6-2-1-7Support from Overseas

Norman Cousins, a leader of the moral adoption program, holding a child on Ninoshima Island
January 9, 1951 Courtesy of The Chugoku Shimbun

As people in and out of Japan learned of the devastation in Hiroshima, aid began to flow in, largely from people who had emigrated from Hiroshima Prefecture to Hawaii or the Americas before the war. Residents living overseas privately “adopted” children in Hiroshima who had lost their parents. A program called “moral adoption” helped individuals overseas pay the living expenses of orphans.