THE HUMAN DEBRIS THE BOMB LEFT

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 5

THE HUMAN DEBRIS THE BOMB LEFT

(By IRA MORRIS in the "New Statesman”. Reprinted by arrangement.) II H the arrival of the twentieth anniversary of Hiroshima’s destruction, it is pertinent to assess the medium-range effects of the world’s first annihilation bomb.

i j v,s,tor toda Y find a new Hiroshima standing, with crow ded streets, modern shops and even miniature skyscrapers—proof of a city’s Phoenix-like ability to rise from the ashes. Indeed, I liroshima now ranks among the country’s 10 metropoles and forms a centre of the burgeoning Japanese automobile industry.

But it is not the same Hiroshima, nor do its inhabitants, who flowed in from rural districts and the former dominions overseas, resemble the pre-war population.

Among them the | survivors form an I ever - diminishing ! minority, resentful and resented, too sick to J work but not yet sick I enough to die—a I ghost population ' haunted by memories ! of flame and thunder. ! The "pikadon"—literally! "flash-bang"—has seared their minds as it seared their bodies, leaving ugly wounds' coated by yet uglier keloid | scars. There are a 100,000 socalled hibakusha in the Hiroshima area, add or subtract' 10.000 because of conflicting, statistics: a somewhat larger! number are scattered through-i out the country, about half of them in and around! Nagasaki. But wherever they live, whatever they do. these quarter million have one thing in common: they are vnwell. This is an essential truth. frequently denied though it be. They suffer from an elusive and indefinable malady which has become known as burabura: "the do-nothing sickness.” Incurably Sick There is no recovery from burabura: even the Japanese Welfare Ministry has been obliged to classify its victims as invalids, with the same status as leukemia and aplastic anaemia patients. While their blood count may be normal, while they may at first sight seem healthy, the burabura patients—read, the surviving irradiated population are sick people, assailed periodically by nausea, dizziness, severe palpitations, loss of memorv.

When the Tellers and the | Franz Josef Strauss’s assure (us that even a world-wide atomic holocaust will leave 'survivors capable of rebuilding our w’orld in a matter of! years, it is useful to remind! ourselves that those “lucky”| [survivors will be burabura' ! patients. [American radiation speci-j alists have estimated that! half of those left living! after an all-out atomic attack! would later die of radio-1 activity, while the remainder! would have their life span shortened by at least 11 j years.] Leukaemia Deaths Of course, a large number i of the hibakusha are afflicted! with more diagnosable ailments: the radiation wards of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Red Cross hospitals are overfull. with long waiting lists of invalids in semi-critical condition. While leukaemia was until recently the main cause of death among survivors—be- j tween six and ten times the national average—this ailment has now tapered off, to be replaced by bone and organic cancer, whose incubation period is longer. Cancer among the survivors is now between two and two and a half times as frequent as in other Hiroshimans. The prevalence of the malady in this category of the population proves almost conclusively that ionizing radiation which invaded the cells just 20 years ago is the cause of the fatal cancers that declare themselves today. Prevalent also among the survivors is an abnormally large incidence of circulatory diseases, such as cerebral hemorrhage and asthma, liver trouble, endocrine disorders and ulcers: all these contribute to the high death rate of the hibakusha, as well as to! premature senility.

Small wonder, then, that these people are afflicted with neuroses and see in every minor indisposition a forewarning of disaster: unable to enjoy the present, they look to the future with misgivings. In many cases the fear of producing tainted offspring has become an obsession, preventing them from marrying and motivating many suicides and voluntary sterilisations. While the ratio of abnormal babies born to survivors is only slightly above the average, it is well known that genetic damage is more apt to declare itself in the second and succeeding generations: also, many still-births of monsters remain unrecorded. So, in point of fact, the survivors are right, despite the annual assurances isued by the A.8.C.C., an Americancontrolled, Hiroshima-based investigation unit, that there is no circumstantial evidence that radiation from the bomb has produced either genetic damage or a lowered life expectancy.

One of the confusing factors in attempting to assess the A-bomb’s effect is the startling discrepancy between the findings of this “Atom Bomb Casualty Commission" and those of independent Japanese and foreign investigators. Played Down From its very inception, while Hiroshima still lay in ruins, the A.B.C.C. has minimised the genetic and health consequences of the bomb, consistent with the policy of all nuclear powers to make the eventual use of atomic weapons palatable to the general public. The hibakusha’s lot is indeed a hard one. Their uncertain health and near-

constant state of fatigue limit their earning capacity, often reducing them to penury. They are engaged largely in casual employment on city projects; comparatively few are capable of holding regular or taxing jobs. They are regarded with suspicion, if not enmity, by their fellow-citizens, many of whom still believe that “atomic illness" is contagious. Not only are marriages to hibakusha frowned on by Hiroshima families, but even casual contact is avoided. While this discrimination is, of course, unofficial, they yet find themselves more or less excluded from public facilities, particularly the public baths. And regular hot baths are very important for the Japanese, especially in winter, when they have a genuine therapeutic value. Little Help Little public help has been accorded the survivors, and none at all before the passage of the Atom-bomb Patients Relief Act of 1956. They are now entitled to free medical treatment, and in the case of total inability to work receive a dole amounting in no case to over 3000 yen (£2 16s) a family a month. Even by Japanese standards, this is not munificent. There has been much agitation to increase this official stipend and, equally important, to make it a permanent, rather than a temporary, allocation. But the hibakusha remain, to all intent, the forgotten sufferers. As the years pass and the original adult survivors die off, leaving descendants who will produce offspring in their turn, we shall be in a better position to judge the longerrange effects of the pikadon. Will we be assessing a generation of Hiroshimans besprinkled with monsters and imbeciles and creatures lacking some essential organ? The geneticists reserve judgment, but it seems certain that the tragedy of the irradiated is far from ended. Those two explosions over cities, and the scores that followed over deserts and seas, will be paid for by tens of thousands of yet unborn martyrs, victims of humanity’s most horrifying and useless experiments.