Pearl S. Buck, Japan, and Its People
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Yoko Sagawa
Abstract
In 1934, Itaru Nii, the translator of the Japanese edition of The Good Earth (1935; 大地 = Daichi), published an article about Pearl S. Buck, “Literature and Literature of Correspondence: Visiting Nanjing,” in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun (Nii 1934, 9). Her novel became a bestseller, which prompted Nii to go to Nanjing “to speak with Pearl Buck, the author of The Good Earth.” However, when he went to Nanjing, he found that Buck had returned to the United States on vacation. He was told this by Mr. McDaniel of the Nanjing correspondent of The New York Times (Nii 1934, 9). Since Nii could not meet Buck, he had to go back to Shanghai, where he recently arrived from Japan, and searched for Buck’s works in bookstores. Then he found “a truly staggering number of books on display, including The Good Earth, which had been the number one bestseller in the United States in previous years, as well as The Mother, The First Wife, The Young Revolutionist, and so on” (Nii 1934, 9). Nii’s article provided a great deal of information about Pearl Buck for Japanese readers who knew nothing about her. He wrote that she was an American female writer who lived in China. He added that there were also many copies of Buck’s works in Shanghai, including The Good Earth, which was a number one bestseller in the United States. Globally, it appealed to readers who wanted to learn more about China. The Japanese were particularly interested in stories about the lives of Chinese farmers. Stories about Buck, her life, and her works continue to appear in the Japanese press, and by the end of 2022, Japan’s three major newspapers had published 568 articles on Buck. This ongoing interest in Buck is not only due to her literary works, such as The Good Earth, but also to her involvement in significant activities in Japan during the last 20 years of her life. This article traces the history of how Buck became a Japan expert in her later years, through her interactions with Japanese people and her social activities after the WWII. Buck came to Japan in 1960 after the war, but before that, many Japanese people had read books and articles about her in newspapers and magazines, and many had written letters to her, establishing exchanges with her across the Pacific Ocean.
1 Pearl Buck and Japan: Infancy-1934
Pearl Buck, who was born in rural West Virginia, was taken to China by her missionary parents just a few months after her birth in 1892. Years before, her parents, Absalom and Carie Sydenstricker, spent some time in Japan. Their ship stopped in Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagasaki on their way from West Virginia to Shanghai, China. Pearl described her parents’ views of Japan in Buck (1966, 9–12): For them, Japan was their first sight of the Orient and remained for them somewhat of a dream, a land of disciplined beauty, of cleanliness and order, a land of manageability and comprehensibility. They escaped to Japan in later years for brief periods when torrid summers and contending warlords made life in China intolerable. Years later, after spending time in Japan, Buck wrote about her own views of Japan:
In childhood terms, visiting there as we came and went across the Pacific, Japan was for me, too, a dream country. The beautiful landscape, the mannered architecture, the gaily dressed people, always smiling, always polite, always bearing gifts for a child, presented a storybook quality. I used to look forward to those stops in Japan, and the more because island made a harbor of safety and serenity in the endless storm-ridden sea surrounding them. (Buck 1966, 12)
She then added: “When I was a child, if we sailed from Vancouver or San Francisco, then Japan was the last stop before Shanghai, the gateway to my Chinese home. If we sailed from Shanghai, then Japan was the first stop toward my American home” (Buck 1962, 14). When it came to the Japanese people, she also wrote, “First let me say here and now that I love them. I inherited love for them from my parents, love for old Japan and old Japanese ways. Upon the solid foundation of love I discovered them through many years” (Buck 1966, 12).
Buck has written many works about the events and people she encountered during the first half of her life in China, and the Japanese often appear in her works. One of the most memorable is Mrs. Sterns, a Japanese woman Buck met in Zhenjiang where she lived during her childhood. The house where Buck lived with her parents became a gathering place for people in distress. Many women waited their turn for a consultation with Carie, and sometimes a little Japanese woman, in a kimono with a floral pattern and a showy sash, also waited to see Carie. She lived halfway up a mountain on the other side of the valley. She was Mrs. Sterns, the wife of an English gentleman, who worked at the customs office at the port of Zhenjiang, and built a Japanese-style house with a beautiful Japanese garden for herself. When Buck, still a little girl, visited Mrs. Stern with parents, she served them Japanese sweets and tea. Buck was entranced by her home because it was so attractive, and she often went there alone. Mrs. Sterns was the first Japanese person she truly got to know. She also learned a lot about Japan from Mrs. Sterns and, over the years, she began to consider Japan as her third “country,” after the U.S. and China (Buck 1954, 4).
Buck wrote about Mrs. Sterns and the Japanese people in several works, including The Exile (1936), one of her Nobel Prize-winning books. She wrote the initial draft of The Exile, which is about her mother, Carie, after her death in 1921, and later revised it. In The Exile, Buck describes Mr. Sterns as follows: the second son of a baronet…a peculiar old Englishman…polite and taciturn, and not very sociable. It was a story about his lost love with a British woman and how he bought the Japanese woman, who would later become his wife, from a high-class teahouse.
When Buck left China to study at Randolph-Macon College for Women in Virginia in 1910, she went via Europe. After graduating in 1914, she returned to China to care for her sick mother. Time passed quickly for her, particularly after she married Lossing Buck in 1917, a missionary who was a trained agricultural specialist. Her life changed quickly after they moved to a very remote village in Anhui Province. Things got worse after the birth of her first child, Carol, who suffered from serious mental handicap.
In 1927, when the family lived in Nanjing, the foreign quarter was attacked, forcing the family, which now included Buck’s elderly father, Absalom, to flee to Japan (Buck 1966, 12). They rented a small Japanese house in the mountains above Nagasaki, near the hot springs of Unzen, and lived there for seven months. Buck wrote in detail about her life of adventure and happiness in Unzen in My Several Worlds and The Child Who Never Grew (Buck 1954, 251–57; 1992, 60–61).
Buck enjoyed taking care of their small home and traveling by train throughout Japan. She wrote, “In curious way I was helped here by what was taking place in China […] For me, after the hard years, it was a time of healing. I knew no one except the friendly Japanese fisherfolk who came to sell crabs and fish at early morning […] I shall pause here for a little gift of thanks to the Japanese people I met in those pleasant months of enforced holiday” (Buck 1992, 60). She felt so safe in Japan that she took Carol on a trip by train throughout the country. “Everywhere we met with kindness and courtesy. There was no sign that anyone saw my [disabled] child as strange. She was accepted for what she was and most tenderly treated. That brought healing too” (Buck 1992, 61). It is clear that the Japanese people who Buck came into contact with during her time in Unzen, strengthened her love for Japan and its people.
While there, Buck heard a story about a past tsunami in 1792. She used it as the basis for a children’s book The Big Wave (1948). It was about two young boys’ experiences when a monsoonal wave swept through their Japanese villages. Many decades later, a famous actress, Misako Konno, read Tsunami (つなみ: The Big Wave) on national radio after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. They were comforted by Buck’s words, particularly for those who had lost loved ones in the tsunami and were in mourning. In one case, a Buddhist priest purchased 700 copies of her book and distributed them to Buddhist missionary organizations (Isa 2011, 6).
A few years later, Buck wrote another children’s book, One Bright Day, based on one of her experiences in Japan (Buck 1952, 1–36). One day, a ship leaving for Shanghai anchored in the port of Kobe. Buck and her daughters had the day free before the ship would depart that evening and decided to spend the day with her daughters playing in a nearby park. Soon after they got to the park, a polite, elderly Japanese gentleman out for a walk stopped and asked Pearl, “Are you a passenger on a ship?” “That’s right,” she replied. He told her he would like to take them on a tour of Kobe and, after Pearl accepted his invitation, he hired a carriage to take them around of the city. He explained, “I’m on medical care, so if you could accompany me, it would be convenient for me.” In the story, they visited the city, the market, the moss garden, and the beach in the afternoon. As they rode back to the port in the carriage, the gentleman treated them to dessert. When they arrived at the port, he gave them souvenirs, and said, smiling at them all, “You have given me a wonderful gift, and you have given me a happy day.” Buck wrote, this old gentleman “never urged us on anywhere, but explained what I did not understand with humanity and grace, and in a soft-spoken manner.” She added that this was “the happiest day of her life” and found it impossible not to trust this kind and polite old gentleman (Buck 1946, 94).[1]
2 Pearl Buck’s Japanese Friends in New York: 1934-
Pearl Buck settled permanently in New York in 1934, where she continued to write and became a prominent social activist. Four years later she received the Nobel Prize in Literature, which enhanced her global reputation. But she did not let her fame diminish her humanitarian values. In 1942, she spoke out against the Roosevelt administration’s decision to relocate Japanese-American citizens to internment camps scattered in very remote places throughout the U.S. In one speech before a large audience, she talked about the “kindest incident” with the elderly Japanese gentleman. The purpose of the speech was to prove “how ridiculous it is to believe that the entire population of a country is guilty and evil” (Buck 1946, 95–96).
The outbreak of the war against Japan did little to weaken her deep love and respect for the Japanese people and their national character. She had many Japanese friends in New York, including Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889–1953), Ayako Ishigaki (1903–96), and Toru Matsumoto (1913–79). Kuniyoshi was a prominent painter who remains a prominent figure in the history of modern American art. Buck wrote about him in My Several Worlds ( 1954 ), her memoirs, and Command the Morning ( 1959 ).
On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, she wrote in My Several Worlds:
[…] I remember the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed that I sat in my office in New York, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi, the great Japanese artist, was announced. He came in and I rose at once to receive him. “Sit down, please,” I said.
He sat down in a chair opposite me, speechless, the tears running down his cheeks. He did not wipe them away, he did not move, he simply sat there gazing at me, the tears running down his cheeks and splashing on his coat. “Our two countries – ” he whispered at last, and he could not go on.
“I know,” I said. “But let us remember that our two people are not enemies, no matter what happens.”
There was nothing more said. He wiped his eyes after a few minutes, we clasped hands and he went away. We were continuing friends, understanding each other, whatever the day’s news was.[2] (Buck 1954, 260–61)
In Command the Morning ( 1959 ), Buck uses Kuniyoshi as a model for one of the key characters, Yasuo Matsugi, a painter from Nagasaki prefecture, to deal with the development of the atomic bomb and its use in the U.S. attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Yasuo first appears in the book the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when he visits the home of Burton Hall, a scientist and close friend. In this scene, Buck uses the conversation she had with Kuniyoshi on December 8, 1941 (Buck 1959, 98–101).[3] Later in the book, she writes about Yasuo’s incarceration in a Japanese American concentration camp in Arizona. After the war, Yasuo and Burt visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Buck considered Yasuo a very important figure in the book because he symbolized the suffering of the Japanese in the U.S. and Japan during and after the war.
Part of the reason was that in real life, Yasuo Kuniyoshi was a wartime patriot who campaigned against Japanese militarism in the U.S. In early March 1942, he visited the Office of War Information (OWI), which oversaw U.S. wartime propaganda, and offered to help the war effort. Kuniyoshi thought that his fame as a painter could be useful in sending an anti-war message to the Japanese people. OWI gladly accepted his offer to broadcast a message to Japan under his name. The same was true with Ayako Ishigaki, the wife of Kuniyoshi’s close friend and Japanese painter Eitaro Ishigaki, who also worked with OWI (Ishigaki 1991, 201–2).
Buck was also close with Ayako Ishigaki, who lived with her husband Eitaro Ishigaki in the U.S. for 25 years and returned to Japan in 1951 during the Joseph McCarthy era. Their friendship began after Buck wrote a favorable review of Ayako’s memoir, Restless Wave (1940).[4] After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Buck wrote to Ishigaki and told her that
The United States and Japan may be at war, but our people do not see each other as enemies. We will never forget how you supported us against the Japanese military. If you are ever arrested and mistreated simply for being Japanese, please show this letter to the authorities. I will come to you immediately. (Ishigaki 1991, 196–197)
Ishigaki later expressed her gratitude for this letter, she wrote that
At the beginning of the war, it was very difficult to defend the Japanese, who were the object of hatred. If you inadvertently approached a Japanese person, you were suspected of being a spy. How reassuring and grateful it was to have the support of this great writer. (Ishigaki 1985, 120)
Ishigaki worked for the East-West Association after the war, which Buck and her husband, Richard Walsh, founded in 1941. Its goal was to promote cultural exchanges and education about East Asia in the U.S. In 1946, Buck suggested that Ishigaki attend the “International Women’s Conference” as a replacement for Tamaki Uemura, a Japanese female pastor and women’s movement activist. The conference was held at the suggestion of Eleanor Roosevelt, in the South Kortright in New York State in fall 1946, over a 12-day period with 185 women from 55 countries around the world with the theme of “Building the World of Tomorrow” (Ishigaki 1991, 242).[5] One third of the participants were executives from American women’s groups, and, like many of the foreign delegates, were well-educated. English was chosen as the language of the conference. Ishigaki served as the reporter for some of the sessions.
Ishigaki wrote about the conference in her book Waga Ai Waga America (1991; わが愛、わがアメリカ: My Love, My America) (Ishigaki 1991, 242–48), and mentioned some of the delegates she met.[6] Their attitudes were affected as to whether their country was on the side of the Allies or the Axis during the war. Attendees were particularly interested in the delegates from Japan, Germany and Italy, who were often interviewed and photographed together. The German representative, a physician, was frequently asked if she had ever been sent to a concentration camp, and, if not, why. When it became apparent that she could not answer the question, a Dutch teacher quietly defended her, saying, “It must have been much harder for you to endure the terrible behavior of your own country than for us who suffered under the occupation” (Ishigaki 1991, 245). In addition, the Philippine representative, who was involved in an underground movement during the war, and had been captured and tortured by the Japanese military for over 20 months, told Ishigaki, “I don’t have any hostility towards you” (244). This really touched Ishigaki.
The two Chinese delegates were questioned about their loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek. One of them tried to express during the conference that “if the U.S. cut off its aid to Chiang Kai-shek, the civil war could be avoided” (247), but she could not speak because of the pressure. Ishigaki and this delegate, Li Dequan (李徳全)became friends, and when the conference ended, all the attendees went sightseeing in Philadelphia at the invitation of the mayor of Philadelphia, where Ishigaki and Li stayed in the same room at the hotel provided by the mayor. Some of the American delegates told Ishigaki in a whisper, “You should stay away from her” (Ishigaki 1991, 248). In 1947, Ishigaki wrote an article titled “Attending an International Conference” for a well-known Japanese magazine Sekai (世界) in February 1947, which was later published in a Japanese junior high school textbook. She wrote that “the strange atmosphere I felt was a sign that the American trend was beginning to change, little by little, behind the scenes” (Ishigaki 1991, 248). She added that even though she was from a defeated country, she did not feel inferior when interacting with the other delegates. This enabled her to build a new career and laid the foundation for her success in Japan.
After returning to Japan, Ishigaki worked as a translator and critic and translated two works of Buck into Japanese. One of these, Of Men and Women (1941), remained a bestseller for over 13 years. It was a non-fiction collection of essays about American men and women on the eve of World War II. She also became an advocate for housewives in Japan and wrote a controversial article in a weekly magazine Fujin Kōron (婦人公論) in February 1955, which led to a huge debate about this issue that lasted for more than 20 years. Even to this day, it remains part of the larger body of literature on gender equality in Japan.
Another Japanese activist who worked with Pearl Buck, Toru Matsumoto, became a student at the Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1935. He served as President of the Japanese Student Christian Association in the United States, and gave speeches at universities throughout the country. He became friend with Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, later known as the “Tanimoto of Hiroshima,” who was studying at Emory University in Georgia. One of the things that set Matsumoto apart from other Japanese residents in New York were his lectures, which led the police to watch him closely. On December 7, 1941, he was arrested and detained as an enemy alien, along with some Germans and Italians. Yet like Kuniyoshi and Ishigaki, Matsumoto opposed Japanese militarism and supported the democratization of Japan. Buck wrote the introduction for his memoirs, A Brother Is A Stranger, that he published with the John Day Company in 1946. She considered him a model citizen and worked hard to dispel the heartless, inhuman Japanese image that Americans held at the time. Buck wrote that Matsumoto is
a real Japanese, born and educated in Japan […] He proves beyond doubt that there is nothing inherently subject or spineless in the people of Japan […] Toru Matsumoto is an unusual man, and yet I am sure there are many like him in Japan, and many more who could be like him […] They are exactly like all other peoples in their variety, including ourselves. Any other conclusion is nonsense. (Buck 1946, vii, “Introduction”)
He was active in the activities of the East-West Association and gave well-attended lectures throughout the U.S. His goal was to address the extreme prejudice that Americans had towards the Japanese. He also introduced Buck to Hiroshima survivor Tanimoto, which paved the way for her work with two prominent leaders of the Peace Center Associates, John Hersey, and Norman Cousins.
3 Pearl Buck’s Social Activism in Japan: 1945–1973
Japan was occupied from 1945 to 1952 by U.S. forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), and was reborn as a democratic nation. A few months after the war ended, Buck was mentioned in the Japanese press, not as the author of The Good Earth, but as a social activist. In the 1930s, the novel The Good Earth and its film adaptation were huge hits in Japan. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese people did not have access to American and British novels and films. When Buck reappeared in the press after the war, all that the Japanese public remembered about her was that she was an American author and a Nobel laureate who wrote about East Asia.[7]
There are no records about how many newspapers were printed immediately after the war, but a newspaper reporter, Kokichi Takakuwa, wrote that the Americans were amazed that, despite the fact that most major cities in Japan had been burned to the ground during air raids, transportation was not paralyzed, trains and trams were running, and electricity, water, and telecommunications were functioning within a few months of the end of the war. In addition, newspapers (even if it was only two pages) and radios had reached every household (Takakuwa 1984, 40).
3.1 Pearl Buck’s Arguments as Seen in Japanese Newspaper Articles
In the fall of 1945, Mainichi Shimbun asked four world-famous figures – Pearl S. Buck, Lin Yutang, Jawaharlal Nehru and André Marois – to write a serialized column to the Japanese people, “Advice to Japan.” Buck’s lengthy remarks began with “this is a thought-provoking passage” written by the reporter of Mainichi Newspapers (Buck 1945, 1).
“My Advice to Japan: Give Everyone the Freedom to be Responsible. O You Good People, Have the Strength.” Mainichi Newspapers, October 2, 1945, 1.
In the article, Buck advocates “freedom of speech” etc., and concluding with the following passage.
If the good people of Japan and Germany are dreaming of a country where they can enjoy freedom and live without responsibility, they must be awakened from their dream of a castle in the air. […] Good people of Japan, you cannot lie down and sleep in peace. You cannot even take a one-hour rest, because the good people everywhere need your power, your careful attention, and your determination added to theirs.
It is difficult to find any other comments about Buck’s first message shortly after it appeared, but it is still remembered today. For example, in the chronology of modern Japanese literature, it is given at full citation, noting the author’s name, the date, and the name of the newspaper company in the “criticism, essays, and research” category. And even today, in the 21st Century, her message is still published in books and appears in many “collections of famous quotes from around the world” on the Internet, and is quoted in the blog of a member of Parliament.
Messages from Buck often appeared on newspapers between 1940s and 1950s. Over time, Pearl S. Buck became a public figure in Japan. The article titled “Advice to Japan” was reported in the morning edition of the Mainichi Newspapers in a large, vertical, eight-column spread in the center of the front page. Overall, the Japanese people saw a noticeable sense of warmth and encouragement in her article for young people who would rebuild post-war Japan. The same was true for the women who hoped for peace and those most vulnerable in Japanese society. Other articles by or about Buck appeared in the Japanese press with similar messages. In 1950, an article titled “From Pearl Buck, A Letter Full of Love, Streptomycin to a Sick Unknown Young Man” was reported in Yomiuri Shimbun. It noted that Buck provided medicine free of charge to a hospital that was treating patients with tuberculosis. It all started with a letter from a Japanese young man, who had tuberculosis. He asked the welfare commissioner for streptomycin, an excellent medicine for tuberculosis, but heard nothing from him for six months. After reading The Good Earth, he wrote to Buck to see if she could help him get the medicine. Buck immediately asked the pharmaceutical company as well as LARA (Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia), a U.S. aid agency in Japan, for help in getting the medicine. The pharmaceutical company sent a letter of apology and said they could not get him the medicine. LARA, spurred by Buck’s request, donated streptomycin for 14 people to the hospital. The medicine worked and the youg man recovered. Later, he and his doctor wrote a tearful thank-you letter to Buck (Pearl Buck 1950, 3).
The following section of the article reports on war widows. Japan was reduced to smoldering ruins by the end of the war. The loss of 3 million lives, half of those young soldiers, had a devastating impact on Japanese society. The widows of these soldiers struggled a lot. In 1952, Buck wrote a foreword for a collection of memoirs by war widows. Fusao Hayashi reviewed the book and included Buck’s essay in it. Buck wrote:
I was completely surprised to hear that Japanese war widows are receiving no support from the government. I think this is completely unfair. The war widows have to live on, so the damage they suffer is far greater than that suffered by the war dead themselves. Furthermore, since everything they lost was for the sake of their country, it would be only right for the general public to do everything they can to ensure that they are well supported. In other civilized countries, war widows are considered to be the responsibility of the state. So please let everyone know about this. (Hayashi 1952, 4)
The timing of the review was important because the day after it came out, the government began providing support for war widows. Buck’s claim must have encouraged many war widows to receive government assistance without hesitation.
Three years later, Mr. Omori, a correspondent with the Mainichi Newspapers, interviewed Buck at her home in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. At the beginning of his article on August 13, 1955, “To the Young People of Japan, 10 Years after the War. I Want You to Bring Back the Spirit of Asia” (Omori 1955, 2), he introduced his readers to her home, particularly her study, which is decorated entirely with Chinese items, including Buddhist statues, wall hangings, copperware, and Chinese paper lanterns. Then, under a subheading, “The Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs are a Threat to Humanity,” he provided excerpts about his conversation with Buck.
Omori: Please tell the younger generation about the world view.
Buck: It is time for everyone to return to their humanity. The three fundamental qualities of humanity are honesty, kindness and justice. Even if there are differences between countries, there is no home in the original state of human beings.
Omori: What were your impressions of the first news of Japan’s surrender?
Buck: Even before I heard the news of Japan’s surrender, I had heard the even more terrible news of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The shock was so great that I had no time to think about the reality of the end of the war. I was ashamed and unhappy. (She then sighed.)
Omori: Ironically, some world politicians think that atomic and hydrogen bombs can be used to prevent another world war.
Buck: I completely disagree. Atomic and hydrogen bombs are a threat to humanity. What a sad idea to try to achieve peace through threats. True happiness will not come unless it is achieved through peace that has been won through culture and education.
Omori: I would like to hear your ideas regarding the campaign to ban atomic bomb testing in Japan.
Buck: I completely agree with it. I think it would be good if that campaign became more active.
In the next article titled “Women Are the True Force for Peace” in The Asahi Shimbun on New Year’s Day, 1956, Buck wrote that “Women with beautiful hearts have the same feelings all over the world. It is a world where our children can live in peace and grow up to their full potential” (Buck 1956, 6). Her article sparked a feminist fire. A Japanese women’s association named The Nishinomiya City Federation of Women’s Association wrote to her and expressed support for what she had written, which resulted in a healthy exchange between them. The Women’s Association devised a way to make use of Buck’s message, and they copied their message in Japanese and Buck’s in English verbatim onto the copper plate as follows:
(Japanese version translated into English).
This Peace Tower was built with donations and contributions from many women, including the Nishinomiya City Federation of Women’s Association, as a “symbol of the hearts of women who pray for world peace morning and evening and pledge to take responsibility for the construction of a peaceful society” with the hope of building a society where children can live in peace and happiness through the unfortunate experiences of World War II.
The letter below is a reply from the Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck, who wrote the novel The Good Earth, and gave her message to Japanese mothers, saying, “Women Are the True Force for Peace.” The Nishinomiya City Federation of Women’s Association deeply resonated with her message and had written to Ms. Buck about the Peace Tower in Nishinomiya, then she replied, “I am convinced that mothers in any country feel the same way as mothers in Japan” regarding the construction of a peaceful society.
(The letter from Pearl S. Buck)
February 3, 1966
Dear Mrs. Sajiki
Thank you very much for your letter of January the 25th. I have read it with much interest and sympathy.
All mothers in every country, I am sure, feel as the mothers in Japan do. I am glad to hear of the Peace Tower and I hope you will send me a picture of it when it is done.
Meanwhile, I shall take pleasure in telling others of the monument.
With best wishes, I am
yours sincerely
Pearl Buck
They installed it at the bottom of the Peace Tower and put Buck’s message in a tube and parachuted it below during the unveiling ceremony of the Peace Tower on April 11, 1956.[8]
Pearl Buck’s ideas deeply affected Japanese readers who were living in horrible postwar conditions. Buck, however, did more than just sending the Japanese people messages. She helped orphans who were left behind in the A-bombed cities, supported treatment for women scarred by keloids, helped mixed-race children born to American soldiers, and parents with disabilities.
3.2 Meeting Hibakusha and The Peace Center Associates
During the American occupation from 1945 to 1952, U.S. forces adopted a strict “Code for the Japanese Press” which forbade it to publish anything about the atomic bombings in 1945. MacArthur was worried that description of the mass destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the widespread suffering of the survivors would lead to the rise of anti-American sentiment not only in Japan but through the world. Under such circumstances, an American journalist visited Hiroshima in June, 1946 with a two-week stay permit from SCAP. That journalist was John Hersey, who later published “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker magazine. He interviewed more than 40 A-bomb survivors, and used the testimony of six of the survivors to write about what they had experienced on August 6, 1945 (Blume 2021, 84).[9]
In 1948, Reverend Tanimoto, one of the six A-bomb survivors interviewed by Hersey, invited by the Mission Board of the American Methodist Church (Tanimoto 1950, 57–59), and stayed in the U.S. from October 1948 to December 1949. During his stay, Tanimoto gave his lecture tour around the U.S. to raise money to rebuild his destroyed church in Hiroshima, and hoped to garner support for a comprehensive Peace Center in Hiroshima (Kondo 2009, 102).[10] Matsumoto thought that the project of The Hiroshima Peace Center was too large for the church, so he took Tanimoto to meet with Buck at her office at the John Day Company in New York. This was the first time that Buck met an A-bomb survivor and she was deeply moved by his vision and told him “America should help Hiroshima to recover. I will cooperate to the best of my ability. I think Hersey should make a great effort in this regard, so I will also write to him” (Tanimoto 1950, 78). A month later, Buck wrote to Tanimoto, who was in Florida, and told him that Norman Cousins was very interested in his Hiroshima Peace Center concept, so he should definitely meet with Cousins. After her meeting with Tanimoto and Matsumoto, Buck gave a lot of thought to the idea about a Peace Center, and thought about a suitable instructor. She came up with the idea of Cousins, the editor-in-chief of Saturday Review of Literature (Tanimoto 1950, 77–79).
On March 23, 1949, a Peace Center conference was held at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York. According to Reverend Tanimoto, the attendees that day included such luminaries as Joseph Grew, former ambassador to Japan, Stanley High, a speech writer for President Roosevelt and senior editor for Reader’s Digest, Harry Kern, Head of the Foreign News Department at Newsweek, Buck, Cousins, Hersey, Dr. Garland Hopkins, the Associate Secretary of the Mission Board, Tanimoto, and Matsumoto. Tanimoto later wrote in his book that those in attendance were “the people who lead the New York media world” (Tanimoto 1950, 93). According to Tanimoto, Buck’s comments were particularly significant. When the topic turned to a Japanese yen budget, she asserted that “you can use the royalties from our publications in Japan as they are. I think there are many authors who would like that” (Tanimoto 1950, 85). When Hopkins said that UNESCO was very interested in the project, Buck asked him, “Does UNESCO have any money? Can they build such a facility?” (Tanimoto 1950, 86) Stanley High answered and noted that “UNESCO may not have money, but it can move large organizations” (Tanimoto 1950, 86). Buck added that “for a long time, peace movements have been saying ‘peace, peace,’ but in reality, they don’t create peace, and when war breaks out, they turn into brave fighters. For this reason, people don’t really trust peace movements. Peace movements need to be grounded and become a movement of solid love” (Tanimoto 1950, 86).
When the group began to discuss the lack of sufficient American repentance for the atomic bombings, Cousins said;
However, in order to prevent the tragedy of Hiroshima from being repeated, the plan to make Hiroshima a symbol of peace as a holy place for reflection on the sins of humanity, and in particular the sins of America, is a very noble and spiritual idea. (Tanimoto 1950, 87)
Next, Stanley High said that “the conscience of the American people has been wounded by the bombing of Hiroshima, and they are repenting, so there will definitely be a response to this” (Tanimoto 1950, 87).
Again, Cousins said that “that repentance is not enough. There must be more repentance” (Tanimoto 1950, 87).
Buck said that “the government sources are even preparing for war. The Hiroshima Peace Center movement is truly a warning” (Tanimoto 1950, 87).
Then Hersey pointed out the atomic bomb survivors’ keloid scars he had seen in Hiroshima and said, “this is an urgent matter, so we should get started right away” (Tanimoto 1950, 87). At the end of the meeting, Buck nominated Cousins as the head of the group, while Reverend Tanimoto was authorized to attend the UNESCO conference held in Cleveland, Ohio on March 31, 1949 as a representative of the Mission Board, where he proposed that UNESCO build a World Peace Center in Hiroshima. He added that “this was done under the direction of Hopkins and his team” (Tanimoto 1950, 75, 83–90). There was no way for the Japanese living in Japan to find out about this topic other than through just a few newspaper articles (excerpt) like the following. This was because SCAP had forbidden the mass media in Japan to report any information about the atomic bombings:
At the UNESCO conference in the U.S., the topic of “Hiroshima” was also discussed in March, and a Peace Center Organizing Committee was established. The committee is gaining momentum internationally, and its members include former US Ambassador to Japan Mr. Grew, Pearl Buck, and John Hersey, author of HIROSHIMA.” (August. 7, 1949)
After the meeting, Buck told Cousins that “if you are going to do something for Hiroshima, you really need to see the place for yourself,” and six months later he visited the devastated city. He took part in the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hiroshima Peace Center and visited the Hiroshima Orphanage for A-bomb Survivors. He was shocked by its shortage of supplies and limited financial resources. When Cousins returned to the U. S., in an article titled “Hiroshima: Four Years Later” published in The Saturday Review of Literature on September 17, 1949, he proposed the creation of “Moral Adoptions” for A-bomb Orphans. This would allow families in the U.S. to adopt these orphans. Their American “parents” would “be responsible for their care and well-being” while the orphans remained in Japan. If Congress passed a law that would allow the children to come to the U.S., then they would legally be adopted by their American family (Cousins 1949, 30). The response to this article was huge. There was a rush of Americans who wanted to become foster parents for the Japanese orphans. By the end of 1950, American families adopted 233 orphaned A-bomb children, a figure that rose to 400 over the next decade. When he returned to Japan in early 1950, Reverend Tanimoto told a Japanese reporter that
Hersey and Buck are making great efforts to find foster family for the orphans of Hiroshima (spiritual adoption). There have already been 150 families who have offered to become foster parents. He made this statement, the reporter noted, smiling through his tears. (“In the Process of Searching for an American Foster Parent for the (Spiritual) Adopted Child.” Yomiuri Shimbun, January 6, 1950, 2)
In August 1950, the Peace Center Associates was officially established in New York and at Reverend Tanimoto’s church in Hiroshima. One of his daughters, Koko Kondo, later wrote that his church became the base for the Hiroshima Peace Center because many people, including the mayor of Hiroshima and the prefectural governor, refused to support it because, with the outbreak of the Korean War, SCAP officials banned all gatherings, including the Peace Ceremony in Hiroshima, and suppressed the international peace movement (Kondo 2009, 104).
Undeterred, the Peace Center Associates in the U.S. raised funds to allow keloid surgery on A-bomb survivors in the U.S. hospitals. In May 1955, the U.S. Air Force flew Reverend Tanimoto and 25 keloid scarred survivors to the U.S. for surgery. Pan American Airlines sponsored their flight back to Japan. Peter Conn wrote in his biography of Pearl Buck that “When female A-bomb Survivors came to the U.S. to have keloid plastic surgery, Buck was among the first American citizens to warmly welcome them. For her, their faces, distorted by keloids, symbolized the absolute necessity of ‘the abolition of nuclear weapons’ and ‘the establishment of world peace’.” Conn argued that this was what led Buck to become involved in the anti-nuclear movement (Conn 2001, 4). Cousins added that “there were many twists and turns. Thanks to the efforts of my friend, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York agreed to take care of them. The problem with travel expenses to and from the U.S. was also quite difficult, but we managed to solve it somehow […] I think that they also played a role in promoting friendship […] in every town, they were loved by the people. They also stayed in American homes, studied English enthusiastically, and willingly expanded their circle of interaction with people. In this way, they demonstrated various “victories,” such as completing a special course for nursing assistants, while living with their illness (Cousins and Ikeda 2000, 35–37). Later on, some of these women married and lived in the U.S.[11]
Cousins, who played a key role in the work of Peace Center Associates, was honored as a Distinguished Honorary Citizen of Hiroshima in 1964. In 2003, a monument to Cousins was erected in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. After Tanimoto’s death, Cousins told Koko Kondo that “if I hadn’t met your father, I wouldn’t have been able to do so much work for Hiroshima” (Kondo 2009, 203). It is important to remember that it was Buck who introduced Cousins to Reverend Tanimoto. Buck also had a great influence on Kondo’s life.
3.3 Japanese Influenced by Pearl Buck
It is undeniable that many Japanese people have been moved and encouraged by Buck’s works, actions, and words. There are the Japanese who came into direct or indirect contact with Buck and went on to play a part in contributing to society in later life. This includes the social novelist, Toyoko Yamazaki (1924-2013), Koko Kondo (1944–) , and a university educator and translator of The Child Who Never Grew, Ryuji Ito (1934–) (Sagawa 2023, 179–92).[12] I choose to discuss Kondo because she had known Buck since her childhood. She often visited Buck at her home when she studied at American University in nearby Washington, D.C. They had the chance to spend time alone together, and the words that Buck conveyed to Kondo sounded like a last will and testament. Kondo told a Japanese TV program that Buck had greatly influenced her life.[13] Kondo remains, at 80 years old, a staunch anti-nuclear weapons activist.
Kondo was only 9 months old when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. She suffered horribly from acute atomic-bomb sickness with bloody diarrhea and a high fever. She then fell into a severe coma and her doctor told her parents there was no hope she would survive. Miraculously, however, she did, but was the only infant in her neighborhood that did (Kondo 2009, 53). Kondo was aware from an early age that she was an A-bomb survivor and was extremely sensitive to the suffering of the other survivors in Hiroshima. She saw young women with keloids scars, the “Hiroshima Girls,” who attended her father’s church. They always treated Kondo like a younger sister, and took care of her. But Koko had a problem. She found it impossible to tell them apart because the faces of these kind sisters were covered with so many terrible scars that their eyes, noses, lips, chins, and ears were stuck together. Her father’s church served as a substitute school for these terribly disfigured girls, who avoided going out. Because of this, Kondo began to hate the American fighter pilots who dropped the atomic bomb, because she thought “the people who got on the plane and dropped the bombs must have been bad people. If those bad people hadn’t dropped the bombs, the sisters wouldn’t have suffered from keloids” (Kondo 2009, 80).
Kondo was 10 years old when her father took 25 “Hiroshima Girls” to New York for surgery. While there, he was invited to appear on the American television program “This Is Your Life” with two “Hiroshima Girls.” The program was popular with high ratings, and Peace Center Associates arranged to have Tanimoto on the program to help raise money for the Hiroshima peace initiative (Kondo 2009, 115). The day after Tanimoto left Japan, the producers of “This is Your Life” contacted his wife and asked her and her children to come to the U.S for the program. The plan was for the family to show up unexpectedly and surprise Tanimoto. The program, which was live, aired on May 11, 1955. When it began, Kondo was waiting offstage. Then, a large man in a suit appeared in front of Tanimoto. His name was Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the “Enola Gay” (named after the mother of Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot), the American B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Unknown to Tanimoto, the main reason for having him on the show was to have him, an atomic bomb survivor, meet face to face with Lewis. Prompted by the moderator, Lewis began speaking quietly (Kondo 2009, 119–120).
It took off from Tinian, dropped the bomb as it had been trained, made a sharp turn and left the sky over Hiroshima. Returning again over Hiroshima, I looked down and saw that the city of Hiroshima had disappeared and burning […]
There he suddenly lost his voice, and at that moment, Kondo and Tanimoto saw tears in his eyes. Then Lewis continued.
“My God. What have we done!” I thought so and immediately wrote these words in my flight logbook.
Kondo was confused. She later said that
When I saw his tears, I was shocked. Why had I always hated this man? I did not even know him. I cried too, in front of the TV camera, repeating over and over in my mind, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They were tears of regret.
She no longer hated Lewis and realized that he was also tormented by guilt and grief (Kondo 2009, 122).
A few days later, Buck invited Tanimoto’s family to her home in Pennsylvania, where they stayed for three months while he was away on a speaking tour. The encounter with Buck was a fateful one for Kondo, who returned to Japan with the image of Buck, a heroic woman raising her children as a mother and taking care of the orphans at Welcome House, burned into her mind. She remembered that during one of visits while she was in college, Buck told her
When war breaks out, many people will be hurt. But the people who will be hurt the most will be the children, Koko, you must remember that. It was my dear daughter Carol who raised me to be a “Nobel Prize” winner. So, Koko, every birth in this world means something. I hope in the future you will do something for the children who have been victimized by adults. (Kondo 2009, 167)
Kondo thought to herself, “I can’t do such a big thing” and later wrote in her autobiography, that “what I have learned from Buck is too vast to recount” (Kondo 2009, 168). After a miscarriage, she, like Buck, adopted two children and helped create a project called “International Adoption” in Japan. She also became an international advisor to “Children as The Peace Makers” (Kondo 2009, 166). And, as an A-bomb survivor, she has been speaking about the importance of peace in Japan and abroad for more than 30 years, and still continues to do so to this day.
In 2014, Webster University in St. Louis awarded her an honorary doctorate in recognition of her humanitarian and peace work. At the same time, the city of St. Louis issued a proclamation on May 11, 2014, which declared the day as one of “value-altering learning” to honor Kondo. This was the same day that her family met Captain Lewis years ago on “This is Your Life.” Knowing the Japanese passion for baseball, the city’s major league baseball team, St. Louis Cardinals, invited her to throw out the first pitch, a significant honor reserved only for prominent Americans. The announcer introduced Kondo by noting her A-bomb survivor identity, her background, John Hersey’s Hiroshima, and finally, her work “to abolish nuclear weapons from the world.” The stadium crowd was deeply moved and gave her a standing ovation. She wrote that “I was surprised that they would feature the encounter between myself, an A-bomb survivor, and Captain Lewis in Missouri, the home state of President Truman, who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb.” This scene was broadcast on NHK, the Japanese national broadcaster the same day (Kondo 2014).
When President Barack Obama visited the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima in 2016, he mentioned a hibakusha believed to be Kondo in his speech:
We see these stories in the Hibakusha: The woman who forgave a pilot who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb because she recognized what she really hated was war itself. (Obama 2016)
3.4 Pearl Buck and Mixed-Race Orphans in Japan
A year after the war ended, a radio station in Japan announced that “the first child of Japanese and American parentage (after the war) had been born,” which sent shockwaves throughout Japan. This should not have come to a surprise to anyone because there were so many American soldiers on the streets. By the end of 1945, there were 430,000 U.S. troops in Japan and by the end of the American occupation in 1952, almost a million had served tours of duty there. In 1953, the year after the occupation ended, it was estimated that there were 3,940 mixed-race children in Japan. Over time, there were a number of cases involving the abandonment of mixed-race children shortly after birth and the disposal of their bodies, which underscored what was now a major social problem in Japan (Honjo 2014, 45–46).
In 1949, Pearl Buck, frustrated by the inability of local adoption agencies to find adoptive homes for mixed-race children, created her own adoption agency, Welcome House, to deal with this problem. She was particularly interested in what she called Amerasian children, those born of unions between Americans and Asians. Soon after the U.S. occupation ended, a few articles began to appear in the Japanese press about Buck’s interest and concerns about these children.
Miki Sawada was so distressed by this problem that she established the Elizabeth Saunders Home in 1948, a facility for mixed-race orphans. She also built elementary and junior high schools for the children. Sawada first met Buck in 1952 when she came to the United States to raise funds for her orphanage and recruit adoptive parents. Over time, Sawada and Buck became close friends. In 1961, Buck published A Bridge for Passing, an autobiographical account about how being in Japan helped her deal with the grief that overwhelmed her after the death of her husband, Richard Walsh. She wrote that Sawada “had been to my home in Pennsylvania more than once. I knew about her work for the half-American children born in Japan” (Buck 1962, 61).
When Buck’s husband, Richard Walsh passed away on May 27, 1960, Buck was in Tokyo working on the film The Big Wave. Sawada invited Buck to spend a quiet day at the seaside in Kanagawa Prefecture, freeing her from her duties of receiving mourners before her midnight departure to the U.S. for her husband’s funeral. Buck was able to meet with some of the orphans at the Saunders Home. When she returned to Japan in August, she accompanied Sawada to Korea, where they were asked to take part in a commemorative project sponsored by a South Korean publishing house. This visit led to Buck’s interest in the plight of mixed-race children in Korea and a novel on South Korea – The Living Reed (1961).
When Buck returned to the U.S. later that year, she brought 12 orphans from Saunders Home with her to their new foster parents. She adopted one of them, Chieko Usaki Walsh. Buck also sent scholarship funds to Sawada, which allowed four graduates of Sawada’s school to study in the U.S. In addition, Buck sent her $50,000 to help her build a farm in Brazil as a workplace for the mixed-race orphans after they graduated from high school.
Buck also became involved with Imao Hirano, a prominent Japanese social activist who shared her passion for helping what the Japanese called “konketsuji (mixed-blood child) or the derogatory term Ainoko (in-between child)” (Hashimoto 2021). She visited his home in November 1966, and spent a day with 15 mixed-race orphans.
Hirano was himself a konketsuji of French-American descent, and suffered from incessant discrimination throughout his life. During the war he was suspected of being a spy and harshly tortured by the Special Higher Police and military police. He was outraged not only because of his own mistreatment but also that of mixed-race children born after the war. In 1953, he founded “Remi Association” and invited the mixed-race orphans to his home on the weekends where he would provide them with meals and let them play. He also officially declared some of them as his own children to ensure that they would not be discriminated against when they applied for jobs. A gifted poet, Hirano also published more than six books in the “Remi” series that revealed the plight of the mixed-race orphans and their mothers.
The work that Hirano and Buck did with Japan’s konketsuji caught the attention of Professor Hiroshi Wagatsuma at the University of Hawaii, who created the Mixed-Race Youth Research Group (MRYRG). In May 1966, Wagatsuma met with Buck in New York to tell her about mixed-race children in Japan. They decided that the MRYRG should do a field survey in Japan and South Korea that would include visits to the Education Center called “Pearl S. Buck Opportunity Center,” which Pearl S. Buck Foundation would build as the first overseas branch next year in Sosa, South Korea and Hirano’s “Remi Association.”
Later that year, Buck arrived at Hirano’s home with Professor Wagatsuma, Theodore Harris, the President of Pearl S. Buck Foundation, Jimmy, a boy of mixed Korean and American heritage, and a group of newspaper reporters from Asahi Shimbun, etc. The visitors enjoyed meeting Hirano’s 15 orphans and Buck told them:
You are very valuable and important people, and you should not feel ashamed of yourselves. Be proud of yourselves and try as hard as you can to fulfill your important mission. I am also a mixed German-Dutch child. Just like all of you. So, together with you, I will continue to serve as a sturdy bridge between our two cultures.
The children and Hirano were deeply moved by her warm words (Hirano 1969, 280–81).
3.5 Pearl Buck and Children with Disabilities
Pearl S. Buck’s work with mixed-race children in Japan and South Korea is only one aspect of her work with children in East Asia. Her initial work with children arose after she discovered that Carol, the daughter she gave birth to in her only childbirth in her lifetime, was diagnosed at an early age with severe mental handicaps. For many years she did not mention Carol publicly, and later placed her in a special institution in New Jersey not too far from her home in Pennsylvania. After she won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1938, she became a very prominent public figure and worried that the press would draw public attention to Carol’s special challenges. However, in 1950, she wrote an autobiographical account of the challenges she and Carol (she did not mention Carol’s name in the book) faced as she dealt with how to raise her so that she could live the best life possible. Buck published The Child Who Never Grew in 1950. It was meant not only as a guide for parents with specially challenged children but also as a call for better public support and understanding of the special challenges parents faced raising a child like Carol. Hahayo Nagekunakare (母よ嘆くなかれ: The Child Who Never Grew) was published in Japan in 1950 and is still in print today. The Japanese edition included a letter of encouragement to parents, and public support for those with disabled children in Japan.
In 1952, parents in Japan with disabled children created a nationwide organization with the aim of encouraging each other (Kitahara 2012, no page number on the last page).[14] The first step in their activities was the publication of a book of essays by the parents, Parents Holding Hands. They asked Pearl Buck to write a foreword, which she readily agreed to do (Inclusion Japan 2012, 1–5). Her lengthy essay began with the following paragraph:
I am happy indeed to hear of the work being done in Japan for children with retarded minds. I am glad, too, to know that parents of such children are publishing a book together, and I am honored to send this small contribution.
Buck then added: “We…” (including herself as the subject), and “our children…” (including Carol), feel strongly about the need for appropriate facilities for children, the cruelty of the world towards them, and their good nature. She also promised to keep abreast of the association’s activities and new discoveries, which she would share with parents in the U.S. who had disabled children. She concluded the foreword with the following words: “Yes, the dawn comes even for our children.” Memoir: Parents Holding Hands became an immediate best-seller and its initial printing sold 10,000 copies. Buck, who spoke from the heart as a mother of a disabled child, helped the parents of disabled children in Japan and continued to do so in her later years. A new edition of the book came out in 2012, a year after the Great East Japan Earthquake, a third edition in the following year, and a new edition in 2020. Since it was first published in 1950, The Child Who Never Grew has been repeatedly re-translated and reprinted, which underscores not only its eternal importance but the strength of Pearl Buck’s determination and conviction to share with the world the need to treat disabled children with kindness and understanding. The same is true when it comes to understanding the challenges that their parents face as they struggle to deal with their special children.
4 Conclusions
This article examines the relationship between Buck and the Japanese people, and the following points have become clear. The fact that Buck was able to win the hearts and minds of the Japanese that she came into contact with is proof of high humanity. Buck’s relationship with the Japanese was mainly demonstrated through the intermediary of Japanese newspapers and magazines, and various exchanges took place across the Pacific Ocean while Buck was in the U.S., after the end of the war until 1960 when Buck came to Japan. In post-war Japan, Buck’s celebrity was as high as it had been before the war, and it is believed that Buck’s public appearances had the effect of improving the Japanese people’s perception of the U.S. Buck’s causes had a powerful impact on the Japanese, and many Japanese people were directly or indirectly supported, encouraged and influenced by her.
The reason for the sharp increase in articles written by Buck from 1952 onwards is probably because the American occupation had ended. The fact that the subjects of these articles were related to A-bomb survivors and mixed-race orphans suggests that they were matters that were inconvenient for the American occupation policy. Buck first appeared in a Japanese article about mixed-race children in 1952. Sawada first met Buck in 1952, and Hirano founded “Remi Association” at his house in 1953. These matches are not by chance.
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