On August 6, 1945, the residents of Hiroshima, Japan, awoke and dressed as they did every day, gathered their belongings, and made their way to school and work.
Suddenly, at 8:15 a.m., a flash cut across the sky — a dagger of fire so hot it melted concrete and steel. The American B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay had unleashed the first-ever atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima. At that moment, 13-year-old Shigeko Sasamori looked to the sky.
The bomb’s force knocked her out. She awoke soon thereafter to a nightmare, as dazed victims walked by her carrying their dead loved ones, some with their own skin melted off by the ferocious heat of the blast. Shigeko recalled seeing herself for the first time in the documentary The Day They Dropped The Bomb: “I looked like a monster. Big eye, and stick nose, no eyebrows and pinky face, and my lips were also up and down, open. Can you imagine?”
Over 135,000 people died or were wounded at Hiroshima and 75,000 more at Nagasaki, where the United States used another atomic bomb on August 9. Ten years later, Shigeko and 24 other young women who were disfigured by the bomb came to the United States for plastic surgery after seeking help from Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who named the group the “Hiroshima Maidens.”
Who were these young women?
A day prior to the bombing, schoolgirls in Hiroshima were put to work clearing fire lanes by the city, which feared the U.S. would drop firebombs. Children at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, the members of this all-female group were outside doing just this when U.S. troops dropped the bomb, and each was badly burned or disfigured by the nuclear weapon’s blast and heat.
As they grew older, they reported feeling alienated from their peers, as many in Japan shunned those with physical disabilities. While other young people went out on dates and spent time with friends, they became more isolated. Rev. Tanimoto formed a Bible group for the young women, who were known locally as “Keloid Girls,” referring to the scar tissue on their bodies that formed as a response to their radiation burns.
Why did they come to the United States 10 years after the bombing?
Rev. Tanimoto was working with journalist Shizue Masugi to raise funds for the young women when American journalist and peace activist Norman Cousins met the group in Japan and learned of their story. Back in the U.S., Cousins spoke with many hospitals and foundations about the women and their need for treatment, and eventually doctors at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital agreed to help. The 25 women from Hiroshima arrived in New York in May 1955, and over the course of the next year and a half Mount Sinai surgeons performed over 125 operations for free. The hospital donated operating rooms and beds, and a Quaker group arranged for the young women to stay with American host families.
What was their experience like in the United States?
Host families were afraid that the young women would become homesick or have trouble adjusting over their eighteen-month stay, but largely the young women reported feeling the opposite. Toyoko Minowa, one of the women who traveled as part of the group, described her experience to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1955, saying, "The people with whom we fought 10 years ago seem to be our friends now....I feel at home here in New York. I don't feel that I came to a foreign country. People here are so nice and friendly."
One host father told Cousins, “So far, no homesickness. And they love American food, especially frankfurters. We’ve gone sight-seeing together to the United Nations, to the museums, and to places in New England. We’ve gone to concerts and baseball games.”
“[They] have a warmth about them and a gift for laughter that created an entirely different and certainly much more welcome atmosphere than the one we anticipated,” one host mother reported to Cousins.
However, academics have argued that media coverage of the women’s experiences in the U.S. banalized the horrors of the atomic bomb, making little acknowledgement of the mass destruction and suffering.
What has changed since then?
After World War II, Japan adopted a new constitution, drafted under the direction of American occupiers, that specifically prohibited the country from going to war. Now, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe and other Japanese conservatives want to change the constitution in response to increasing threats from North Korea. But pacifism runs deep in Japan, and though 49% of Japan’s citizens agree with the change, 47% oppose it.
Since 1945, the world has developed the nuclear capacity to destroy itself many times over. The U.S. alone now possesses over 4,000 nuclear weapons, which are much more powerful than the bomb that deformed Shigeko. And American law gives a president the sole authority to launch those weapons as quickly as he or she can send a tweet.
Why does their story matter?
Theirs is a story of resolve and strength among those affected by violence. Michiyo Zomen, one of the young women impacted by the bomb, could barely move her hands when she arrived in New York. On the flight back to Hiroshima, she used them to write thank you letters to her host family in English.
Remarkably, many of these survivors who came to the United States after the bomb was dropped did not not express resentment toward the country that destroyed their city. Michiko Yamaoka, one of the Hiroshima Maidens, told the Japan Times that before she came to the United States for surgery, she hated Japan for starting the war and the United States for dropping the bombs. But her experience in the U.S. changed her perspective, she said: “The hate in my heart was changed by meeting people.” As a young girl, Koko Tanimoto Kondo, the daughter of Rev. Tanimoto who also survived the Hiroshima bombing, recalled wanting to “give a big punch to whoever was on the B-29 Enola Gay, to take revenge.” Still, she bravely looked into the eyes of Robert A. Lewis, the man who captained the aircraft that bombed her, on the television show This Is Your Life in 1955.
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Impacted so personally by the destruction of war, this group survived to foster peace and pursue better solutions to conflict. In the decades after World War II, while the world raced to build new and more powerful nuclear weapons, these Japanese women, their host families, and a wave of people around the globe spoke together in unison to say: “No more Hiroshimas!”
Are we still listening?
Eric S. Singer is currently adapting The Untold History of the United States Young Readers’ Edition, Volume 2, to be released by Simon & Schuster in 2018.
Related: What You Need to Know About the Future of Nuclear Weapons Under Donald Trump
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