Hiroshima Maidens

by Rodney Barker

  *

  Although predictable excesses showed up in the headlines announcing their arrival (25 JAP GIRLS SEEK NEW FACES) and in the descriptions of their appearance (“The face of every girl was scarred. One had an eye burned out. The flesh of another’s throat had the corded appearance of manila hemp. The nose of another girl was all but burned off and the mouths of many were like twisted and distorted livid gashes. Through the girls’ stockings could be seen red and white fire scars.”), the nation’s newspapers generally gave the story wide and fair play. The Hiroshima Maidens, as the American press called them, were characterized as a peace-loving and appreciative group, and the project was portrayed as a “mercy mission.”

  The majority of Americans were introduced to the Maidens on a live television broadcast, however, for the day after their landing in New York, the Reverend Tanimoto and two girls who had been with him from the beginning were flown back across the country to Los Angeles to appear on Ralph Edwards’s This Is Your Life. “This Is Your Life — Kiyoshi Tanimoto” was strong material for the mid-fifties, and the messy spectacle of a captain of one of America’s proud airships crying over what he had done to the enemy in wartime — on national network television, no less — provoked an immediate and angry response. Minutes after the show had ended the switchboard at the NBC studio was blitzed with phone calls.

  The Reverend Marvin Green had been put in charge of the post-show public relations, and he could not handle the calls fast enough. Every caller was a member of the American Armed Forces, and to the man they were outraged. To watch a decorated Army Air Force man all but apologize for his part in a mission that to their minds had put an end to the war in the Pacific made them mad. On the phone Green did not argue; none of the callers wanted to talk anyway; they just wanted him to hear them out and then they banged the phone down. But Green alone knew there was more to the matter than what had been seen on the air, and that Captain Robert Lewis had been under the influence of more than strong emotions when he had broken down. As he would recall the incident years later, “Lewis claimed that Edwards’s office had worked out a deal with him ahead of time and he thought they were going to pay him a big fee for appearing on the show. When he got there he found they weren’t going to pay anything but expenses, and he hit the ceiling. Around noon the day of the show he started visiting the grog shops. He didn’t show up for the afternoon rehearsal and the producers were going crazy. They sent me out to find him and by the time I tracked him down he had already hit four taverns. And he was drunk. I got him back to the studio in time for the show and we tried to sober him up, but, you know, coffee only makes a drunk wide awake instead of sleepy.”

  Green had no doubt that what Lewis had said on the air was deeply felt, for he knew too that while stumbling around back-stage waiting to go on, Lewis had peered into the room where the two Hiroshima Maidens were also waiting. His face was white when he turned to Green and whispered, “And there are a hundred thousand more who look like that?” But Green did not believe Lewis would have cried if he had been straight.

  The media reviews ran the gamut. Time magazine called it “First-rate entertainment...Easily the most dramatic and affecting moment of the TV week.” John Crosby in the New York Herald Tribune awarded it a “new low in taste” rating and wondered if “an adorable little gold bomb [was] attached” to the charm bracelet given to Mrs. Tanimoto as a souvenir for appearing on the show.

  As for Norman Cousins, he felt that the purpose of having the Reverend on television had been decent and that there had been nothing staged or wrong about what Lewis had done. The man had expressed genuine emotions, which were natural under the circumstances. Rather than defend the program, however, Cousins preferred to let the viewing public cast its vote by mail. Fourteen letters of criticism were received, seconding the opinion that the show was in poor taste (while Ralph Edwards saw historic irony in arranging for the Reverend Tanimoto and Captain Lewis to cross destinies on his Hollywood stage, others could only remember the shadows cast by the two deformed Japanese girls) or stating that Japan had a long way to go to atone for Pearl Harbor before she was entitled to American sympathy. Against those fourteen letters stood more than twenty thousand pieces of mail warmly supporting the project with contributions. The proceeds did not amount to a million dollars, as hoped, but the $55,000 eventually collected would help to to solve the petty cash crisis of the Hiroshima Maidens Project.

  Meanwhile, at the State Department the program had been watched with mounting dismay, for during May 1955 a series of overlapping articles and events were putting America’s nuclear policy on parade. On May 5, the very day the Maidens departed from Hiroshima, Operation Cue had been carried out at Yucca Flats, Nevada. This thirteenth U.S. atomic blast of the year was given the full glamour treatment through promotional and public relations techniques. Busloads of middle-aged Americans wearing civil defense caps and badges, coming from as far away as Kansas City, Akron, and Terre Haute, had been transported to the detonation site where they tramped through dust and sagebrush to inspect the test homes of frame and brick and concrete block: a mock town such as you would find on a Hollywood set that was carefully designed to simulate a typical American community, right down to department store dummies seated at kitchen tables. Comedian Dave Garroway was reported to have conducted his morning show from the GI-filled trenches two miles from the blast, which had twice the destructive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima; the show was carried live over national television into millions of homes at breakfast time.

  A week later the magazine US News & World Report carried a cover story on the findings of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dr. Robert Holmes, the current director, tried to dispel some of the rumors and fears about radiation effects by equating the nervous public reaction to the hazards of the Atomic Age to “the panic that the first steam engine produced among the Indians as it crossed the Western prairie, and the consternation of the people at the first automobile as it roared along at the tremendous speed of about 25 miles an hour.” But under questioning, Dr. Holmes was forced to admit there had been a dramatic rise in the incidence of a whole range of cancers in the A-bomb survivors, with more due to come because of cancer’s incubation period. Ten years after the bombing he confessed, “The end is not yet in sight.”

  That same week the semi-documentary Japanese film Hiroshima that had so disturbed the Reverend Tanimoto that he had picketed it, opened commercially in New York City to favorable reviews.

  Then, along came This Is Your Life, wherein a commercial organization had presented a sensational story to the public without investigating its possible ramifications in a very sensitive area of Japanese-American relations. Even if the show had been designed for the purposes of entertainment, some felt the picture of the teary-eyed American co-pilot of the Enola Gay shaking hands with an atomic bomb survivor and presenting him with a check from his squadron, could be dynamite in the wrong hands. There was concern it could serve to dramatize the demands of aggressively active groups in Hiroshima who were seeking funds from the United States government for the rehabilitation and care of all persons affected by the atomic bomb. There was little doubt that the film would do much to reinforce leftist propaganda of American guilt and could even provoke further anti-American demonstrations in the Far East.

  It was time for a talk. Officials at the State Department were well aware that Norman Cousins was a vocal critic of its nuclear policies and active in disarmament and antinuclear testing campaigns. They needed to be assured that the Hiroshima Maidens were not going to be used to attract publicity and followers for his political objectives, and become the darlings of the Ban-the-Bomb Movement. Norman Cousins was eager for a meeting, too; he wanted to find out why the State Department had tried to halt the flight of the Maidens.

  The face-off took place during the summer of 1955 at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Behind the desk sat Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, Walter S. Robertson
, and in front of it sat Norman Cousins, who would remember the exchange this way: “I asked him why he had sent a wire to General Hull canceling the flight, and he said the reason was he was afraid if the girls came to this country they would produce sentiment for outlawing the atomic bomb. I said, ‘But Mr. Secretary, President Eisenhower has declared it to be a prime purpose of American foreign policy to find a way to outlaw the atomic bomb.’ He fudged at that point and said that we had to create a formulation to indicate that we would be second to none in our interest to produce peace, but that the atomic bomb would not be outlawed, not in the interests of American security — which ran directly counter to the President’s stated policy.”

  A recently declassified State Department memorandum supports this account of the conversation, which rapidly degenerated into a debate. Robertson took the position that “the single major factor now keeping the world from a third world war is the deterrent power of nuclear weapons,” and Cousins argued that “disarmament carried out by foolproof methods of enforcement is the only feasible course to try to follow.” The meeting concluded with the assistant secretary of state stressing that “helping victims of misfortune is a very worthwhile endeavor, but every effort should be made to keep the project involving the Hiroshima girls from stirring up propaganda against nuclear weapons,” and Norman Cousins summing up his case with the opinion that the treatment of the Hiroshima Maidens could only further the cause of peace and goodwill on an international level.

  Of course, Cousins was aware that the Hiroshima Maidens Project probed a sensitive nerve at the State Department. At that time the government was defensive about anything that the “Red press” could possibly exploit for propaganda purposes. But while he did not hesitate to speak out publicly, calling the double-barreled atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the greatest stain on our national history,” or opposing the brinksmanship of building and stockpiling more and bigger nuclear weapons, or advocating certain unilateral measures “to demonstrate our own good faith, since we took unilateral measures in dropping the bomb,” he did not want the Maidens to feel part of a larger symbolism. They were not pawns in a political game, be it relations between the United States and Japan or the issue of nuclear weapons. Some of his friends were concerned about America’s nuclear policy and thought the Maidens ought to go around lecturing about the A-bomb “to bring about a larger awareness of the menace and immorality of these bombs.” But again, Cousins did not want them to feel they were being used for something greater than themselves. “If their presence aroused public opinion, it was all to the good. But to have them travel around as part of a demonstration, or attend meetings or rallies for that purpose would have exploited the girls, as well as the emotions of the people.”

  For that reason, when the producers of the Japanese film Hiroshima attempted to obtain his endorsement of the film in exchange for one-half the box office proceeds of the first week’s run in New York as a benefit for the Hiroshima Maidens, he refused. Although he was determined to challenge the American government for ignoring the special sufferings of the Japanese people hurt by the atomic bombs, he was not indifferent to current political realities.

  Cousins wanted to keep the project a personal event. “That, for me, is what history consists of. One makes an impact on history in terms of example, not pronunciamentos. I was trying to create relationships and I thought the relationships would spread and endure. If there was anything to this, the power of the example would find its meaning.”

  *

  The day before the Maidens were to leave Pendle Hill for their American homes, the Reverend Tanimoto escorted the first two girls scheduled for surgery to Mount Sinai Hospital. There they found themselves barraged by a sequence of wholly unexpected physical checks before they could be admitted. First, a nurse came to take their temperatures. In Japan, the thermometer was placed under the arm, so there was an awkward moment of embarrassing confusion when the American nurse attempted to take their temperatures rectally. It required an explanation from the Reverend before they understood and, with grimaces, skeptically submitted to the procedure. Barely had they gotten over the humiliation of this when a young doctor showed up to conduct a gynecological examination. While this may have been a common procedure in many American medical institutions, it was not done in Japan. The Reverend had left, so there was no one around to explain. It was not until the nurse herself assumed the proper position on the examination table that one of the girls, evidently more experienced in these matters than the other, guessed what they were talking about and hopped onto the table. Even then, it sounded like a wicked inspiration to the other girl, who cooperated when it was her turn, but was burning with shame and afraid to imagine what they would want to do next.

  After breakfast the following morning, seeing there was no one in authority around, one of the girls suggested they have a look around. Her shyer companion did not think it was a good idea to leave the ward without permission. “What are they going to do, send us back?” the bold one demanded. And when she indicated her willingness to venture on her own, her wardmate was not about to be left behind. Together they wandered down a maze of corridors, peering around corners and scurrying down empty hallways, riding an elevator all the way to the roof where they gasped at the vertical grandeur of midtown Manhattan, and then taking the elevator down to the very last stop. They were exploring the catacombs of the basement when a security guard spotted them. “Hey,” he called, “where do you think you’re going?” From the way they looked at him he must have realized they didn’t understand English. Holding his hands out in a wait-right-here gesture, he ran to make a call upstairs. One girl had the terrible feeling they were about to be arrested and was on the verge of tears, but the second the man’s back was turned the other girl bolted for the elevator, grabbing her companion by the hand and pulling her along like a doll. They were breathless by the time they found their way back to their ward; and though they hung their heads in shame before a lecture from a stern nurse who made it clear they were not to leave the ward unaccompanied again, when they were alone they laughed and laughed, and even the shy one had to admit it had been an exciting first twenty-four hours.

  Mount Sinai Hospital consisted of two buildings, each over ten stories high, standing side by side on Fifth Avenue at 100th Street across from Central Park. On the fourth floor of the surgical pavilion a four-bed suite at the back of the general ward for females had been converted into a private ward for the Hiroshima Maidens. To assist him in performing the operations, Dr. Barsky had recruited his second-in-command at Beth Israel Hospital, Dr. Sidney Kahn, and at Mount Sinai, Dr. Bernard Simon. When they were first approached, each man had had personal reservations about donating time to this project. Aside from the fact that they were both already maintaining steady hospital and private practices, Dr. Simon, who had served in the Army during the Second World War as an evacuation hospital surgeon in Germany, suspected this might be a political ploy put together by Norman Cousins to dramatize the effects of nuclear weapons. Dr. Kahn had not quite overcome his resentment toward the Japanese as a ruthless enemy and was loathe to be part of an action that implied regret over the use of a weapon he credited for putting an abrupt end to the war. Moreover, he knew there were a good number of Americans who could benefit from free treatment, and he felt that if they were going to start opening their services to charity, they should begin with the people in New York. But both men had been trained by Dr. Barsky and held him in tremendous respect, and when he told them matter-of-factly that this was what they were going to do, they forgot their reservations.

  Dr. Barsky had decided it would be best to begin with several uncomplicated procedures so that the progress could be immediately seen, thus raising the morale of the rest of the Maidens. Before operating, he let each girl know what he had in mind, giving her a sense of what was going to happen and what she would have to put up with. He did not feel that their emotional backgrounds posed an obstacle; he believed they would r
espond to complete gentleness, compassion, and honesty, and he treated them the same way he did every other young patient.

  In his own mind, Barsky was thinking function first, appearance second, knowing that in most cases there was an interrelation between the two — that restoring an eyelid, for example, not only saved vision, it looked better. But these were young women who obviously wanted to be made more presentable, so sometimes he would discuss the options with them, and there were those who were willing to accept a slight functional restriction in trade for a better look.

  Four girls were operated on in rapid succession. A keloidal adhesion was removed from the back of a girl’s neck, allowing her head, which had been frozen in a bowed position, to move freely. A scar that had locked another girl’s right hand to her forearm was excised and replaced by a small skin graft, restoring an elementary function that had been missing for a decade. An ulcerated lower left eyelid was replaced by a graft taken from the inside of a right upper arm so a third girl could close her eyes at night. And a graft of full-thickness, hair-bearing skin was taken from behind a fourth girl’s right ear and implanted over her eyes, giving her a new and complete set of eyebrows.

  Where just the surface of the skin had been affected, “free grafts” could be drawn directly from another part of the body. But where the deeper structures were damaged, the transfer of fat and subcutaneous tissue was also called for. The first step in this process was the selection of a “donor area” that resembled the recipient area as closely as possible, in color, texture, elasticity, and thickness of skin. The abdomen was generally recognized as the most suitable area to draw from, but as Barsky and his associates quickly discovered, with the Maidens the best tissues were not always available because they had already been used up on procedures attempted by Japanese surgeons — procedures that had been improperly chosen and inadequately carried out. He never said it would have been better if the girls had been left alone, and he would not use the fact that he had to go to secondary selection sites as an excuse if the operations did not turn out satisfactorily, but Barsky was glad for the presence of the two Japanese surgeons who had come along, and who could not help but see the handicap he was working under.