. . . in their present states of mind they were not thinking of themselves as messengers of peace; they had begun for the first time in all those years to think of themselves as ordinary Japanese women, entitled to a normal life, for whom transcending the past meant not letting the bomb get the best of them. They were anxious to make up for lost time by getting on with their lives. The most pressing and consuming concern was finding the right place for themselves in Japanese society.

While a number came back to congenial family circumstances and comfortable homes that showed little evidence of the destitution that had been everyone's common plight ten years earlier, the majority returned to far more humble settings with a minimum of worldly goods. One girl returned to a dingy, windowless shack built of rough planks and insulated with straw.

Parental responses to their experience were extreme in their range. Their mothers expressed dismay upon observing that they had picked up mannerisms and expressions which were unmistakably American—sitting crosslegged instead of the Japanese kneel, calling other girls in the group by their first names, and dropping the polite—san. A dramatic conversion took place in Yamaoka Michiko's mother. After the war she had been so bitter she would throw stones at passing American soldiers and run out of the house when American planes flew overhead, shaking her fists at the sky and crying, "Give me back my daughter." Now, each morning upon rising, she would bow in the direction of America and voice a prayer of thanks. Kawasaki Keiko's father was less gracious in his appreciation. When his daughter came home with a sizable monetary gift from her hostess on top of her own allowance savings, she suddenly became the hen who could lay golden eggs and was hammered at to take advantage of her American connections and ask for more. But it was Harada Takako's father who displayed the least amount of gratitude for what was done for his daughter. A hard, overbearing man who seemed to take pleasure in crushing Takako's sweet, gentle spirit, permitting her to go to America had been his way of saying, "Here, see what you did." While in the States this retiring, self-effacing girl had developed a precious degree of self-confidence, only to lose it in the first few days she was home, as her father went to contemptible lengths to make his feelings known that the A-bomb Maidens ought to be sacrificed to the cause of peace by being put on exhibit.

Then there was the unpublicized consequence of all the publicity. It created a charged and distorted kind of celebrity status that none of them felt good about: They were known for their faces but not their beauty; they were heralded as victims. Not only did the publicity cause them a certain mental strain, it generated an inadvertent and unfortunate set of negative side effects in the community. Rather than serving as examples that might encourage other bomb victims to take a more positive approach to life, the girls found themselves the objects of envy. It was not the changed attitude and brightened expressions that caught the public eye so much as the new clothes, stylish haircuts, and make-up the Maidens wore. When they made presents of some of the souvenirs they brought back, such as ballpoint pens and stockings, they were said to be showing off, as though they were trying to give the impression they had so much they could afford to give some of it away. Some had felt a singing inside that made them want to let all their friends and neighbors know about what they had seen and learned, but they encountered what seemed like the feigned indifference of those who resent anyone who has enjoyed himself while they have struggled. Put on the defensive by sarcastic comments about how lucky they were to receive an all-expense-paid trip to America, they found themselves flashing back with the rejoinder that they did not go as tourists.

But their total experiences in America had given them an increased awareness of their capacity to conquer great difficulties. It was reassuring to know that there were friends in America who cared deeply about what happened to them. What's more, the Friends Meetings which had sponsored them had let it be known that they considered their job only half-done if the girls simply returned home to lead the same sort of lives their injuries had committed them to before, and they would not rest content until all were well on their way to making good.

In most cases they were now able to mix openly, they had the full use of their arms and hands, and they felt capable of managing challenging positions. Nevertheless, their prospects on the whole were still limited. Some needed to finish their interrupted schooling before they could qualify for the job of their choice, others required additional study in an area of special training, and a few who wanted to start businesses of their own lacked the start-up funds. When it became apparent that the only thing holding them back was money, the American families who had hosted the Maidens, working through Helen Yokoyama, put up the funds necessary to finance these efforts; and this continued concern for their welfare provided the solid base from which many of the Maidens, step by step, pursued their individual lines of interest.

A look at how they were faring a year after their return showed that, all in all, they were doing quite well. Save for a few girls who had been unable to take advantage of the opportunities offered them because it had been necessary for them to help their families and so had become tied down at home by nursing and housekeeping responsibilities, the rest were either gainfully employed or attending classes. Less the five of them, that is, who had married.

For ten years the Maidens had been led to believe that they were sentenced to spinsterhood by the ugliness of their scars, and that even if their looks were improved by surgery, they carried the curse of the atomic bomb in a more insidious way, for they were doomed to bear deformed children. But prior to their return they had been disabused of the "common knowledge" that hibakusha necessarily carried within their bodies hidden mutants caused by exposure to radiation. Helen Yokoyama [a Japanese American who had married a Japanese before the war and lived in Japan; she had acted as interpreter for the maidens during their American surgery and remained in touch] reminding them she had worked at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, told them that the research facility had so far been unable to establish a higher incidence of genetic mutations in the offspring of survivors. Support had come from the Japanese doctors, who had said the odds of their giving birth to normal, healthy children were as good as any woman's. Unenlightened attitudes persisted (matrimonial bureaus, which arranged marriages throughout Japan, had informed applicants from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that survivors were not acceptable as brides and grooms), but the girls' fears were enough allayed that many had returned with marriage on their minds.

Of the five weddings announced within the first year back, not one was arranged in the formal sense. Some began with an introduction by a matchmaking friend or a meeting set up by a family member, others came about as a result of a chance encounter; but all evolved out of a satisfying personal relationship with a man who gave every indication that he and his wife-to-be had come together on the closer level of feeling that two people in love have for each other.

Not that all the weddings were easily achieved. Sako Michiko 's relationship with a National Railway worker nearly ended in tragedy. When they announced their engagement, his family opposed it on the grounds that the damage she had suffered would surely show up in their children, and they threatened to disown him if he went through with it. Michiko was brought to the point of utter despair when she discovered she was already carrying his child, and one morning when she could stand it no longer she boarded a train she thought was headed toward a famous shrine where she intended to take her life. But in her confusion she had taken the wrong train, and by the time she realized her mistake she was approaching a station close to the house where Helen Yokoyama was staying. The very day Helen found Michiko sobbing on the doorstep, she marched straight to the home of the girl's fiancé and had it out with his family. Either they changed their minds or she would go to the newspapers with the story, which would look wonderful in the headlines: SUITOR CASTS OFF PREGNANT HIROSHIMA MAIDEN. Shortly afterward, grudging approval was received, and the couple was properly married.

Nor did it all end happily ever after. When she returned, Yamamoto Atsuko took a position as a switchboard operator at the New Hiroshima Hotel, where she found herself courted by the assistant manager. He was handsome, athletic, university-educated, and she was flattered that he showed so much interest in her when there were so many other pretty women walking about town. There was a cunning streak in him that made her slightly wary, but that was characteristic of many "aprés-guerre" Japanese men, and it was also exciting to be around. He spoke relatively good English, and after they married he took charge of their American correspondence, writing long letters to her hostesses full of rhapsodic passages about Japanese traditions (plagiarized from English guidebooks to Japan) and profuse thank yous for the regular checks they sent that allowed Atsuko to purchase new clothes seasonally and him to join the Hiroshima Lawn and Tennis Club. It was shortly after Atsuko gave birth to a daughter (they named her Toshiko, meaning "fourteen," the number of years after the bombing that she was born) that his letters began to include references to his personal frustrations as a "featureless hotel-man." He wrote that he had come to realize the opportunities for advancement belonged to those with an education in hotel administration. The best had studied abroad, which brought him to the point: to help him actualize a longstanding dream, and to improve his position as provider for his wife and daughter, he wanted to come to the United States and attend an American university. The only hitch was that he could not afford to pay his own way. Would they be willing to sponsor him? Sensing they might be dealing with an opportunist, Atsuko's hostess wrote back they were not in a position to finance his ambitions, and not long after that the marriage began to fray. Atsuko's husband became surly with her and talked about his family responsibilities as a burden. He said he refused to sacrifice his future for the sake of a child, and eventually he found consolation in the company of another woman. Toshiko was three when her father left; Atsuko has not remarried.

For many, the transforming success of the surgery and the tangible evidence of the Hiroshima Maidens' ability to rise above their circumstances would be found in the final tally of marriages and number of robust babies they produced. Eventually, twelve would marry, exactly half, and nineteen healthy children would be born to them.

While it was generally assumed that they all had their hearts set on becoming brides and mothers, in fact the desire for a traditional future was not the same for everyone. For several girls the yearning for intimate relations with a member of the opposite sex had passed; at some point they had given up imagining it was possible, and now they no longer contemplated men in that way. For a few the right marital partner never came along. All were exquisitely sensitive to the impression they would compromise their tastes and standards in men just because they were disfigured. The very thought of accepting a proposal from a man who was motivated by pity was enough to raise their sights to a level that parents and friends sometimes called unrealistic.

At least one girl, however, was liberated from the notion that the only means of achieving a meaningful sense of self-completion was through marriage. Wada Masako’s interest in social work was directly tied to the atomic bomb; while recovering from her injuries she had realized that she would someday probably end up in the care of a social welfare organization, and she decided that until that day came she would like to work with the people who would eventually look after her. That was how she had come to be one of the Maidens hired on staff at the Reverend Tanimoto's Blind Children's Home, and why her American hostesses arranged for her to visit various institutions for the handicapped, and receive lessons on a braille typewriter at the Lighthouse in New York City. At the time there were no such things in Japan, but when Masako returned there were five: four bought for her by the Quakers, and one donated by the Lighthouse. She fully intended to resume her job at the Home, but conditions in the workplace had changed. Although Norman Cousins had made an earnest effort to extend some symbol of American friendship to the other eighteen Maidens by making certain they were given a chance to receive free surgery in Hiroshima, and facilitating an exchange of letters and gifts with a group of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Quakers, they still felt left out, and resented it. Her co-workers who had not been chosen to go to America made life so difficult with their petty jealousies that, to her bitter disappointment, Masako was forced to quit. But she did not give up. It was a setback of sorts, but in a good way, for upon hearing that she had lost her job, her Friends Meeting offered to finance her education-the two years of high school she had left, and four years at a university-and give her the means to answer the higher calling of becoming a social worker. The opportunity to receive academic training, and the special perspective her personal experiences gave her, came together with the force of a new mission in life, and she went on to become a highly respected caseworker at a home for solitary, aged A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima. She never married, but there were no regrets. When asked about it, she insisted it was not a matter of the atomic bomb closing down that option. Rather, she felt, it was the case that whatever situation she was put in it was her nature to try to make the best of it. Through her ordeals she developed certain strengths that led her in a particular direction, and they happened to be job-oriented.

It would be hard to weigh all the private benefits and personal gains the experience of living with an American family and taking part in American community life gave the Maidens. Certainly their particular outlook on life was different from those of people who had never been out of the country; the chance to experience two entirely different ways of living in one lifetime broadened their thinking; and a new world of opportunities was opened to them at home. (Hiyama Suzue did become the Japanese distributor for Covermark.) But what they actually did with it, and how it helped them through the years ahead was expressed differently for every girl.

In a literal sense, Wada Masako owed the opportunity to become a social worker to her host families for they had provided her with the scholarship that allowed her to complete her education. But as a caseworker, it was her overall experience while in America that she drew on as a source of wisdom, for it provided her with a model she tried to repeat in her practice. Just as she had never met any of her host families before entering their homes, the elderly patients who entered the nursing home where she worked came in as strangers; and just as the healing qualities of family life had helped her to become involved in the world positively, so she saw it as her role to help them learn how to live out the last of their lives actively and happily within a supportive community of friends.

For Shibata Tazuko, there were things she could do now which she had not been able to do before, and would never have done if it were not for that experience. While in the States she lived with relatively wealthy families, including several company presidents who conducted much of their business out of their homes, assisted by personal secretaries. Her observation of these crisply efficient and businesslike women, so different from the obsequious "office girls" in Japan whose main job was keeping their boss's teacups full, motivated her to want to become a "professional secretary." When the Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce arranged for a series of job interviews for the Maidens with local businesses, Tazuko was hired by a firm that manufactured electrical switches, and although at first it seemed like a public relations move, in short order her attitude and abilities were noticed and she was promoted to an executive position. Eventually she became a chief of a project team, and she always credited her success to the exposure she had had to the American secretaries.

Throughout her life, Harada Yoshie would carry her memories of America like a cross to ward off evil tidings. She was the first Maiden to marry, but her life was beset with difficulties thereafter. With two babies in the fold, her husband lost his job and remained unemployed for six years, forcing her to support the family on the meager income from a physically punishing job on an assembly line at a seaweed factory. There were times when she felt she almost could not go on, but then she discovered a secret source of strength. When faced with hardships that might other-wise have broken her spiritually and physically-the pain that came from working under sweltering conditions day after day, the despair she felt when her husband told her he was in love with another woman-she would retreat into reveries, remembering the surprise birthday party her American hostess threw for her, living in two worlds at once.

It most definitely continued to inspire Hirata Hideko. More than any other girl, she seemed to grasp the essence of the project—that the tangible benefits of surgery were really secondary to the spiritual regeneration. She was the oldest Maiden and probably the most introspective: As the flash of the atomic explosion cut across the sky it had seared her retinas so badly she had permanent "blind spots" in each eye, and ever after she wondered if her limited vision was the direct consequence of her blind hatred toward the enemy during the war. There were not any outstanding incidents about her while she was in America, but she seemed to come to new depths of human feeling that prompted her, upon her return, to devote herself to another group of unfortunate people. She could have gone into business for herself, or worked for pay, but instead she decided to do volunteer social work with an outcast group known as the burakumin. These were the people engaged in such lowly tasks as the slaughter of animals, the tanning of leather, and the removal and disposal of refuse; and centuries of social and economic discrimination had kept them living in wretched slums. Equipped with a new electric sewing machine that had been sent to her by the Friends Meeting that sponsored her, Hideko opened a sewing class for the ostracized and impoverished burakumin women. It was deeply rewarding work for it filled her life with purpose, but it was done without her parents' consent or comprehension. When Hideko talked about a personal Golden Rule--to do for others what had been done for her-her parents wondered if living abroad she had been exposed to and caught some Western habit.

Hirata Hideko became a shining example of the girls' new-found ability to empathize with the pain and suffering of others, and the desire to carry on the spirit of the project in some way, which was why she had been the initial choice of the project organizers to stay and study at Parsons. But the physical weakness she had cited in turning down the offer was more than an excuse. Never one to bring her problems to others, she never mentioned that with each passing day a pain deep inside her was getting worse. She continued to teach, adding a night class for women who worked at day jobs, even as her health weakened. By the time she went for an examination, cancer had infiltrated her stomach wall. A total gastrectomy was carried out at the Hiroshima University Hospital; twenty-eight days after surgery, on April 8, 1958, Hideko Hirata died. There was suggestive evidence linking expo-sure to high levels of radiation to stomach cancer, so her name was duly added to the toll of human lives taken by the atomic bomb.

There was another side to the story, naturally. For an anthology of the lives of the Hiroshima Maidens to be complete it would have to include not only themes of transformation, resurrection, and reclamation, but tales of disillusionment, dashed hopes, and defeat. The America they experienced in 1955 was an open, wildly optimistic country, and pleasantly seduced by the American habit of thinking that they could do whatever they set out to do, at least one Maiden found that this conceit eventually brought even more heartache to what she had already endured. The spirit moved in Yamaoka Michiko was of the highest order-in her dreams she saw herself as a nurse in a hospital like the ones she had been in and out of for years—but she came back to a life of adversity almost beyond comprehension. She never knew her father, her mother worked in the amusement quarter of Hiroshima as a solicitor for prostitutes luring men into seedy hotels, and while Michiko was in America her mother's dissipated life finally caught up with her. Too diseased to work any more, the pitiful old woman had sold all the furnishings in their home and borrowed money to cover her living expenses, so Michiko returned to an empty house and a list of debts. Forced to take menial work so they could be sure where their next mean would come from, Michiko continued to harbor the hope of someday becoming a nurse, and her Friends Meeting wanted to help her make it happen.

Barker, Rodney. The Hiroshima Maidens: A Story of Courage, Compassion, and Survival. New York: Viking and Penguin, 1985;176-186.