Hiroshima Maidens

by Rodney Barker

  In defense of his actions, the Reverend Tanimoto maintained that there had been no other way to get things done than to opt for maximum exposure. He pointed out that only after working very hard through “official channels” and receiving disappointingly slight attention had he turned to his own devices. But for the most part he disregarded the criticism because there were other more pressing problems occupying his attention. The money to finance the surgery for the Maidens was almost spent, and even though some of the girls had been operated on as many as a half-dozen times, their conditions were not markedly improved.

  At first he had put the failure down to the complexity of the injuries caused by the atomic bomb; but while it was true that the particular scar formation that disfigured and crippled the Maidens was unique, it was not a phenomenon associated with the atomic bomb alone. The growths of scar tissue that exceeded the normal boundaries of the skin, swelling like hard tumors and contracting on all adjacent movable tissues were called keloids. It was not known why or how keloids developed, though apparently they had something to do with the pigmentation of the skin, because they were uncommon in whites but more common in Orientals; the higher incidence of keloids among A-bomb survivors also suggested an enhancing effect of radiation. Perhaps their most distinguishing property was their tough resistance to scalpels; when cut away, they promptly grew back.

  But the nature of the injuries was not the only stumbling block to progress. The level of reconstructive plastic surgery as it was currently being practiced in Japan was an equally impressive obstacle. It was not a medical specialty, and its techniques were primitive at best. When he looked into it further the Reverend found the reason had something to do with the fact that Japanese medicine was largely modeled after German medicine, and traditions of plastic surgery were worked out in France and England. Apparently there were no courses on plastic surgery offered in Japanese medical schools, very little was written on the subject in Japanese textbooks, and there was not one surgeon in the country who could transplant skin with a reliable degree of success.

  From a purely medical standpoint it was logical then for the Reverend to think of taking the Maidens to America for treatment. The best, most challenging plastic surgery was being done in American hospitals, he was told. But apart from that, the idea seemed perfectly ordered to him on two other grounds as well. First, he felt that such an undertaking would foster a more favorable image of the United States, which was urgently needed to slow the surging left wing movement in Japan that was attempting to make the Hiroshima bombing the symbolic rallying point against the “American militarization” of Japan. Second, it had been a source of considerable discomfort for him that a Christian nation had used the atomic bomb first — and twice; and it seemed to him that if the country that had the scientific genius to create such a weapon could show it also possessed the moral courage to repair the human damage it had wrought, it would make a story that could unite the people of Japan and the United States, so recently at war, in their common humanity.

  He knew that getting the girls to the States was going to require the intervention of an influential person, so he took every opportunity to make an appeal to visiting Americans. In June of 1953, he spoke with the wife of none other than the man who had initially approved the development of the atomic bomb, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, when she came to Hiroshima. After meeting with several Maidens, Mrs. Roosevelt was willing to express her sympathies in a public statement but reluctant to get more deeply involved. Then in the fall of that year, Norman Cousins came to Hiroshima, accompanied by his wife, Ellen.

  Sensing that if anyone he knew had a conscience about Hiroshima and the power to make things happen, it was Norman Cousins, the Reverend made arrangements to pick them up at the airport. And on the drive into the city he gave a brief report on the Hiroshima Peace Center activities and his frustrations surrounding the A-bomb Maidens. This was the first Ellen Cousins had heard of the Maidens and she expressed the hope that they might be able to meet the young women. The Reverend replied they would be coming to his church the following evening for one of their get-togethers, and he urged the Cousinses to join them.

  They met the next night on the steps of the renascent Nagarekawa Church, and after leading his guests on a tour of the chapel, which had been restored with American donations, the Reverend led the Cousinses downstairs to the community room where the A-bomb Maidens were waiting. There were fifteen girls present, whose ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-one, and they sat in a circle on wooden chairs, their legs tucked under them, hands folded primly in their laps. Cousins had been expecting something of the sort, but was still not prepared for what he saw. He tried not to scrutinize the details — a shorn-off ear, the caved-in side of a face, a nose shoved into a snout — but it was impossible not to stare. Once seen, they were faces never forgotten.

  Cousins and his wife attempted to carry on a normal conversation through the Reverend’s translation. He asked them what they liked to do most, and one girl answered, “Just be together, like this.” Another said they liked to sing songs and a third added, “Go to the movies.” When he asked them what kind of movies they enjoyed most the answer was unanimous, American movies, and their favorite actor was Gregory Peck, with Gary Cooper a close second.

  When the Reverend asked several of them to roll up their sleeves and hold out their hands, Cousins swallowed hard. Elbows and wrists were yanked out of position as if from some muscular frenzy and locked into place by gristly straps of scar tissue. One girl held up both hands, revealing fingers that were curled and webbed like talons clutching at prey.

  The Reverend spoke softly. “I can give them things to do, and I can help restore some of their self-respect, but the important thing now is medical treatment.” He had come to realize, he said to both Cousinses, that there was neither the means nor the expertise to go much further in Japan. He went on to say that if miracles did happen, he would like to take the girls to America for the help they so badly needed.

  Before he could utter a word, Norman Cousins’s wife turned to him and said, “It may not be as difficult as you think.”

  *

  What happened in Hiroshima and whether the atomic bomb should have been used in the manner it was had preoccupied Norman Cousins’s postwar writings and dominated the editorial pages of the Saturday Review. As one of the earliest critics of the bombing, he felt that most people had been convinced by President Truman that it had shortened the war, that nothing short of an all-out invasion would have made Japan surrender, and that before the last surviving Japanese soldier was dug out of a cave on top of Mount Fuji, a half million GIs would have lost their lives. Cousins did not believe that an invasion of mainland Japan was necessary because he felt the outcome of the war was already evident; it was simply a matter of the terms of surrender. He was convinced that the atomic bomb had been dropped so Japan could be defeated before the Soviet Union could enter the war and stake a claim in the Occupation, an intention revealed by the use of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki just three days after Hiroshima. “It was a matter of racing against a deadline to prevent Russia from getting in on the kill, and not to spare American lives, that explained why all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki died.”

  In the forties and fifties the Saturday Review burned with a purer flame than most other magazines of the day, due mainly to the visionary humanism of its editor — a man with mild, pleasant features, fit-looking in build, thick brown hair with a well-defined part, but nothing in his appearance that stood out as remarkable except his luminous brown eyes. Since taking over the helm at the Saturday Review, Cousins had expanded a literary weekly into a widely circulated journal dealing with world affairs and committed to a policy of cultural enlightenment, as well as the arts. In the process he had demonstrated a unique ability to inspire a sense of family among his readers, and no greater proof of his devout following existed than the response that followed his moving report on the plight of the “atomic orphans” he wrote afte
r his first visit to Hiroshima in 1949. Observing that thousands of children who had been evacuated to country villages during the war had lost their mothers and fathers in the blast, and were roaming the ruins or were penned up in draconian orphanages, he had invited Saturday Review readers to contribute the funds for a “Moral Adoption Program” that would shelter, feed, and educate the “atomic orphans.” More than six hundred Americans had answered his call, anteing up more than $70,000.

  Cousins had a special feeling for orphans. When he was eleven years old he had spent a harrowing year in a sanitarium because the doctors thought he had tuberculosis, and that experience had left its mark: He knew what it was like to face a future dark with doubts. That feeling, coupled with the fact that he had four daughters of his own, accounted in large part for his strong reaction to the A-bomb Maidens; but it was his disagreement with the American government’s policy toward the survivors of Hiroshima on a general humanitarian level that ultimately provoked him into action. Within a year after the war had ended, the United States had set up a research facility in Hiroshima called the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission to study the long-term effects of radiation on the survivors. Sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, the facility was a scientific institute run by American authorities with the exclusive purpose of carrying out research on what parts of the human body were affected most by radiation. It was not a therapeutic establishment designed to treat patients. There were those in Hiroshima who felt that their city had been used as a laboratory for a spectacular American scientific experiment and that they were now being studied like guinea pigs, and Cousins was of the same opinion. He thought it was indecent if not immoral for the government to study A-bomb survivors for the scientific purposes of calibrating how close they were to death while denying them medical treatment. Feeling as he did that any doctor who examined a patient had an obligation under the Hippocratic Oath to treat the patient, he was determined “to shame the bastards” if that was what it took to rectify the injustice, beginning with the A-bomb Maidens.

  On his own, he attempted to calculate the costs of the enterprise he had talked about with the Reverend Tanimoto. He started with transportation and figured it would take approximately $25,000 to bring about twenty girls over and fly them back. He estimated that the cost of room space and operating time in a hospital might round off to $40,000. When he added up the cost of surgery — an extremely difficult branch of surgery, involving a series of operations — and realized this might exceed $100,000, he stopped counting.

  As he thought about the options and courses open to him, he slowly realized that a project of this magnitude would obviously need the support of a foundation. For the next six months he visited officials of various foundations that seemed to be concerned with America’s relationship to other nations, particularly in Asia, but foundation after foundation turned him down. One was fearful of what repercussions might follow should any of the girls die accidentally while in treatment. Another was concerned about the political views of the girls. Anxieties generated by the Cold War, the controversy over atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, and the current anticommunist crusade made them wary of any associations that might furnish ammunition to some future Congressional investigating committee.

  When it became evident that the best chance, perhaps the only chance, was for the venture to take shape as a volunteer project, and that it depended entirely on what support he himself could rally, Cousins turned to his large circle of New York contacts. First he took up the medical and surgical aspects with his friend and personal physician, Dr. William Hitzig, who divided his time between a lucrative Park Avenue private practice and Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was an internist on staff. A short, stout man with receding white hair brushed straight back from a florid face that was frequently flushed by an excitable temperament, Dr. Hitzig responded with alacrity when asked for the name of a plastic surgeon who would be equal to the towering surgical challenge. “Why not start at the top?” he said. “Arthur Barsky sounds like your man. I’ll call him right away.”

  In a profession not generally known for humility, Dr. Arthur Barsky was the exception. Gentle-mannered, soft-spoken, and almost shy, he had an air of ancient learning about him that was consistent with his position as founder and chairman of the Plastic Surgery Departments at both Mount Sinai Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. Nor was he a stranger to war injuries; during the Second World War, Lieutenant Colonel Barsky had set up an independent center for plastic surgery in the army camp at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where as well as handling three or four wards of regular patients, he was given a separate ward and the right to select interesting cases that presented him with challenging problems. There were no restrictions on his activities in this regard, which were left up to the surgeon and his conscience: The range of injuries he saw, and the innovative techniques he used to treat them led to a joke around the camp that Dr. Barsky could mend anything but a broken heart.

  Barsky listened carefully as Norman Cousins outlined the project, and afterward he said it was hard to know how much good plastic surgery would do these people without actually seeing them. At that, Cousins pulled out a folder containing photographs sent to him by the Reverend Tanimoto. After studying them for a long time Dr. Barsky said he thought surgery would most definitely be of help. Next, he expressed a concern about the way a project like this would be handled in the media. He said he did not want to get involved in anything that would become a sensation in the press. Cousins assured him that he would see to it the project was handled with restraint and dignity.

  Shuffling through the photographs again, Barsky said, “A detailed examination of each patient will be essential before any basic decisions can be made.”

  “Then I’ll explore the possibility of an on-the-site inspection in Japan,” Cousins replied.

  For a moment or two Dr. Barsky leaned back in his chair and said nothing. Of that moment Cousins would later write: “It was the kind of calm and deliberateness that spoke unusual strength. A small smile played around the corner of his lips, as though to indicate he was going to say something that he knew would change the course of his life.”

  Barsky suddenly nodded. “All right. Count me in.”

  Wrote Cousins: “There was something in the way he said it that made me think he knew far better than the rest of us what we were letting ourselves in for.”

  After that, one good thing happened after another.

  Since Drs. Barsky and Hitzig were both attached to Mount Sinai Hospital, it was the logical place to approach in the search for hospital facilities. The director of the hospital, Dr. Martin Steinberg, readily grasped the significance of the project, but he said the hospital charter did not allow them to underwrite charity, no matter how worthy the cause. The solution was provided by the chairman of the board of trustees, Alfred Rose, a wealthy New York lawyer, who agreed to pay personally for all hospitalization costs, though for reasons of his own he insisted that his role remain anonymous and the hospital be credited for supplying the operating facilities and bed care.

  As important as the surgery was, Cousins knew that the Maidens would be spending a substantial amount of time outside the hospital and that the kind of experience they had, the people they met, what they did and learned would probably be crucial to the overall success of the project. So he selected the Religious Society of Friends to handle the hospitality in between operations because he believed they were “honed by history” to carry out a project of this sort. One of the distinguishing principles of the Quakers is their opposition to war, reflected not only in their refusal to fight but in their tradition of carrying out relief work. Collectively he felt they “understood the possibilities of compassion as well as any people.” Working through the American Friends Service Committee, Cousins was put in touch with the New York Friends Center, where he was told that an immediate affirmative could not be made until the matter was discussed with all the Meetings involved, but they had every reason to beli
eve that the Friends would rise to this “opportunity for service”.

  Next, he turned to the issue of transportation, and for a while it seemed the project would quite literally not get off the ground. Every trans-Pacific airline he approached to discuss the possibility of supplying “courtesy flights” for approximately twenty persons politely informed him it was out of the question. For several months the progress of the project was stalled at this point, and it might never have gone further had not a friend, recently returned from Japan, suggested he let the Japanese see what they could do on their end. He was given the name of the American-born and -educated president of the Nippon Times, an English language daily newspaper based in Tokyo, and told that if anyone would be sympathetic and resourceful enough to make it happen, it would be Mr. Kiyoshi Togasaki. Only later did Cousins learn of the chain reaction his letter to Togasaki set off. Sufficiently intrigued by the largesse expressed in Cousins’s appeal for help, Togasaki had given the matter his full attention. Working quickly and quietly on his own, he made unofficial calls on the Foreign Office and the U.S. Ambassador; and once he determined that passports and visas would be granted when they were needed, he flew to Hiroshima to make certain the project had the blessings of the mayor of the city and the governor of the prefecture. With all these assurances in hand, he went to Japan and Pan American air lines, the two commercial carriers with routes between the Orient and the States, but got no further than Cousins had. Temporarily stymied, he arranged another meeting with the American Ambassador and sought his advice. Casually, in the manner of a government official leaking a delicate piece of news to a reporter, the Ambassador reminded Togasaki of how progressive General John E. Hull — commander-in-chief of the Far East Command — had shown himself to be in his attitude toward improving U.S.-Japanese relations.