“Hiroshima Maidens” loosely translates genbaku otome, a phrase first used in early 1950s Japan to refer to young women who had been scarred by injuries received during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  Ten years later, 25 such women were flown to New York, where they underwent extensive reconstructive surgery.  The “Maidens” received wide publicity in both the U.S. and Japan, where the story resonated with growing anxiety about nuclear weapons, along with public fascination with new forms of beauty culture and the seemingly limitless potential of postwar technology.  This talk explores American, and especially Japanese, perspectives on the episode, to reconsider its significance within a broader international context.  

Kim Brandt is Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She specializes in twentieth-century Japanese history. Brandt’s publications include Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan (Duke University Press, 2007). Her new book, to be published by Columbia University Press, is titled Japan Boom: Rethinking the Rise of a World Power, 1945-1965.