The New Face of Hiroshima

On May 5, 1955, not long before the ten year anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a group of young Japanese women departed from Tokyo for the United States to undergo reconstructive plastic surgery. These women were known as the Hiroshima Maidens, all of whom had been injured and scarred by the nuclear blast in 1945. These Hiroshima Maidens were in the unusual position of traveling to the country whose government was responsible for the destruction of their city and their own bodies in order to receive medical treatment.The Maidens’ time in the U.S. was highly publicized, and the sensational and macabre story of the Hiroshima Maidens captured the American imagination. They intrigued the American public due to the “utopian mystique” of plastic surgery at that time, because they were visual reminders of the destructive force of the atom bomb, and because they were also perceived as paradigms of Eastern exoticism. In “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens,” the second chapter of his book, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America, David Serlin explores the significance of the Maidens undergoing plastic surgery and the ways that it was tied to Japan’s struggle to rebuild a national identity after the trauma of war. As the Maidens project was being conceived and carried out, the city of Hiroshima was being rebuilt. In the postwar period Japan was striving towards modernization and was strongly influenced by Western technology. Rebuilding Hiroshima with an emphasis on modern design was a way of looking forward toward the future and shirking the past. Part of this involved planning and building the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Serlin references a specific example of a cenotaph design submitted by Japanese-American architect, Isamu Noguchi, which was designed in a traditional Japanese manner. The proposal was rejected on the grounds that an American citizen should not be involved with the peace park project, but Serlin argues that it was actually due to the traditional style of cenotaph, which harkened to the past. The Maidens project, even more closely tied to the US, was allowed because it highlighted modern, Western medical technology. According to Serlin, “In contrast to these retrograde illusions about Japanese architecture – or perhaps because of them – the Hiroshima Maidens project reflected the themes of renewal and progress associated with the rebuilding of Hiroshima, especially when ideas of architectural modernity were blurred with their surgical rehabilitation.” (p. 76) As Serlin argues, the Hiroshima Maidens project was not only about reconstructing the faces and bodies of the Maidens and reconstructing Hiroshima was not simply a matter of rebuilding the flattened city. It was part of forging a new Japanese identity fueled by modernization and a rejection of a past that had been tainted with nationalism. References: D Serlin, Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens, in Replaceable You- Engineering the Body in Postwar America (2004).pdf