THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER was inspired by the Hiroshima Maidens Project, an heroic and successful campaign in the mid-1950's spearheaded by Saturday Review publisher Norman Cousins to bring 25 young Japanese women, burned and scarred by the first atomic bomb, to the United States for reconstructive and plastic surgery.
Although some details in the play are derived from the Project, the play is neither a dramatization nor an adaptation of actual events. The action and characters of THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER are my invention.
Some personal history …
The root of THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER was planted in me when I was a child, long before I knew anything about the Hiroshima Maidens Project. My memory is dim except that I witnessed a terrifying animated short that visualized the consequences of a nuclear destruction.
It was shown — twice! — on the Ed Sullivan Show which was a Sunday night entertainment ritual from families coast to coast with its mix of opera singers, pop stars, and knockabout comedians. The six-minute video, titled “A Short Vision” dramatized a day when suddenly the world is incinerated in a flash, accompanied by wind, fire, and melting flesh.
I was too young to fully understand what I was seeing. Nevertheless it so imprinted itself in my brain that it haunted my sleep for years afterwards as a child. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
You can read about that broadcast and watch “A Short Vision” here:
Years later I was living in Philadelphia and went out for an early evening jog on a warm summer night. I ran into a director friend who was getting out a car to go into a restaurant with her husband. She said she’d just read about the Hiroshima Maidens Project and described it with great interest. In that instant, an image of a woman, her face in bandages, refusing to let anyone take the bandages off her face flashed in my mind. I wrote THE HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER to find out why she wouldn’t.
As I started my background reading, something else joined that initial image: a young Japanese woman who escapes the tragedy visited upon her by learning and mastering sumi-e brushpainting. Hampered by her disability, she must use both hands to paint. She dreams of the day when her hands will be freed of the scars that cripple them. The day when she will be able to paint with one hand.
Certainly if America is so powerful in crippling her, it can also free her hands as well. But as with so many dreams, they come with a cost.
For anyone unfamiliar with sumi-e brushpainting, here is a short demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ljZWje4nI
Who were these women, the Hiroshima Maidens, and what did they experience?
While I did not model my character Miyoshi on any one Hiroshima Maiden, here is a profile of and an interview with one of them, Shigeko Sasamori:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z4p7fXimfI