Hiroshima Maidens
Page 26
As for the Maidens themselves, they had a mixed reaction to the book. Several were motivated to come forward and make themselves more available to the media, agreeing to appear in newspapers and on TV; and a few were moved to write their own autobiographies. Some others took it upon themselves to organize return trips to America to visit their aging host parents. But the majority remained quiet, and, as a group, they began to more or less go their separate ways. Today, they no longer get together regularly, and individually they do not dwell on the experiences that brought them together in the first place. They speak very little about the past, even to their children and grandchildren (who mercifully seem not to have suffered health problems that can be attributed to radiation from the atomic bomb). Privately, some will pray for a world without nuclear weapons, but for the most part they try to forget the past. Not long ago, when the local Hiroshima paper tried to contact them, the rejections it got ranged from “No comment,” to “Just hearing the words ‘atomic bomb’ makes me ill,” to “Leave me alone.” One even said she had come to think of the term “Hiroshima Maiden” as an inappropriate, even discriminatory term that no longer applied to her.
This doesn’t surprise me. I encountered some of this sentiment myself when a Japanese publisher wanted to come out with a translated version of this book. When I arranged for an early draft to be circulated among the Maidens, some were so upset that details of their private lives and feelings were being made public that they pled with me not to allow it to be released. I understood. I wanted readers not just to feel their pain, but to appreciate the underlying complexity of what it meant to be an atomic bomb survivor. But as one of them said to me, “There are lingering wounds in our hearts that have not healed.” Not wanting to cause any of them any more anguish than they had already been through, I asked them to put their feelings into one letter signed by all who felt this way. When I presented the letter to the Japanese publisher, my request that we not go forward with publication was respected.
As I write, there are sixteen Maidens still alive. Hiroko Harris and Toyoko Minowa are among those who have passed away, but Shigeko Sasamori, at 83, is alive and still very active. Her philosophy is that life has given her experiences of historic proportion, and she has an obligation to do something significant with them. Almost singlehandedly she has continued to keep the spirit of the Hiroshima Maidens Project alive through what she calls “peace work.” Something of an ambassador for Hiroshima, she has told her story to countless schools and groups around the world, and spoken before heads of state and the United Nations.
Now, on the 70th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, sixty years after the Hiroshima Maidens Project, and thirty years after its initial publication, The Hiroshima Maidens is being released as an ebook. I could not be more pleased. A whole generation has come of age for whom the Hiroshima Maidens Project is a largely forgotten event. But I do not believe this story has outlived its historical moment. I feel it is an important chapter in American history that deserves a place in our national memory.
The ideals behind this extraordinary humanitarian initiative also seem to me to have a timeless quality, making it important to keep this book available for readers around the world to draw on as a source of wisdom and inspiration. And, hopefully, as a force for preventing nuclear warfare for another thirty years.
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Notes
The source material I have used in the preparation of this book consists primarily of extensive interviews which I conducted personally in the United States and in Japan between the years 1979 and 1984 with participants in the events described, and of documentary evidence from both countries. Most of the interviews were tape-recorded and most of the written material was copied or given to me in its original form. Apart from the intrinsic importance of each of these two primary sources, I have used them as a means of providing checks and balances, one against the other, to enable me to present the story as authentically and accurately as possible.
In the United States, I met with numerous host families for their recollections. Many had kept scrapbooks during the project, which turned out to be a rich source of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and letters. When I visited Ida Day, she cooperated with me to the extent of providing me with all the “records” of the project which she had kept on an informal basis. After several sessions with Norman Cousins, he gave me open access to all his private papers that are stored at Brooklyn College and the personal files he kept at the old Saturday Review offices in New York. I interviewed and corresponded with Dr. Sidney Kahn before his death in 1980, with Dr. Bernard Simon, and on four separate occasions with Dr. Arthur Barsky before he passed away in 1983. Also, I twice interviewed the Reverend Marvin Green, who had been the treasurer of the Hiroshima Peace Center Associates, and before his death in 1982 he turned all the reports and newsletters he had retained over to me. After two requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act, State department documents originally classified were released to me. For background information on Hiroshima, I consulted with Dr. Robert Lifton, the author/psychiatrist who was the first to write about the psychological and social effects of the atomic bomb in his book Death in Life; Mr. Aboul Foutouhi, a retired Foreign Service man who was stationed at the American Culture Center in Hiroshima for most of the 1950s; Ms. Barbara Reynolds, a peace activist who lived for many years in Hiroshima; and Dr. Robert Miller, a radiation research specialist who was employed at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in the midfifties. Miscellaneous materials supplementing these interviews were gathered from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Collection of the Wilmington College Peace Resource Center. For clarification and elaboration on a variety of issues and details, I spoke with many other individuals to whom I am indebted, but probably do not need to cite by name.
In Japan, I met with eighteen of the twenty-two Hiroshima Maidens. After repeated get-togethers I came to know most of them on a deeply personal basis, so they felt comfortable enough to relate the story of their lives to me in detail. Some spoke English well enough to permit a direct conversation, but most required the services of translators whom I selected for their command of both languages, their ability to communicate a sense of trust, and their skill in asking delicate questions in an inoffensive way. Some of the Maidens had written personal essays or kept diaries and letters, which they gave to me and I had translated. In Hiroshima, both the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto and Helen Yokoyama cooperated completely with my research objectives, giving me time for interviews and responding to my follow-up queries. Drs. Tomin Harada and Goro Ouchi, the two living Japanese physicians who accompanied the Maidens to America, also provided a thorough account of their experience, as did Mr. Kiyoshi Togasaki in Tokyo and Mr. Kaoru Ogura, a public official in Hiroshima. Finally, editors at the Chugoku Shinbun, the major daily newspaper in Hiroshima, generously supplied me with copies of all the articles they have published about the Hiroshima Maidens over the years. In Japan there were also numerous individual contributions which added insight and understanding to the work, but need not be individually listed.
*
Detailed source notes on a chapter-by-chapter basis follow.
Prelude: This Is Your Life
Material for the prelude is drawn directly from a viewing of and the transcript of the This Is Your Life program which aired on NBC-TV on May 11, 1955. Further informing this section are comments made by the Reverend Tanimoto and the Reverend Marvin Green during personal interviews.
Hiroshima
The historical perspective in this chapter is drawn from information obtained from the archives of the Hiroshima Castle, various booklets published over the years by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, and a personal interview
with the retired director of the Hiroshima City Library. The Hiroko Tasaka section is based on extensive and repeated personal interviews conducted at her home in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Japan. The Shigeko Niimoto section is based on personal interviews conducted with her at her home in Newton, Massachusetts, and on visits to Washington, D.C.; a conversation with her mother in Hiroshima; two essays she wrote about her atomic bomb experience, one of which was published in a book entitled The Life of the Flower Is Very Shorty an anthology of essays by various female survivors, and various newspaper and magazine articles written about her, both in the United States and Japan. The Toyoko Morita section is based on a series of interviews held with her at her apartment in Hiroshima, and an essay published in The Life of the Flower Is Very Short. Corroborating and supplemental testimony was provided by the Reverend Tanimoto.
Corroborating and supplemental testimony was provided by the Reverend Tanimoto, Atsuko Yamamoto, Michiko Yamaoka.
America
The author interviews that form the crux of the material contained in this chapter were held with the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, Norman Cousins, Dr. Arthur Barsky, the Reverend Marvin Green, John Hersey, Kiyoshi Togasaki, Aboul Foutouhi, Dr. Robert Miller, and Helen Yokoyama. The written source materials were: the Reverend Tanimoto’s personal diary and letters to the Reverend Marvin Green, Norman Cousins, and the author; assorted documents collected in Norman Cousins’s private papers; Norman Cousins’s articles in the Saturday Review concerning the Reverend Tanimoto and the Hiroshima Maidens, and the chapter addressing the Maidens in his book Present Tense; records and newsletters of the Hiroshima Peace Center Associates; declassified State Department documents; and translated articles from the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shinbun.
In addition to interviews with the previously mentioned principals (Cousins, Tanimoto, Barsky, Yokoyama, Green), the following individuals testified to the information contained in this chapter: Mr. Kiyokai Murata (a japan Times reporter who accompanied the Maidens on their flight to America); Dr. Tomin Harada and Dr. Goro Ouchi; eighteen Hiroshima Maidens (Michiko Yamaoka, Michiko Sako, Yoshiko Yanagibashi, Takako Harada, Suzue Hiyama, Tadako Emori, Terue Kawamura, Tazuko Takeya, Emiko Takemoto, Michiyo Zomen, Hideko Sumimura, Masako Wada, Toyoko Morita, Atsuko Yamamoto, Hiroko Tasaka, Shigeko Niimoto, Misako Kannabe, Sayoko Komatsu); Dr. Bernard Simon and Dr. Sidney Kahn; Mr. Glenn Everett (a Washington-based journalist working with the Hiroshima Peace Center Associates); Ida Day; Janet Freeman (head nurse on the female ward at Mount Sinai Hospital in 1955); and some of the Quaker families: Bishop, Barker, Robbins, Sharpless, Valentine. Contributing newspaper sources were: New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York World Telegram & Sun, Daily Worker, Japan Times, Chugoku Shinbun. Magazines: Time, US News & World Report, Saturday Review, Redbook, Collier’s, Christian Herald, Look, Friends Journal Documents: State Department memorandums; minutes of HPCA executive committee meetings; reports from host families to Ida Day; assorted communications to Norman Cousins.
Additional interviews took place with Bill and Mary Kochiyama (Japanese-Americans living in New York who befriended the Maidens and visited them in the hospital) and Dr. Takahashi (wife of Dr. Sadam Takahashi, who passed away in the 1970s). Supplemental written material was provided through an unpublished essay, ‘The Hiroshima Maidens and American Benevolence in the 1950s,” written by Michael Yavendetti, Professor of History, Alma College. The article on Lydia O’Leary comes from Reader’s Digest.
Home
The final section of the book draws on personal interviews with Harry Harris; Bernice and Susan Hall (close friends and neighbors of the Cousinses’); Dr. Pietr Hitzig (son of Dr. William Hitzig); Ms. Anne Keagy; and Donald Simonelli (a former classmate of Toyoko Morita’s). Other sources for this section duplicate those in the America section.
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