On August 6, 1945, the residents of Hiroshima, Japan, awoke and dressed as they did every day, gathered their belongings, and made their way to school and work.

Suddenly, at 8:15 a.m., a flash cut across the sky — a dagger of fire so hot it melted concrete and steel. The American B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay had unleashed the first-ever atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima. At that moment, 13-year-old Shigeko Sasamori looked to the sky.

The bomb’s force knocked her out. She awoke soon thereafter to a nightmare, as dazed victims walked by her carrying their dead loved ones, some with their own skin melted off by the ferocious heat of the blast. Shigeko recalled seeing herself for the first time in the documentary The Day They Dropped The Bomb: “I looked like a monster. Big eye, and stick nose, no eyebrows and pinky face, and my lips were also up and down, open. Can you imagine?”

Over 135,000 people died or were wounded at Hiroshima and 75,000 more at Nagasaki, where the United States used another atomic bomb on August 9. Ten years later, Shigeko and 24 other young women who were disfigured by the bomb came to the United States for plastic surgery after seeking help from Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who named the group the “Hiroshima Maidens.”

Who were these young women?

A day prior to the bombing, schoolgirls in Hiroshima were put to work clearing fire lanes by the city, which feared the U.S. would drop firebombs. Children at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, the members of this all-female group were outside doing just this when U.S. troops dropped the bomb, and each was badly burned or disfigured by the nuclear weapon’s blast and heat.

As they grew older, they reported feeling alienated from their peers, as many in Japan shunned those with physical disabilities. While other young people went out on dates and spent time with friends, they became more isolated. Rev. Tanimoto formed a Bible group for the young women, who were known locally as “Keloid Girls,” referring to the scar tissue on their bodies that formed as a response to their radiation burns.

Why did they come to the United States 10 years after the bombing?

Rev. Tanimoto was working with journalist Shizue Masugi to raise funds for the young women when American journalist and peace activist Norman Cousins met the group in Japan and learned of their story. Back in the U.S., Cousins spoke with many hospitals and foundations about the women and their need for treatment, and eventually doctors at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital agreed to help. The 25 women from Hiroshima arrived in New York in May 1955, and over the course of the next year and a half Mount Sinai surgeons performed over 125 operations for free. The hospital donated operating rooms and beds, and a Quaker group arranged for the young women to stay with American host families.

What was their experience like in the United States?

Host families were afraid that the young women would become homesick or have trouble adjusting over their eighteen-month stay, but largely the young women reported feeling the opposite. Toyoko Minowa, one of the women who traveled as part of the group, described her experience to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1955, saying, "The people with whom we fought 10 years ago seem to be our friends now....I feel at home here in New York. I don't feel that I came to a foreign country. People here are so nice and friendly."