The ‘Hiroshima Maidens’ on Different Shores: Decentralising Scarred Japanese Femininity in the A‐Bomb Victimhood

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores uneven histories of hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945) activism involving publicly visible nuclear injuries. By looking beyond the famous ‘Hiroshima Maidens’ and expanding an intersectional analysis of gender, race and disability to Korean, Japanese and American hibakusha, this article decentralises the scarred Japanese femininity in our understanding of hibakusha history. As Japan's former colonial subjects, Korean hibakusha successfully obtained disability compensation from the Japanese government beginning in the 1970s, helping Japanese and American survivors, too, to gain better treatment by the government. By contrast, US survivors remained unrecognised by any official US entities, despite the rising activism in Asian America in the 1970s. This article argues, it was a redefined, postcolonial masculinity of Korean and Japanese hibakusha that brought them tangible state benefits. In America, transforming gender was not enough to deconstruct the ‘model minority’ myth, which trivialised any physical injuries and disabilities among Asian Americans as self‐healable. Indeed, racism might have overwhelmed gender by making both femininity and masculinity irrelevant to racial minority rights. This illuminates a need to analyse the intersection of gender, race and disability in trans‐Pacific contexts so as to better identify the roots of nuclear injustice.