Humanitarian Aid or Private Diplomacy? Norman Cousins and the Treatment of Atomic Bomb Victims

Individual citizens can often wield considerable influence in international affairs. In 1955, prominent American journalist Norman Cousins launched an initiative to bring 25 Japanese victims of the atomic bomb to the United States to receive treatment. The U.S. State Department made concerted efforts to stop the project, fearing that it would generate negative publicity and conflict with government policy to de-emphasize the dangers of nuclear weapons. Refusing to accept official policies that he believed to be wrong, while at the same time working to “shame” the United States into providing treatment for atomic bomb victims, Cousins used his international contacts, prestige, and the reputation he had built in Japan as a humanitarian, to overcome the U.S. State Department’s attempts to stop the project.The overwhelming success of Cousins’ private diplomacy initiative resulted in greatly improved U.S.-Japanese relations and eventually garnered Cousins a letter of commendation from the White House and an honorary citizenship in the city of Hiroshima.This article highlights an early instance of citizen diplomacy during the atomic age. It shows how an individual civilian balancing the delicate issues of humanitarian aid, sensitive international relations, and protest against official government policy, managed to have a major impact and achieve both a positive political outcome in the United States as well as improved relations with a foreign nation.