In addition to the visa applicants, several dozen newsmen, photographers, and news cameramen were on hand, and they asked Blake to make a statement concerning the trip. Aside from wishing the participants an enjoyable and successful journey, he declined further comment, but in the spirit of goodwill he did grant a request to take pictures of the issuance of visas. Immediately he regretted it. As he reported in the dispatch he filed to Washington: “When several photographers and moviemen attempted to take close-ups of the girls, one in particular attempting to take movies of a girl with hideously deformed hands laboriously signing her visa, the reporting officer covered the camera lens and refused permission for continued photography.”
Early on the morning of May 5, 1955, the departing party assembled in front of the Hiroshima City Hall. The twenty-five Maidens all wore dark blue suits purchased with the 20,000 yen that a local civic organization had donated to each of them to help them get ready for the trip, and they each carried one suitcase. Accompanying them were the Reverend Tanimoto, Helen Yokoyama, Drs. Tomin Harada and Goro Ouchi, and an entourage of escorts and interpreters headed by Dr. Hitzig. They boarded a charter bus and left for the American Air Force Base at Iwakuni, a half-hour’s drive away, making one stop along the way at the Peace Park, a swatch of land in the center of Hiroshima that marked the hypocenter of the atomic blast. After laying flowers before the memorial to the 140,000 who would never make this trip and pausing for a moment of silent meditation, they went on.
Some 150 jubilant well-wishers had come to Iwakuni to wave the Maidens off, and standing among them was General John E. Hull, whose cooperation from the start had played a chief part in the good fortune that had brought the project this far. The girls had already walked up the boarding ramp and the propellers on the Skymaster C-54 were whirling when an aide dashed up to the general with an urgent cable from Washington. It was one he read with dismay: Senior officials at the State Department had apparently decided at the last minute that the risks of the program outweighed the potential benefits, and they were ordering the flight canceled.
For a long minute the general said nothing. Then, with a heavy sigh, he handed the cable back to his aide. “Unfortunately, I don’t have my reading glasses with me,” he said. “Be sure to remind me to read this later.”
The aircraft made a sweeping circle over Hiroshima before disappearing in a southeasterly direction. When it was out of sight, General Hull reread the cable and then wired the State Department saying that the plane had departed by the time he received their message, and to abort the mission at this stage would, in his opinion, so sour relations that unless he immediately received a countermanding order from his direct military superior, the flight would have to continue on its prearranged course.
Part Two – America
Chapter Four
Even though foam rubber seats had been installed for their comfort, and a galley added so they might have complete meal service as on a commercial flight, the trip to New York was a noisy and grueling one for the Maidens, most of whom were too airsick to think about eating. This was their first airplane flight, and the slightest turbulence was enough to send up screams all around. The make-up of the crew was an added concern; for brawny Air Force men and not stewardesses were the flight attendants, a reminder that only ten years separated this flight from the one that had brought disaster to Hiroshima. The similarity ended there, for in fact this mission was almost the reverse of the other, and the men smiled reassuringly as they moved up and down the aisle serving cold beverages and handing out moistened towels. Nevertheless, the awareness of each other as another day’s enemy charged the air with something extra — until one of the uniformed attendants who knew rudimentary Japanese attempted to make friendly conversation with several girls in the front seats. The ensuing reach for a medium of communication led one girl to bring out a songbook of traditional American tunes that they had each been given before leaving, and it proved to be the icebreaker, for soon the pure sopranos of the Maidens were harmonizing with the basses of the servicemen over old-fashioned campfire ditties. The women in back crowded forward to join in on the sing-along, which had evolved to an exchange of national anthems when suddenly the plane began to buck wildly, tossing the passengers into the air, spilling water out of the temporary latrine that had been set up in the tail section. It was a terrifying moment that seemed like nothing less than the prelude to a plunge into the sea, but as the men sprinted toward the rear the plane quickly stabilized, and when word came back from the pilot that the disturbance was the result of the unbalanced distribution of weight and they should stay close to their assigned seats, everyone had a good laugh.
After twelve hours in the air the plane reached Wake Island, where it stopped for refueling. From there it was scheduled to head straight for Hawaii, but a typhoon forced it to depart from the normal flight plan and veer south. Circling around the bad weather meant a detour stop at Johnston Island and another fourteen hours before arriving at last at Hickam Air Force Base where, despite the delays, more than a hundred Japanese residents of Hawaii were on hand to garland the Maidens with colorful leis in a traditional island greeting.
They were billeted in the bachelor officer’s quarters, ate at the plush Officer’s Club, and the next day taken on a sightseeing tour of the island that included an hour of relaxation in the sunshine at famous Waikiki Beach and a visit to the Punchbowl National Cemetery where Americans who had died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were memorialized. The following morning they departed for Travis Air Force Base in California, and a murmur spread among them as the plane passed over the city of San Francisco and the view from the air revealed block after unbroken block of bungalows and buildings in clear relief. It was their first glimpse of America, and what struck them most forcefully was the absence of a single sign of war. They saw none of the reminders of bombings and fires that still scarred most urban areas in Japan; and for the first time it dawned on them that Japanese warplanes had never gotten any closer to America than Pearl Harbor.
After resting for several hours they flew on to New York, landing at Mitchell Air Force Base on Long Island early on the morning of May 9, 1955, to a raucous reception. At a briefing beforehand, Norman Cousins had told the press that the girls did not mind group shots but they were understandably sensitive to close-ups, and a rope had been put up behind which everyone was asked to stand. But along with the gentlemanly New York papers like the Times and the Herald Tribune were the Mirror and the Daily News, and thrown together they made a tough bunch of reporters who would go to any lengths to beat each other out for a story. As soon as the small, dark-haired women stepped one by one from the Air Force transport, huddling at the foot of the exit ramp, uncertain and visibly scared, the pressmen forgot the agreement and charged across the runway like they were on their way to a prizefight. All the representatives of the project could do was try to get in their way. Big flash cameras exploded over their shoulders and between their legs, and a fistfight nearly broke out between Norman Cousins and a photographer from the World Telegram & Sun before the girls could be hustled into the terminal and the door locked on the angry, cursing mob of reporters who had not gotten all the pictures they wanted and were demanding interviews.
With their faces pressed to the windows, the Maidens rode into Manhattan on an Air Force bus with a New York Police Department motorcycle escort. After a formal registration session at Mount Sinai Hospital, they checked into an uptown hotel and rested for a few hours before assembling at Dr. Hitzig’s five-story Park Avenue townhouse for a catered welcome party. In some ways it was their debut into New York society, for the reception and dinner was attended by a strong representation of the city’s medical elite and embassy officials, who came fashionably dressed as though they were attending a ball. But the various supporters of the project were also present, and afterward people commented that no one who saw the overwhelmed and miscast Maidens clustered in one corner of a room where the plainly clothed Quakers joi
ned them, linking arms in a united kind of front, could question Norman Cousins’s wisdom in asking the Society of Friends to handle the hospitality.
As a point of fact, the Quakers had agreed to take on the responsibility of boarding the Maidens with serious and protracted reservations. Many had felt that as well-meaning as Norman Cousins was, he did not realize what lay ahead of him. At meetings held in advance of the Maidens’ arrival, concern had been expressed that they would become homesick and be unable to make the adjustment to a different culture with a different diet. No one knew what these girls were like, or what their attitude toward America was. Mothers with young children wondered if they were safe to be around after having been exposed to high levels of radioactivity. After all the misgivings had been voiced, a core group in twelve Friends’ Meetings in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, two in conjunction with other churches in their towns, took the initiative to respond positively; but by that time the flight of the Maidens was already in progress. Although Norman Cousins’s penchant for going forward and letting the details work themselves out was once again vindicated, actual homes had in fact not yet been located for all twenty-five women.
Up until now, Helen Yokoyama had been reacting to what was in front of her without a clear understanding of what her duties were or what precisely was expected of her. She had assumed that the project had been carefully planned and that her responsibilities would be spelled out in due time. That many details had been unforeseen, overlooked, or simply not given a great deal of thought became distressingly clear the morning after their arrival. First, when the Maidens came down for breakfast they found that the hotel did not have a restaurant on the premises and that no arrangements had been made for their morning meal. At the Reverend Tanimoto’s suggestion they went in search of a coffee shop, trooping down the street and into a corner drugstore where they filled the seats at the counter. The astonished waitress dropped a plate as they entered and threw a glance of supplication to the short-order cook, who came out wiping his hands on his apron. “What’s this?” he asked. “It’s all right,” Helen Yokoyama assured him, and when she ordered breakfast specials of ham and eggs down the line, it was fine with him. The girls loved it, too, every second of it, but Helen could not eat for worrying, for if it hadn’t been for the American currency she had brought along to take care of her own personal expenses, she would not have been able to pay the check.
Then, when they got back to the hotel, a charter bus was waiting to whisk them out of town; as the move was explained to her, the Maidens were going to be taken to a Quaker retreat in eastern Pennsylvania until their housing arrangements were worked out. All she could think when she heard the news was, They don’t know where the girls are going to be kept We’re going to this place because there’s nowhere else to go...
As they rolled out of the Holland Tunnel and across the New Jersey flats, an American woman accompanying them noticed several girls gazing intently out the window at the landscape of marshlands and oil refineries and she hastened to assure them that where they were going and where they would be living would be much nicer than this. Compared to A-bombed Hiroshima, the girls thought the view was already picturesque, but when they stepped off the bus at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat a dozen miles southwest of Philadelphia, and found themselves surrounded by glorious green lawns and grand old trees, with the fragrance from flower beds scenting the soft spring air, it was less an arrival than a deliverance.
Designed to provide spiritually centered people with a place to gather and study and reflect in an atmosphere of serenity, Pendle Hill had the look of a small private college. The center of “campus” activity was a fieldstone mansion, actually a spacious farmhouse that had been converted into a combination dining hall, library, and meeting room. A large barn had been remodeled into a dormitory, and several other buildings used for a variety of purposes were scattered over some seventeen acres that had been partially landscaped, with enough lush woodland left to give the grounds the atmosphere of a park. Each morning after breakfast the residents would gather in a meeting for worship, which was followed by an hour or two of cooperative work, then classes in religious thought, social change, and literature, with time available to pursue individual study projects. As there had been no official orientation program devised for the Maidens, the daily routines of the sixty current residents at Pendle Hill became their starting point. After a day or two to recover from the fatigue of five days of travel, they attended the morning meetings, which consisted of an hour of meditative silence; they pitched in on the common tasks, cleaning their rooms and cutting vegetables in preparation for the evening meal; and during the time of day set aside for educational activities, they sat in the grass and listened to Helen Yokoyama as she tried to prepare them for the year ahead.
That there was indisputably an improvised element to this whole enterprise had been disconcerting in the extreme to the woman who felt herself caught in the middle, for it led her to question the thoroughness of the rest of the preparations. She did not know what to do at this point, but when she let herself feel the full gravity of the situation she knew that if the project flopped there could be disastrous international repercussions. Realizing it was too late to turn back now, however, she made up her mind that if it did fail it was not going to be because of any neglect on the Japanese side.
The job she assigned herself was neither enviable nor easy. First of all, the twenty-five girls in her charge had only the dimmest idea what the country they were visiting was like. Aside from what some of the older girls had studied in geography class at school, they knew next to nothing about Western customs, they spoke and understood no English, they could not even write their names in Roman letters. Most of what they did know about America came from American movies they had seen, usually westerns. As the plane had taxied to a stop at Mitchell Air Field, one girl, eyes glued to the window, asked, “Where are all the cowboys?”
For that matter, their familiarity with Japanese customs varied greatly. Though she had been “den mother” for less than a week, it had been long enough for her to observe that not all the Maidens were model Japanese girls. Watching them eat, she had been appalled at their table manners. Some of them ate like common laborers, devouring their meals in as little time as possible. Apparently some of them had come with an unreasonable load of expectations, too; a group of girls went on a food strike as soon as they arrived at Pendle Hill, refusing to accept a Western menu and demanding Chinese noodles at the very least. Eventually the girls had come around out of sheer hunger, but that had not been the only instance of rudeness.
To a certain extent that was to be expected. After all, these girls were inexperienced and uneducated; they had been selected on the basis of their disfigurement, not their backgrounds, and most had lost homes and family members so their home training lacked the discipline and instruction in etiquette that were mandatory in a traditional Japanese household. That being the case, and knowing that soon they would be entering American homes as guests, Helen Yokoyama felt it was most important for them to have a standard of conduct to guide them in their daily interactions. So in addition to leading them through a crash course in the ABCs of conversational English and American customs, she conducted an elementary class in etiquette.
Her method of tutoring was to let the instruction flow from the girls, for instinctively she knew better than to criticize them, which would only make them more self-conscious. “Imagine yourselves as perfect Japanese daughters,” she would say. “What would you do for your own parents to make them happy?” When one girl replied she would help her mother prepare meals and clean dishes, and another said if her father came home tired she would give him a massage, Helen would say, ‘That’s fine. Do just the same for your American parents.”
She stressed the fact that politeness and courtesy were virtues recognized and appreciated around the world and that if they always presented a pleasant, gracious self it would add to their attractiveness, for people would
notice their presentation more than their appearance. She said that whenever they were in doubt as to how they should think or speak or act in a given situation, they should remember that they were Japanese ladies and that, in their own way, they were going to be perceived as emissaries from Japan. And it seemed she had found just the right tone to use, because looking at their eyes she saw they almost seemed relieved to have a code of conduct to hold onto in the days ahead.
They stayed at Pendle Hill for two weeks, and in that short time Helen Yokoyama came to feel that even though they had ended up there through a hurried, last-minute arrangement, it could not have worked out better. Those two weeks not only gave the Maidens an opportunity to prepare for their future in a casual, easygoing atmosphere but also gave them a chance to develop relationships with foreigners in an ideal situation. Although none of their feelings about the war and the bomb had been particularized against the American people, nonetheless, they felt a certain apprehension being around the citizens of a country they had been raised to despise. Pendle Hill had been set up expressly to create a shared sense of community among those who stayed there, however; and as the Maidens meditated and worked side by side with the residents, they found themselves growing fond of them. The Quakers were friendly and helpful. They were unable to speak Japanese, of course, so through pantomime they tried to communicate the customs of daily living, which added a kind of sporting element to their exchanges. Amused, drawn out of themselves, the Maidens would reciprocate by singing folk songs of Old Japan in the evenings after dinner when the dining hall was cleared. The most memorable was a plaintive one about a lone maiden who sits apart waiting patiently in the gathering dusk for her lover to come.
Hiroshima Maidens Page 10