6 Letters Kiyoshi Tanimoto Hiroshima Peace Ctr Atom Bomb 1950s Historical RARE

Description

2020 is the 75th 'anniversary' of atomic bombing of Hiroshima and we are offering a collection of six (6) amazing and historical Letters during years 1950-1953 from Kiyoshi Tanimoto (1909-1987), one of six survivors from the bombing featured in the Pulitzer Prize Winning Book,
Hiroshima
, by John Hersey.  Mr. Tanimoto went on to become a minister and founder of the Hiroshima Peace Ctr. Foundation - plus many other accomplishments.  Reverend Tanimoto worked tirelessly after World War II raising funds throughout the world to aid Japanese victims injured and disfigured by the bombing - and brought several women known as the 'Hiroshima Maidens' to New York for reconstructive surgeries.  These letters are primarily focused on those efforts.  He spoke hundreds of times in the U.S. raising money and awareness and was even featured on the popular U.S. television show 'This is Your Life' in 1955 where the show amazingly and with no regard for Mr. Tanimoto had him meet one of the Enola Gay pilots in probably one of the most awkward and uncomfortable moments in television history.
The six original letters are still within their original envelopes postmarked from Japan with Hiroshima Peace Center Foundation return address. After weeks of research, inquiries and providing copies of all documents, we were able to obtain authentication of Kiyoshi Tanimoto's signature(s) by Koko Kondo, daughter of Kiyoshi Tanimoto, and current President of the Tanimoto Peace Foundation, located in Japan.  A confirmation of Kiyoshi Tanimoto's signature(s) authenticity (received via email from Tanimoto Peace Foundation) will be provided to buyer post-purchase or upon request.  If any letters are officially determined by an expert NOT to be authentic we will accept return of documents and pay buyer 2x their purchase price.
The letters are all addressed to the same individual Reverend Clarence Avey (1900-94), Athol, MA.  Reverend Avey was an amazing man himself who donated monies and appears to put forth extra effort (probably as a friend of Tanimoto as well) to support The Peace Center's fundraising in the U.S.  The six letters are a mix of financial disclosures and Rev. Tanimoto's detailed reports of the Peace Center's actions, plus many personal thoughts and feelings.  The letters are all postmarked and consist of the following (as numbered by us for purposes of this description):
Ltr #1: Dated Sept. 30, 1952 is 6 typed pages signed by Kiyosi Tanimoto (envelope is also signed) includes cover letter and five pages of Hiroshima Peace Ctr. Associates in America 'Report To The Board of Directors' dated June 21, 1952 by Treasurer Marvin Green, who also served as the Foundation's U.S. Director.
Ltr. #2: Dated April 13, 1953 is 2 typed pages signed letter by Kiyoshi Tanimoto and includes much more personal account by Tanimoto of his struggles and public reaction in Japan.  Also includes signed receipt (mostly in Japanese) to Reverend Avey for his donation of to the Peace Center.
Ltr. #3: Dated May 29, 1953, is single page typed signed letter (letter also serves as envelope) thanking Reverend Avey for another donation and more personal insight regarding efforts and organization and thoughts about communists attempting disrupt his efforts.
Ltr. #4: Dated December 1953 includes typed unsigned 1/2 page generic greeting and 2 1/2 pages of Peace Center Business Report with Financial Stmts.  Also includes Christmas Card with pre-printed greeting from Reverend Tanimoto.
Ltr. #5: Dated July, 1950 (the earliest correspondence in collection) consists of 4 page typed and signed Summary of Tanimoto's trips to the U.S., Financial Stmts., Girls Cultural Arts School and Church Rebuilding efforts.
Ltr. #6: Dated Winter 1952, 3 page printed name (not signed) typed letter entitled 'Let's Give Support to the Keloid Girls (aka Hiroshima Maidens).  Also includes color Christmas card with prep-printed greeting from the Peace Center Foundation.
Conditions of all documents are good to VG.  The correspondence paper is the older thin typewriter paper.  But their conditions are VG they have creases from being folded in envelopes for 70 yrs. but that's about it.  The envelopes are good some slight wear.  The Christmas Cards are good some very slight wear normal with extensive age.  Zoom in on the numerous photos as part of description.
From Wikipedia:
'Kiyoshi Tanimoto was a Methodist minister famous for his work for the Hiroshima Maidens. He was one of the six Hiroshima survivors whose experiences of the bomb and later life are portrayed in John Hersey's book Hiroshima.  Tanimoto converted to Christianity in his youth, opposed by his Buddhist father. He studied at the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, on an international Methodist scholarship. Ordained a minister at Emory University in 1940, he served in churches in California, Okinawa and then Hiroshima.  After the war he went on extensive speaking tours of the US, raising funds for his project of a Hiroshima peace center, and for the Hiroshima Maidens.[1] He appeared on the popular television program This Is Your Life, where he and his family were placed in the uncomfortable position of meeting with Captain Robert A. Lewis, copilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Due to these public activities he developed an unwanted reputation as a publicity seeker and attracted the attention of the US and Japanese authorities as a potential "anti-nuke trouble-maker".  In 1972, he was interviewed by Thames Television, for the 24th episode of the acclaimed British documentary television series, The World at War.  The annual Kiyoshi Tanimoto Peace Prize is named after him.'
More about Reverend Tanimoto and the Hiroshima Maidens:
'The Hiroshima Maidens are a group of 25 Japanese women who were school age girls when they were seriously disfigured as a result of the thermal flash of the fission bomb dropped on Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. They subsequently went on a highly publicized journey to get reconstructive surgery in the US in 1955. Keloid scars from their burns marred their faces and many of their hand burns healed into bent claw-like positions. These women, as well as the other citizens affected by the A-bomb, were referred to as hibakusha, meaning "explosion-affected people". By 1951, Hiroshima bomb survivor Shigeko Niimoto had endured several unsuccessful Japanese operations to repair scarring on her face. Following a Christian church meeting with Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, he invited her to a meeting of bomb-affected people. Upon arriving and finding the meetings discussion too political for her tastes, Niimoto suggested to Rev. Tanimoto that they form a support group for the dozen or so young women who he knew with similar injuries and concerns. Soon they were meeting regularly in the basement of his church. The women had all experienced similar lives following the war, such as being hidden from view by parents, stared at when they ventured outside, unwanted by employers, and rejected as potential wives for fear they were genetically damaged. As Tanimoto had gained some fame in America as a subject of a celebrated 1946 magazine/book article by journalist John Hersey titled Hiroshima, Tanimoto joined American journalists to create a charitable foundation to help victims of Hiroshima and "explore the ways of peace". Hersey, Pearl S. Buck, Norman Cousins and Reverend Marvin Green were Tanimoto's partners in the Hiroshima Peace Centre Foundation. The group of scarred women was one of the foundation's projects, with Tanimoto calling it the Society of Keloid Girls. Following the help from newspaper columnist, Shizue Masugi, Tanimoto began raising funds to get plastic surgery for his group. Newspapers dubbed them genbaku otome, or "atomic bomb maidens", and in 1952 about 20 of them were treated in Tokyo and Osaka. Plastic surgery in Japan was not as advanced as it was in the United States so Tanimoto tried to find a way to get the "maidens" to America. Once aware of his efforts Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins pledged to help Tanimoto. They found two doctors, William Maxwell Hitzig and Arthur Barsky of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, who were willing to supervise the medical operations and on May 5, 1955, a group of 25 women in their teens and twenties departed for America. The more specific nickname for the group – the Hiroshima Maidens – caught on when the women were brought to The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York in the United States to undergo multiple reconstructive surgeries. This highly publicized turn of events was largely the work of Cousins, an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament. Following their arrival, Tanimoto was the subject of the US TV program This Is Your Life on May 11, 1955. Before a studio audience, guests came forward to illustrate pivotal moments in Tanimoto's life. In the line-up were two of the Hiroshima maidens, their faces hidden behind a screen, and most surprising Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the plane, the Enola Gay, that dropped the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima. The full film of this encounter appears to be lost as of 2004. In all, 138 surgeries were performed on 25 women over 18 months during their stay in the US. On their visit, the women lived with a charitable Quaker group of foster parents. Hiroko Tasaka, heard in the following Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) clip, was known as "Champion Surgery Girl" because she had 13 operations, more than anyone else. One maiden, Tomoko Nakabayashi, died of cardiac arrest while undergoing a reconstruction operation on 24 May 1956; the cause was declared by the doctors to have been from complications/errors in the operation, not from radiation effects. Not all the atomic bomb maidens left for the US. Miyoko Matsubara states that she was one of 16 young "Hiroshima maidens" who received surgeries in Tokyo and then Osaka in 1953. After the 10 successful operations, together with 2 other Hiroshima maidens, they were then well enough and thus started work as live-in caretakers to disadvantaged children. When time came in 1955 to travel to Mt. Sinai Hospital in the US, unlike her two colleagues, she did not feel comfortable traveling to the country that bombed her and was "left behind alone". None of the nearly equally disfigured young women at Nagasaki following the Fat Man fission bomb explosion on August 9, 1945, were in the group. There was no comparative Nagasaki Maiden charity organization: there was an effort from US cities to sponsor scarred survivors to travel to receive medical treatment, but this move is said to have been derailed by the US government.  Moreover, when the women traveled to the US, three Hiroshima surgeons came along, to study the American plastic surgery techniques. This medical training was done free of charge. Presumably there were as many scarred boys as there were girls from the Little Boy bomb at Hiroshima, who also could not marry, and who were forced to live in the "twilight society of Hiroshima". They did not receive the same level of media and medical attention received as by the young women.  The use of the term "maiden" reveals the focus was on their attempts to attain romantic prospects with men. A number of the maidens married and became mothers. Some gravitated towards social work. Toyoko Morita attended Parsons School of Design, and later became a well known fashion designer in Japan. One maiden, Masako Tachibana, married and moved to Canada. She was not able to have children. On August 1, 1995, she gave an interview to reporter Len Grant of CBC Television. She said although she was a schoolgirl ordered to demolish buildings to create firebreaks at the time of the bombing, and the bomb's flash ignited her clothes on fire, and it made her vomit (a symptom of acute radiation syndrome) – she was glad the US had dropped the bomb. Tachibana said it was justified because it brought the war to a quicker resolution: Without it she does not believe the Japanese would have surrendered. Instead, more lives would have been lost, possibly close to all of Japan's population.  She is the author of the Japanese book Reaction to the flash.
The number of living Hiroshima maidens/atomic bomb maidens is not generally published separately.'
Again, this is a remarkable historical collection with incredible insight into Japan post WWII, Hiroshima and Mr. Tanimoto's heroic struggles and efforts to raise awareness and assist his fellow countrymen (and women) during a period where very little sympathy or interest existed in the U.S. to help the Japanese.  Shipped fast and FREE signature required.
NON-Returnable.  So, please review photos and description in detail and contact us with any questions.