The Hiroshima Maidens

Japanese women who underwent surgery in the U.S. to repair the ravages caused by the atomic blast became known as the "Hiroshima maidens". The author documents the medical, humanitarian and diplomatic undertaking that brought them to the States.

The story of twenty-five young women, scarred survivors of the Hiroshima blast, who became known as the Hiroshima Maidens after they were taken to the United States for plastic surgery.

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

The little-known history of U.S. survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings reveals captivating trans-Pacific memories of war, illness, gender, and community.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, an American bomber, the Enola Gay, roars down the runway of the Pacific island, Tinian. Its target is Hiroshima, Japan. Its cargo is an atom bomb. The same morning, twelve-year-old Sachi and her classmates tear down houses. It is their way of contributing to the war effort. Suddenly, a teacher yells "B-29! B-29!" There is a blinding light like the sun, a boom like a giant drum. The Enola Gay has dropped an atom bomb over Hiroshima. Will Sachi ever see her family again? Book jacket.

Describes the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, particularly as it affects Sachi, who becomes one of the Hiroshima Maidens.