Wages of Destruction

Two articles, one “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens” by David Serlin and “Reconstructing the Perpetrator’s Soul by Reconstructing the Victim’s Body: The Portrayal of the ‘Hiroshima Maidens’ by the Mainstream Media in the United States” by Robert Jacobs discuss the same subject, the Hiroshima Maidens, women who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the US in 1945 and were flown to New York City in 1955 for reconstructive surgery for their wounds but the two articles focus on different things. In Serlin’s article he focuses on the shame felt by the Japanese and their hope that by immersing themselves into Western culture and western science, they would recover from their postwar ruin. In Jacobs’ article he focuses on the different portrayals of the atomic bomb’s history in the United States and Japan, how in the United States we focus on the history of the atomic bomb before its detonation, “brilliant scientists making groundbreaking discoveries, about engineers and industry rapidly manufacturing incredibly complex technologies”; whereas in Japan the history begins with the bomb’s detonation and it is all about the rebuilding that had to occur.

These articles were interesting to me because it seems that the history of Japan postwar is purposefully forgotten in western history. In America we study Japan as the ancient samurai society and then after World War II we skip ahead to their industrial power. These articles both touch on the fact that this was the way the US government wanted us to think. The State Department censored any pictures of the dead or wounded of Hiroshima from being published in American newspapers and in fact there were concerns that bringing the “Hiroshima Maidens” into the U.S. would provoke anti-nuclear sentiment and the U.S. State Department sent a telegraph to Japan canceling permission for the trip but it was ignored as the women were just beginning to depart.

Jacob seems to think that the US had a more purposefully malicious role in hiding the destruction in Japan from American audiences whereas Serlin argues that the Japanese also themselves wanted to get away from their old culture and memories of the war and start again with modern architecture and women wearing Western suits instead of kimonos. The articles seem to disagree on Japan’s power after the war. In Serlin’s article he also brings up the strange contradiction that an American citizen of Japanese descent Isamu Noguchi wished to build a memorial in Nagasaki but was denied by the Japanese government for being a “foreigner.” This seems strange given that they were willing to send their women to the US for surgery but I think this shows their desire to rebuild and not be reminded of the old.