they were all still dependent on their parents. Jobs were scarce, however, and few had completed their education or possessed marketable skills.

  In an effort to create employment opportunities the Reverend hired several girls to work in a dormitory for blind children, another of his Peace Center projects. Endeavoring to teach them a trade he purchased three sewing machines and organized sewing classes four nights a week; as seamstresses, they could work at home and not have to face the public. Very quickly, however, he realized that many of them were so functionally disabled they had trouble threading a needle and that before anything further could be done for them they needed special surgery.

  The saga of the Reverend Tanimoto’s struggle to obtain medical help for his group of girls from within the community of Hiroshima is a shameful episode of neglect. When he went to the Hiroshima Medical Association he encountered immense resistance; first they pleaded poverty, then they told him to mind his own business. When he approached public officials, he found that they were so intent on establishing a new identity for Hiroshima as a “Peace City” and placing it on the world map, that they were interested more in constructing monuments and memorials to the dead than in helping the suffering thousands who still lived.

  The way he saw it, if he was going to get help it was going to have to come from sources outside the city; with that in mind, he attended the Japan PEN Club conference in Hiroshima the following year. There he met Shizue Masugi, a prominent Japanese novelist and newspaper columnist for the Yomiuri Pressy a widely circulated Tokyo-based paper. Miss Masugi was a warm-hearted woman who had taken a special interest in Hiroshima’s problems. When she asked him what he thought the city needed most, he replied without hesitation: Help for the young women burned by the breath of the atomic blast who would be condemned to a life of endless degradation and despair unless they received reconstructive surgery. When Miss Masugi left Hiroshima at the end of the conference, the Reverend saw her off at the station and brought along several of “his” girls so she could see for herself the extent of the problem. Miss Masugi was aghast. As the train pulled out of the station, she promised to do something on her end.

  Two weeks later a wire came from Tokyo, inviting the Reverend Tanimoto and his group of girls to come as soon as possible; everything had been arranged and all expenses would be paid. For the nine girls who went, it was as if all the field trips they had missed as schoolgirls were rolled into one grand excursion. They were entertained royally and whirled around town on Miss Masugi’s connections. Their plight appealed to the newsmaking dictates of the time, and the press dubbed them “Genbaku Otome — Atomic Bomb Maidens,” an image of horror defiling innocence. At the Tokyo University Hospital a team of specialists examined each girl to determine what the chances were of restoring her original appearance and functional abilities. When the overall prognosis was optimistic, Shizue Masugi announced the formation of a Hiroshima Peace Center Cooperating Society, whose board was composed of high society matrons and whose purpose was to raise the funds necessary to bring the A-bomb Maidens back to Tokyo for surgery.

  Within a month after the Reverend and the girls had returned to their native province, they reboarded the train to Tokyo for an elaborate series of operations. While the Maidens were hospitalized, the Reverend campaigned extensively for their cause. Promotion had become his specialty and he delivered countless speeches to women’s groups and church meetings. When a national magazine arranged for some of the country’s most popular screen actresses to put in benefit appearances on behalf of those less fortunate, the Reverend Tanimoto was amply supplied with a stack of autographed photographs which he sold to the crowd of fans who turned out. A poem written by Michiko Sako, an artistically inclined Maiden, entitled “Smile, Please Come Back,” was put to music and became a hit song. A short movie about them was produced and distributed to Japanese theaters. The resulting publicity carried to Osaka, where another Hiroshima Peace Center affiliate was formed, and in December 1952 twelve other Maidens were invited for treatment at Osaka University Hospital and Osaka City Medical College. As interest in treatment for these girls reached a peak, a group of Hiroshima surgeons, smarting at the implication that they were unable or unwilling to foster care for their own citizens, announced plans for a program of their own.

  Almost singlehandedly the Reverend had propelled the fate of the A-bomb Maidens into national prominence at a time when no one else spoke out in their behalf. But all the media attention he was receiving created a backlash in his own hometown. His gutsy, independent style of promotion contrasted with the traditional Japanese approach that persuaded in quiet ways. There were those who thought a minister should stick to the pulpit and address questions of God, instead of straying down into the pit of controversial social issues. And by playing every conceivable angle, he opened himself to the charge that he was manipulating the Maidens.

  During their first trip to Tokyo they had visited Sugamo Prison, where the Japanese “war criminals” were incarcerated. According to the press, a remarkable reconciliation occurred when the Japanese three-star general who had commanded the army divisions in Hiroshima bowed deeply before the girls and volunteered responsibility for “forcing this tragedy on you.” At that, one of the girls had burst into tears and cried, “We never thought it was your fault. Let’s all make an effort to put an end to war once and forever.” Flowers had been exchanged, everyone prayed for “No more Hiroshimas,” and altogether it made for a stirring story — except in Hiroshima, where many found it strange that the victims of war should want to console those who had been convicted of initiating and profiting from war. Even if the girls genuinely felt no personal antagonism, as it was reported, the intention behind arranging such a meeting was unclear. Whatever was going on, it was unlikely that the meeting had been a spontaneous act by the Maidens, and more likely it had been staged by the Reverend for private reasons.

  In early 1953, when the Reverend was asked by leaders of the Japanese Teachers Union to cooperate in the making of a semidocumentary film about Hiroshima, he agreed to permit the cameramen to take footage of the Maidens praying for world p
eace in his church. It was not until he saw the movie premiere that he realized he had made a mistake. The storyline was melodramatic; in an attempt to illustrate what happened to children in the aftermath of an atomic attack, the camera recorded the grisly fate of an orphan who ended up an embittered delinquent raiding graves for the skulls of bomb victims to sell to tourists. And the message of the film, rather than pointing a finger at the crime of war itself, appeared political in purpose and seemed edited to agitate anti-American feelings in the viewers. To protest the context of their appearance in the film, the Reverend and several Maidens demonstrated outside the theater, demanding their scene be edited out; but the damage had been done, and to many the incident served as a confirmation that the Reverend was willing to go to any extreme for the sake of publicity.