Wages of Destruction: Reconstructing the Japanese.

 

  World War II was a war that changed the world entirely. Some places lay in ruins. Some places were victorious. However, the places that were in ruins faced a long road to recovery. One that even today in 2017, people are still on. World War II introduced weapons the world had never seen before. However, it did not take the world long to get acquainted with the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Japan to win and end the Second World War.   In the “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens chapter out of Replaceable You—Engineering the Body in Postwar America not only is there discussion of reconstructing the city of Hiroshima and what would happen moving forward, but the lives of many of the Japanese that had their homes, bodies and livelihood destroyed.   The Hiroshima Maidens were women who had survived the atomic bombing in 1945. These ladies eventually were flown to the United States for reconstructive plastic surgeries. They spent eighteen months in the U.S. beginning in May 1955 and ending in November 1956 (Serlin, 59-60). There were many different things that jumped out to me in Serlin’s chapter. His discussion of how difficult it is for a country to get back on its feet after such an event, while also talking about the things the Hiroshima Maidens dealt with were interesting. The discussion on how these women were viewed by their home country and the United States was also a main point.   The dropping of the atomic bombs caused the greatest destruction known to man. However, with such destruction came an opportunity for Japan to make changes. The plastic surgeries were an example of healing in the eyes of some of the Japanese and also as a way to westernize their country. Before the bomb went off, Hiroshima relied on the fishing business. With the city in shambles, they were able to look to the future with hopes of a Western-style architecture (Serlin, 61). Things from the United States began to flood into the Japan. Whether it was medical practice, architecture or just social ideas, America was influencing the Japanese reconstruction process. While some people viewed the story of the Hiroshima Maidens as a good deed done by humans, some believed it was the United States way of making up for the destruction they had caused in Hiroshima (Serlin, 62). The picture on page 65 in the article is powerful. It shows two of the Hiroshima Maidens separated from the destruction of the city by a barbed wire fence. The more you read into the article, the more it seems like the views of these women moving forward in being westernized was sought as like this. Being separated from their roots with a barbed wire fence. However, Hiroshima was rebuilt better than ever by 1955.   The modernization story of Hiroshima especially on page 72 reminded me a little bit of a small coal mining town in southwest Virginia: Grundy. In the early 2000s, Buchanan County’s county seat gave the home of the Golden Wave a make over. Route 460 through Grundy was rerouted, historic downtown Grundy was wiped out and there was a plan to modernize this old town. Now, in 2017 when you go to Grundy, you see a Walmart with a two story-parking garage, a mini mall and a law school. This was what came to mind for me when reading of the modernization and urbanization of an area. On a personal note, it was interesting seeing this play out in the hills of southwest Virginia but even more so to see it on a much larger scale in the case of Hiroshima.   When the women came to America, the buildings in Manhattan mesmerized them. The descriptions of women with their eyelids torn off and the scarring left on them were very powerful. It was very interesting that the pictures of the destruction and deaths that were caused by the H-bombs were not allowed in the newspaper publications for quite sometime. I guess this was to make sure, the backlash was not going to be in an uproar. Can you imagine if the United States dropped an atomic bomb in today’s day and time? The backlash of seeing the physical detriment to people and their homes would send people into an outcry of how bad of a thing it is. The Hiroshima Maidens and their plastic surgeries would not even be a discussion. We would owe it to them to fix their injuries. I think that we catch this feeling here as well. However, it was thought that these women would be used as propaganda against nuclear weapons (Serlin, 84). Their injuries were viewed as what a nuclear war would look like in the future. These women were viewed in Japan as getting the first class American treatment. Plastic surgery was usually saw as a procedure sought out by upper class people to make them look better. However, these women sought after it to make their physical injuries received in the war look better. They hoped to reclaim the physical features they once associated with positive external identities (Serlin, 92). Reading the observations of these women of the American life really showed how high of a standard they held a western life. The high regards they held a steak dinner towards was also interesting. It was also interesting that this was the case even though they had just had their country destroyed by the same people living this lifestyle.   Overall, the physical and psychological problems these women faced were interesting to go over. The ways that plastic surgery were conceived and how the Hiroshima Maidens changed the way that it was thought about was also an interesting thing to read. With all the backlash and mixed feelings bout the surgeries these ladies received, it was only thirty years later that that type of surgery was accepted. It just really stands out how Japanese and Chinese citizens held the western lifestyle in such high regards. Especially after the westerners destroyed the Japanese’s homeland.