Medicine and books

Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physician's Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands

On 6 and 9 August 1945 two atomic bombs vaporised 200000 Japanese civilians. James Yamazaki's book vividly portrays the after effects of the world's most horrific weapons. Fifty years on, cancers and genetic disorders are still claiming victims of the first bombs.

The image of a mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima is probably the most graphic symbol of the postwar period. Unfortunately, that image often hides the human effects of the two bombs and the 2200 or so nuclear tests since. Yamazaki's memoirs include an account of a harrowing meeting with the mothers of pica babies, or children born with severe abnormalities after exposure to radiation in the womb. Ten per cent of these children were born with IQs that were unmeasurably low. In one school in Nagasaki 1284 out of 1324 pupils were killed. In another 622 out of 906 died.

Yamazaki is a Japanese-American paediatrician who was the physician in charge of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) between 1949 and 1951. Before his work with the children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Marshall Islanders (who bore the brunt of American postwar nuclear testing), he tended American troops in Europe and was imprisoned in a German prison camp. His parents too were interned, like thousands of other Japanese, in an American concentration camp.

His period in Nagasaki was a constant battle to overcome both American censorship and pitifully poor conditions.

All previous reports on the effects on the bomb--such as the report of the Joint Commission on the Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb, which examined 8000 survivors--were classified. Japanese researchers were not even allowed to give papers on the after effects of the bomb until 1951. The 102000 feet of film directed by Daniel McGovern, which had the aim of "documenting Japan before the grass turns green" was not released for 38 years, until 1983.

Even without deliberate official obstructionism, Yamazaki's team also had another difficulty. It is easy to forget the medical advances made since 1945, both in the treatment of burns and in the knowledge of and protection from radiation.

In Nagasaki, the real horror of the bomb's effects unfolded. Burns had to be treated with vegetable oil (possibly causing the unique keloid formations on the skin of survivors) as antibiotic penicillin was unobtainable. No information about the risks from fallout was made public, despite the American scientists anticipating them after the first test in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The doctors treating survivors of the bombs were up against tremendous odds. It is a tribute to them that we now know so much about the real effects of atomic weapons.

Something that shocked Yamazaki was the initial hostility that he met in Japan. Many Japanese felt that they were part of an experiment and that the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission wanted information only to protect lives in the event of an atomic attack on America. Their suspicions may have been justified. The commission was set up to undertake long term investigations of the medical and biological effects of exposure to radiation. One of the first memoranda dealing with the medical effects of the bombs stated, "A study of the effects of the two atomic bombs used in Japan is of vital importance to our country [the United States]. This unique opportunity may not again be offered until another world war." By refusing to release medical findings immediately the Americans surely allowed many more Japanese to die.

The saddest thing about this book is not just the incalculable human suffering that resulted from the bomb. It is that decent, humane, and perceptive people such as Yamazaki became part of the living laboratory that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki.--DAVID NOLAN, journalist, London

View larger version (114K): [in this window] [in a new window]   In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, August 1945

David Nolan 

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