When people think about World War II, they often think about Nazi Germany and the war in Europe rather than war in Japan. Most people forget about the impact of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the people and infrastructure of Japan. While the bombs themselves are controversial and many people question their necessity in ending the war in Japan, they almost allowed Japan to rebuild themselves, Westernize, and become a brand new, modern city with new technology that had not been available to them before. In a sense, a horrible incident brought about massive, progressive change in Japan, particularly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People in the West, specifically regular citizens in the United States definitely questioned the bombs, and felt they were inhumane. In order to counter this, the US jumped on a method of propaganda to quell dissent amongst the people and to show that the bombs were, in fact, a good thing. Through the two piece that I read, it is clear to me that the the US providing surgery and care to the Hiroshima Maidens after they had been physically mutilated by the bomb was an attempt to show people that the bomb was not inhumane.
According to D Serlin’s “Reconstructing Hiroshima Maidens, in Replaceable You- Engineering the Body in Postwar America (2004)”, the Hiroshima Maidens were a group of 25 Japanese women who had been seriously injured due to the bombs. Their appearances were altered due to the thermal flash of the bomb. Because of their physical appearances being so gruesome, “[F]or most of their adult lives, the young women had been kept out of sight by their embarassed families, who understood their disfigurements as subjective reflections on their family’s status rather than as the objective effects of atomic warfare.” (Serline, “Reconstructing Hiroshima Maidens, Pg. 59) The US decided to take these women in in order to provide them with plastic surgery to remedy their physical appearance. Cosmetic surgery was not available in Japan prewar. By providing the Maidens with plastic surgery, the US was able to “feel better” about the whole situation. It was as if they felt they were making up for dropping the bombs on Japan.
In another scholarly journal, Annie Tomlinson’s “Fetishizing Fallout: The “Hiroshima Maidens” Come to NY”, Tomlinson outlines the US’s guilt postwar regarding the dropping of the bombs on Japan. Much of the media coverage of the Hiroshima Maiden Project was mostly positive. According to the journal, “While not all of the articles completely skirted the issue of responsibility for the bombings, only a few made any direct link between Truman’s decision at the end of World War II and the need of these women for reconstructive surgery. Norman Cousins, according to one article, denied initiating the program out of guilt, but rather from a general anti war position.” (Tomlinson, “Fetishizing Fallout”, Pg. 1) This journal basically states that the US wanted to feel good about themselves, and the program was a way to do that and relieve guilt that was associated with the bombs. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the journal, as these women wouldn’t even need reconstructive surgery if the US hadn’t dropped the bombs in the first place.
Therefore, both articles discuss the potential reasoning behind the Hiroshima Maiden Program, and the possibility the US was trying to recover from guilt after the dropping of the bombs on Japan.
You took a unique perspective in your article that can be seen in your title. It was refreshing to read. I think that the US was guilty after what happened but with that being said, I do not think guilt was the sole reason of why they helped out the women. I think that it looked good for the US to do it and they did regret what happened but they also knew it would help their image.
I think your post had a really unique point of view. I think the US was definitely feeling guilty after the war, but I question the methods that they used to “rebuild” Japan. Was a Westernized rehabilitation really the most logical for Japan, and how positive was this rehabilitation?
With rehabilitation on the mind, Japan used the bombs as a catalyst for the rebirth of their country. They were smart and were able to play on the fears the United States could have looked like the bad guys had they not played their cards right. It was a forceful way of making a bad situation as a defeated and wounded nation into something that would help the country in the long run.
Your post did a good job of tackling the issue of post-war Japan from a different angle. I would like to say though that Japan had already completely modeled themselves off of the Western powers following the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s, and this included changes in everything from a constitution to the clothing and hair styles that people wore. Just before World War II, Japan was going through a nationalistic wave that sought to regain their cultural uniqueness, but this was ultimately halted by the US’ victory and subsequent alterations of Japan’s society once again. I do agree that the US did harbor a large amount of guilt over the dropping of the atomic bombs and the consequences that it had on world politics and military operation.
I found it interesting how you stated regarding the atomic bombs that “they almost allowed Japan to rebuild” because I think that this shows the impact of the bias in these sources on our own understanding of the war. Instead of seeing the bombings even as a necessary evil, I think as Americans we are fed a rhetoric that frames this event in positive terms because the end result was a more Westernized Japan. I don’t think that what you said is inaccurate but I just think it’s interesting. I also found it interesting later in the article when Cousins claimed that they weren’t using this initiative to relive the guilt of the US but that they were doing it because they were anti-war. I liked that you included this quote because this was one of the major threads that I recognized in my readings. This idea that the US didn’t do this damage but that “War” had; the US tried to make it seem like this was just a natural effect from a war and that no particular side was to blame when the US was clearly the guilty party here.