"Filled with, as the original caption stated, 'feelings of sadness and gladness,' the first group of Hiroshima Maidens wave from the runway of La Guardia Airport and begin their long journey home. Sadam Takahashi, a Japanese surgeon, holds a box containing the ashes of Tomako Nakabayashi, the Maiden who died of heart failure in May during her third operation to correct her disfigured arm. Nakabayashi's death was underplayed in the American media but wildly overplayed by some Japanese newspapers, which maintained that the maidens were guinea pigs of American medical experimentation. Photograph taken June 12, 1956 (c) Bettmann/Corbis."

From: Serlin, David. Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.