Hiroshima in the Morning

Part II In the Morning

p a r t i i i n t h e m o r n i n g Some things have to be believed to be seen. —Ralph Hodgson 85| On the hill| H ow simple to erase. It starts with a small, stubborn no, and Japan could be its birthplace: here, they have perfected the barely perceptible smile, the sliding maybe I’ve become so familiar with. If I’m making inroads now, if I’m gaining trust, I am still offered exactly what the person in front of me wants to give. Buckets for washing myself; a memory of grasshoppers . In Japan, you can refuse a sweet and still be presented with it, and with the great expectation of your satisfaction. I have been invited to the headquarters of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, where there is tea in the chairman’s office and windows that slide open to look out on a few well-placed shrubs. This is the organization that Aunt Molly worked for, which launched my journey. It’s housed on the top of Hijiyama, the only hill in the delta that is downtown Hiroshima, the hill that’s most famous for being the only shelter from the blast of the bomb. Now, it is home to the organization that began as the first wave 86 of American medical researchers, home to their grey, tin, bisected cylinders—Twinkie barracks—which were erected in 1951 overlooking a sprawling, multilevel cemetery filled with war dead. The placement of these facilities, their purpose , their very existence, can cast a quiet cloud over the faces of the people I am interviewing. Now I hesitate to say that my aunt worked there, and hasten to add that, when Molly applied, she had no idea what they were doing. Which was: measuring the power of their unknown weapon in the bodies of the wounded. Providing no treatment , withholding the results of the tests. Classifying research and disavowing any “significant” lingering effects or genetic mutations from the radiation. I can’t think of this place without the anger, the accusations , that accompanied my introduction to it. The ABCC were the people who tried to take your baby’s body, who sent their car for you if you didn’t report on your own to the doctor ’s office and gave you nothing in return. Their betrayal was not only in the fact that they had no intention of healing , but in the expectation that they were the doctors, and if there was no refuge in them, there was no refuge at all. Except that, these are no longer the people. In 1975, the ABCC ceased to exist. It was replaced by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, or RERF, which differs from its predecessor in that it more specifically sets out its identical mission—research, not medical treatment—and is directed jointly by the US and Japanese governments, which was claimed to have been the case all along. Same facilities, same staff when the progress of time is accounted 87 for. These people are interested in my aunt, though none of them have ever heard of her. I tell them that Aunt Molly worked for one year as a file clerk or maybe in the statistics department in 1946 or 1947, when there were only twelve or fifteen people on the staff. I tell them the name of Molly’s boss, and that she was bussed in from the nearby town of Kure. But somehow Aunt Molly neglected to tell me, until long after my visit, that she was known by her maiden name when she worked there, and that her first name was mispronounced as “Marie.” The name change will forever obscure my attempts to find her there. Still, the ABCC staff—I think of them this way because I’ve never heard anyone off the hill refer to the RERF— are very nice. I’m escorted there by an energetic, mountainclimbing man who used to work for the Commission in the 1950s. The librarian turns out to be the very warm and helpful daughter of one of the women who escorted the Hiroshima Maidens, the disfigured girls my aunt first told me about, to the US for surgery. I am a writer on a grant from the two governments that fund this place, so I’m greeted by the chief of the director’s office, by a representative from...