Faces of Hiroshima

Journalist Chisholm recounts the story of the ""Hiroshima Maidens,'' 25 young Japanese women who were disfigured when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945 and who 10 years later were taken to New York for plastic surgery. The highly publicized trip to America, arranged by Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins, marked a watershed in attitudes about and treatment of A-bomb survivors. Until then, for a variety of reasons most Japanese shunned those maimed by the blast, and Americans showed a remarkable lack of interest in the fates of such victims. After their American sojourn, Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors were accorded free lifetime medical care in Japan, and there was a better understanding of their particular problems. The Maidens themselves changed, too: their self-images improved as much from being loved and accepted by their American hosts as from the surgery (which was relatively primitive by today's standards). A gripping reminder of the physical and psychological ravages of nuclear war. February