Up to this point, Norman Cousins had been a very lucky man; but Dr. Penn’s visit was wrong from the start. Inadequate efforts were made beforehand to solicit approval and formal invitation by “the right people” in Hiroshima, so consequently Dr. Penn was snubbed when he first arrived. To make matters worse, he came on the scene with a heartiness that ignored the niceties which were an essential part of professional protocol in the East. Without consulting anyone, he announced his intention of operating on several hundred cases over the next two weeks, and called for “the local boys” to fill the hospitals up from one end so that he could pass them through the theater and out the other end. His arrival was a fiasco. The Japanese were a proud people, the medical profession especially so. Coming to Hiroshima to treat A-bomb patients was not the same as going into the African jungle and lining up the natives. It took an emergency meeting of the Medical Association, at which the Japanese doctors who had accompanied the Maidens to America reminded everyone of Norman Cousins’s humanitarian intentions, before any cooperation was forthcoming.
In surgical and public relations terms, the second phase was certainly not the triumph the first phase was. Fewer than one hundred patients were treated and the results were mixed. The secret to Dr. Penn’s reputed success was the use of a special anesthesia which lowered blood pressure during the operation so there was less bleeding, but in several transplants the grafts burst when pressure returned to normal. Seen in the larger context, however, the net accomplishment was all good. Norman Cousins had fulfilled his vow to provide every A-bomb survivor with the opportunity to undergo plastic surgery free of charge. Not only that, his chain of projects ignited a reaction in the Japanese medical community that led directly to the development of plastic surgery as a medical specialty there; an Association of Plastic Surgeons was organized, with Dr. Arthur Barsky nominated as its first honorary member, and medical schools throughout Japan were beginning to include courses in plastic surgery. Perhaps the most significant by-product of Cousins’s efforts on behalf of the Hiroshima survivors was that they so dramatically testified to the failure of the Japanese Government to help hibakusha on their own that, embarrassed by the successive one-sided humanitarian gestures from Americans, the authorities finally saw fit, twelve years after the bombing, to enact an A-bomb Victims Medical Care Law that provided free medical examinations and care to persons certified as having A-bomb-caused health problems. The issue had been building and a relief law would have come in time anyway, but in a tribute to all he had done to publicize the need for one, the measure was proposed in the Japanese Diet as the “Norman Cousins Bill.”
As for the Maidens not doing their fair share for society, it was a matter of interpretation. While it was true that none of them emerged as a visible spokesperson for peace, the organized peace movement in Japan at that time was fraught with dissension and dispute; a swirl of political manueverings surrounded all so-called “peace activities”; and though everyone said they wanted peace, different groups were at such ideological odds they were unable to put the interests of their respective parties aside long enough to unite on a strategy for the common goal. The Maidens’ complex relationship to the peace movement was captured in the dilemma they faced when a Quaker who had hosted them decided to protest the continued testing of hydrogen bombs in the South Pacific by sailing a boat into the restricted area. It was big news in Japan and reporters were eager for comments from the Maidens. At heart they, too, objected to further testing, and yet they had to be careful that anything they said could not be twisted into an expression of anti-American sentiments, so they refused comment.
At times like this they turned to the one person they could count on for sound advice, Sensei. Helen Yokoyama had had every intention of separating herself from the project after their return to Japan, only to find herself inexorably drawn back into the lives of the Maidens because they had come to depend on her whenever they had a problem. Recalling the old Chinese saying, “The tree, the tree/ it wishes to stand silent/ but the wind will not allow,” she remained their confidante and counselor. She thought it was extremely unfair for anyone to burden these girls, who had been through so much, with ongoing obligations. The beauty of the project, in her estimation, had been the selfless display of people giving without wanting anything in return. If the Maidens wished to pass on the benefit of their experience to others, she thought it should be their decision, and the expression should be made in terms of what was right for them as individuals. That was why she told them, “Not all of us are born into this world to become leaders, and if we reach beyond our abilities we are apt to make mistakes. But those of you who feel you have a message to deliver can pass it along in your own quiet, personal way, through every association and every contact, and it will ripple like a pebble tossed in a pond, whose fall starts widening, concentric waves.”
Each in her own way had followed that advice, taking no stands but talking about her experience when the situation called for it, and stirring people to new awarenesses of war and peace by their example. Misako Kannabe, for instance, went on to become a hairdresser in Canada, catering to a Japanese-Canadian clientele; from time to time she would be asked about her scars. People expected to hear about a car accident or house fire, and when she told them she had been in Hiroshima it often elicited an admission on their part that they could never forgive America for dropping the bomb. Of course they fully expected her to agree, but she would patiently explain it was not as simple as that.
Emiko Takemoto, who succeeded in becoming a respected member of the faculty at Hiroshima’s most prestigious design school, never lectured her students about the bomb. It was a matter of their being able to see for themselves by the irregularities of her face and hands what it had done to her; her presence at the front of the classroom was proof enough that she had refused to allow her injuries to disfigure her life. At a certain level she believed this registered as a kind of “peace education.”
With the passing of time, as their daily activities became centered around the home and children and work, the Maidens gradually withdrew into their private lives. Things were not entirely easy for any of them. Though they rarely talked about themselves, now and then one of the women would break her silence and grant an interview, or the newspapers would decide to carry a retrospective of the project and call around to find out whether they were married, or what they did for a living. For the most part they were ready to put behind those details of their lives that were precisely what made them interesting to the press, toward which they remained suspiciously hostile. Because to choose of one’s own volition not to marry was an unconventional position to take in Japan, it was interpreted in light of their status as “A-bomb Maidens,” and for years to come those who remained single would have to contend with the image of themselves as love-starved old maids whom no man would have as his wife. At some point, when they could no longer give a gracious set of replies to the reporters’ loaded questions, they simply stopped talking.
In the following years, their activities as a group were limited to infrequent get-togethers. Once a group of girls held a pleasant reunion at a restaurant, at which time they made believe they were part of a This Is Your Life television program twenty years down the road for Norman Cousins, whom they pictured as an old man and themselves as homey middle-aged women flying over the Pacific to meet him again. Annually they would meet for a picture-taking session that produced a mass-mailed Christmas card to all their host families. They continued to think of their American friends, and many maintained a private correspondence with the “American mommy” they had grown particularly close to. But without the link from abroad — the visit of a Quaker couple, the nostalgic return of Norman Cousins at five-year intervals — the group of women became scattered. No ill intentions, just a human story of people whose interests took them in different directions. A strong feeling of connection to America remained, but it was usually expressed on the personal level, such as when Yoshie Harada heard her hostess
was ill in the hospital. If she could have afforded it she would have flown to the States and nursed her back to health personally; as it was, she placed her faith in the old folk tale that said if one thousand paper cranes were folded in the name of a sick person it became a talisman and they would recover. Late at night, when everyone else in her household was sleeping, Yoshie would sit in the dark and fold cranes until she had two thousand, one for insurance, which she strung together and sent to America as an eloquent example that the bond of continued caring was mutual and alive.
For the rest of the world the story of the Hiroshima Maidens appeared to have come to an end, save for the three girls who found their futures in America: Shigeko Niimoto, Toyoko Morita, and Hiroko Tasaka.
*
If she had had any doubts, six months back in Japan was time enough to convince Shigeko Niimoto that she would be better off living in the United States. Though some said she had been spoiled by her stay in the land of plenty and simply was unable to readjust, she maintained that, given her situation, America was a more hospitable society for her kind. Six months was also the length of time it took Norman Cousins to feel he had adequately assured the other girls that he was not playing favorites — bringing Shigeko back was actually a symbol of his concern for all of them — and to complete the transportation arrangements for her return trip.
Early that summer, Shigeko moved into the Cousinses’ stately New Canaan home. Contrary to press reports stating she was formally adopted, she was not, but in virtually every other sense she became a legitimate family member. One evening the cousinses’ oldest daughter explained Shigeko’s presence to a dinner guest this way: “Shigeko was supposed to be born into this family, but she was born in Japan and Daddy finally found her and brought her back home.”
Above everything else, Shigeko prized her relationship with Norman Cousins. He, in turn, felt she was a special human being, gifted in an almost magical way with an ability to connect to people, and he was determined to provide her with the opportunity she needed to make a go of it in this country. Just as he had taken care of the necessary paperwork allowing her to return to the States, he made the necessary preparations for her education. Privately she concluded he must have made some kind of deal to get her admitted into nursing school because in June he delivered the graduation day speech at the Waterbury School of Nursing, and shortly afterward she was notified of her acceptance into the fall class.
Taking care of people came naturally to her, but the sincerity of her motives did not make the reality of her chosen career any easier to attain. Even though a special curriculum was designed in view of her language limitations, she had difficulty completing an assignment if it meant concentration and discipline for any sustained period of time; and her initial enthusiasm began to fade as it became increasingly evident she did not have what it took to make it through nursing school.
The method of learning that seemed to best suit her temperament was education based on the accumulation of experiences, the kind of schooling that took place as a fringe benefit of living in the same house with a man as diverse in his interests as Norman Cousins. It seemed there was always some interesting guest dropping by to discuss politics, literature, or world affairs from whom she learned by listening. But her true mentor was Cousins, who in addition to his magazine interests had become a national spokesman for such organizations as the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and the World Federalists. Although Shigeko was naive about the historical and economic tensions that made wars, the sense of world-mindedness she gained from Norman Cousins, plus her own experience of feeling at one with so many people, prompted her participation in a public demonstration on August 6, 1958, at the United Nations Plaza.
“Marchers Honor A-bomb Survivor,” ran the caption under a photo of the mass gathering that appeared in the New York Times. The accompanying article read:
A group of Americans carried flowers yesterday to a young Japanese woman on the anniversary of the day in 1945 on which the atomic bomb brought her and her townsmen great suffering...Smiling and gracious, the petite Miss Niimoto accepted their tribute and...told the well-wishers...“People ask me, ‘Aren’t you confused to belong to two families?’ And I answer, I am not confused. I feel enough love for both. I was born in Japan and I have love for Japan. Now I belong to an American family and have love for the United States. But I think this is not enough. It is not enough to love only two countries. Now I want to become a citizen of the world and many times I have thought all people must belong to each other. Maybe they will feel happy and free only when they all become citizens of the world.”
After giving up her nursing studies, Shigeko took a room at the home of a Nisei couple in New York City, and a job as a nurse’s aide at St. Luke’s Hospital. It was a menial position, her duties consisted primarily of serving meals to patients and emptying bedpans, but at least she could say she was living on her own. In contrast to Japan, where a young woman had very little opportunity to meet young men socially, in New York Shigeko received numerous invitations. A highlight for her was the annual dance given by the organization of Japanese-Americans who had fought on the side of the United States during the war; in 1959 they selected Shigeko as Queen of the 442nd. But the social event that would stand out most in her mind that year was the party for foreign students held at Rockefeller Plaza, where she met her first romantic interest.
Actually, she met him an hour beforehand while shopping. He was working as a sales clerk in a store, and she noticed him no less for his self-confident suaveness than for the fact that he was Japanese. They had a brief exchange at the cash register, and when she met him again at the international party they talked all evening. As it turned out, he was far more than a clerk; his father was the equivalent of an American senator in the Japanese Diet, and he was a music student working part-time for reasons that had to do with his visa. His instrument was the piano, as was Norman Cousins’s.
There was no pretending that Shigeko’s looks were those of a normal young woman. Although surgery allowed her to open and close her mouth properly and turn her head without having to twist her upper body, the lower half of her face, even when caked with make-up, had a coarse, distended texture; her hands were stubbily misshapen; and her body was so patched with scars left behind by the skin transplants that she thought she looked like a world map. But this did not seem to make any difference to Mr. Sasamori, who appeared to be captivated by her vibrant personality.
Something very exciting began to happen in her life. Always before, her relationships with men had been platonic friendships; now, for the first time she was going out on dates to restaurants, movies, and concert halls. It was new and different for her, but she had a charmingly coquettish way of acting and talking that gave the impression she was more experienced than she was, and because of this she was partly to blame for what happened.
Shigeko would call what followed “a love story,” though the turns in the plot would make it an unconventional romance at best. Her amorous initiation into womanhood was enhanced by the validation of her worth as a female, for so long obscured by her scars. But when she found herself pregnant and then she was spurned by her lover, she was devastated. Near panic, she went to Norman Cousins, who had assumed responsibility for her as if she were an adopted daughter. When she confessed the trouble she had gotten herself into, his first reaction was that he should go to Japan, confront Sasamori’s parents, present the problem from one father to another, and appeal to the family tradition, which he knew was strong in Japan. But after considering the potential damage to all parties involved, he decided not to try to pressure the young man into accepting responsibility for his actions. Instead, he bought Shigeko a ticket to Los Angeles, where his sister lived and where the one person whose judgment in matters regarding the Maidens he was willing to defer to had recently taken up residence.
When Helen Yokoyama answered the phone, she heard a shuddery breath on the other end of the line, and Shigeko’s voice whisper,
“Sensei? I need to see you right away.” Without asking any questions, Helen gave her the name and address of a coffee shop where they could meet.
The instant she saw Shigeko’s face — pale with eyes swollen red at the rims from crying — she figured the story out. There was nothing new in one sense, she thought; Shigeko’s happy-go-lucky attitude had finally caught up with her. But as she looked at Shigeko sitting with her head bowed in a new helplessness, Helen’s maternal instincts welled up spontaneously and she felt in a way that it would be cruel to speak to her now about her lack of responsibility. The girl was floundering; there were moments, she confessed, when killing herself seemed the only way out. After a moment of silence Helen advised Shigeko not to despair, and she went on to tell her about a classic Japanese novel she had read with a somewhat common storyline. It was about a country girl who fell in love with a member of a traveling troop of entertainers when they passed through her village. They had a brief, passionate affair, and then he moved on. When she found herself pregnant she did not know what to do because it was considered a disgrace to bear a child out of wedlock; but after searching her heart as well as her conscience, she decided to take a defiant stand and bear a “love child.”
The story had not had a neat and happy ending. The man had come back and had a reunion with the woman and child, and then he had gone off again. It finished with the characters’ futures left up in the air, the way so many Japanese books ended. But at the end of the telling, when Shigeko looked up, her gaze was brimming with a feeling of such intensity it appeared as though a spirit had taken possession of her. It helped to know that she was not the first woman to find herself trapped like this; but it romanticized her predicament for her to be given a heroine she could identify with.
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