When I think of the end of WWII, images of confetti raining from the sky and soldiers riding on floats in victory parades pops into my mind. However, for the people of Hiroshima, Japan their world lay in ruin. The atomic bombs employed by the United States to finally end the war wreaked havoc on the civilian populations of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving behind piles of radioactive rubble and the individuals that survived with countless health problems. Ten years after the attack, there was an initiative led by __ to bring some of the women effected by these bombings to the United States for reconstructive surgery. These women were dubbed the “Hiroshima Maidens” and they played an integral role in rebuilding the relationship between the US and Japan. Some of the Hiroshima Maidens are depicted in the image above. I chose this image because I thought their expressions were intriguing; some appear to be smiling and others grimacing. It makes me wonder, did they understand why they had gone through such horrors at home? Did they understand the political ramifications surrounding their bodies? Were they downtrodden from the terrible fate that had befallen them or hopeful for the future?
In an article entitled Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens, David Serlin argues that this initiative supported by the US to perform reconstructive surgery on these women was largely motivated by politics and played a huge role in reshaping the political relationship between Japan and the US. He seems perturbed by the attitude of the US regarding the Hiroshima Maidens and how he saw the US as pushing a very specific narrative of the war and postwar reconstruction on the Japanese. Some of the many examples he uses to point to this include: an emphasis in postwar photography on destruction of buildings in Hiroshima over images depicting the dead, a focus on the disfigured Maidens as casualties of war in general, instead of the result of direct action taken by the US, and an insistence that the efforts to provide plastic surgery to the Hiroshima Maidens was of an altruistic nature rather than a political one. While there was certainly some guilt associated with the fallout from Hiroshima on the part of the US, this article would suggest that there were more pressing political issues that made this decision to bring these women to the US for procedures expedient and ultimately what forced it into fruition.
These are some of the more intriguing questions that Serlin brings up in his article: Why is it that this initiative occurred 10 years following the bombings and the end of the war? What took so long? Why were only women considered for these operations but not the disfigured men of Hiroshima? On page 64, Serlin writes, “Hitzig and his colleagues flew to Hiroshima and selected twenty-five young women they believed could benefit most from the reconstructive surgery.” How did they determine who was most in need of receiving the operations? Overall, Serlin does a fantastic job of storytelling, while at the same time, stepping outside of the narrative when necessary to interject ideas and analysis to prove his argument. The anecdotal stories support his argument regarding this complex relationship between Japan and the US and at the same time, his argument provides the framework to give deeper meaning to these narratives.
Paul Boyer takes a similar approach in his article Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory as he explores the long-term consequences of dropping the atomic bombs in areas such as the United States’ understanding of the scale of destruction caused by such technology, the cultural impact in areas of book and film, the significant to the scientific community in understanding the medical ramification of such a weapon, and in the context of modern policies on nuclear proliferation. He starts out his article with a more personal narrative in which he discusses the significance of the name of a place and relates this to our understanding, as Americans, of Hiroshima. Again, this is a more linear understanding of how policy has shaped around this issue but he also uses a narrative tone at times to lay out his examples like Sirlin in his article. He discusses how Americans, immediately following the use of the atomic bomb and the end of the war, viewed this action as necessary and good for the US as a whole. He also addresses how at first there was little knowledge amongst the American public of the scale of casualties and ruin caused by this decision symbolized by the vague mushroom cloud. This article does disagree with the previous article on the issue of how aware the American public was of the death toll in the months following the release of the bombs. Boyer argues that people were reporting on this so there was more knowledge and that this was a part of what led to larger concerns over nuclear proliferation. Boyer sees this moment in time as a catalyst for all future movements against nuclear proliferation, a way to harken back to the terrors of the first bomb and denounce that destruction. I found it interesting that he talks about the Hiroshima maidens in the context of his argument, stating: “But despite criticism in Japan about the “publicity stunt” and the U.S. States Department’s reservations, the project helped restore Hiroshima to the forefront of memory while furthering the test-ban cause” (304).
While both authors seem to use a similar style and form, their topics vary slightly. The first article has a historical aim while the second points more toward modern implications of nuclear proliferation using this historical event as a cautionary tale. The structures of both articles were quite convincing in their conciseness and logical development. Overall, the point these historians are trying to make in their separate articles is what ultimately shapes the structure of their narratives. Even though a similar structure seemed to work for both articles, I think it is important to remember that this is not always the case. Furthermore, the tone of the article is just as important in persuading the reader and this tone depends largely on the topic they are tackling. I found the first article to be more conversational in talking about people’s personal stories while the second was more technical in its analysis; however, they were both effective for the information they were trying to convey. For me, these articles opened my eyes to the scale of destruction in the Pacific theatre and how those people dealt with such extreme losses at the hands of the US.
Sources:
Photo- http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue24/jacobs.htm
David Serlin, Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens, (2004), pp. 57-110
Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory
Author(s): PAUL BOYER
Source: Diplomatic History, Vol. 19, No. 2 (SPRING 1995), pp. 297-318 Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24912297
Accessed: 26-09-2017 02:28 UTC
I also had the same question about the Hiroshima Maidens were chosen. When I was trying to find out it seemed like it was just who Reverend Tatiomoto knew at that time, which were only women in their 20s affected by the blast?
I found your question about how the Hiroshima maidens were chosen very interesting. It was something that i hadn’t thought about during the article and is a very important way of looking at the impact of the story. Do you think that this difference in the public understanding of the devastation of the bomb, according to the articles, is significant to understand the american view of it?
I thought that your introduction was an excellent attention grabber. I also think that the article you chose offers an interesting perspective. It is extremely interesting to track the consequences of atomic warfare overtime, because in today’s society we tend to think of it as an event. However the dropping of a bomb is really the beginning of a period.
I find it interesting that Boyer argues that the Hiroshima Maiden’s surgery helped the test ban movement despite the state department’s efforts to portray the maidens as merely normal victims of conventional warfare. I also enjoyed your discussion of the tone in the articles. I agree that the facts alone are not always persuasive and that good writing is very important to advancing an argument.
Did you think one had more information and you learned more from one over the other? Are personal stories better for telling history or is the analytical reading better?