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After the Bomb Section 1 www.AtomicBombMuseum.org/4_survivors.shtml

THE SURVIVORS 1. How many survived?

A broad accounting of survivors takes into account several groups: (1) directly exposed persons (primary victims), (2) fetuses exposed in their mothers’ wombs, (3) indirectly exposed persons affected by residual radiation (secondary victims), including (4) early entrants into the two cities and (5) fallout victims in areas where the “black rain” fell. Besides these, “victims” included another large group: (6) “others affected” (tertiary victims) by loss of spouse, close relatives, and housing and household furnishings.

While it is impossible to tally all who fall within these various groupings, a national survey of October 1950

gives a national survivor total of 283,508, with 158,597 for Hiroshima, 124,167 for Nagasaki, and 10 persons who experienced both bombings.

Of Hiroshima’s survivors, 79 percent lived in Hiroshima Prefecture, of whom 98,102 (79%) resided in

Hiroshima City. Comparable figures for Nagasaki survivors were 111,294 (89%) in its prefecture, with 96,582 (77%) living in the city.

Another useful accounting of survivors is those treated under the A-bomb Victims Medical Care Law (1957),

which showed a gradual increase in those treated.

* Registered A-bomb victims: nationwide, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. (Impact, p.145) 2. Physical and mental suffering

Survivors suffered a wide variety of physical complaints and symptoms, as shown in a chart based on 1953 data.

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*Observed complaints and symptoms among exposed survivors over 8-year period. (Impact, 147) Main disorders detected by periodic health examinations of 11,470 ambulatory A-bomb survivors, as of 1971, are shown in Table 27.

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*Case counts by disorder among total of treated survivors in Hiroshima. (Impact, 149)

The number of patients with serious diseases hospitalized in Hiroshima A-bomb Hospital in the period 1956–65 was 2,259, and over the years to 1974 the grand total was 5.350 (yearly average: 296). These cases covered a wide range of malignancies and various blood, endocrinological, digestive, cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological and renal diseases, as well as motor dysfunctions and sequelae due to foreign matter.

3. Marked forever

“The fate of all survivors is to live with the stigma that the atomic bomb stamped permanent marks on their minds and bodies.”

It imposed on them an abhorrent lifelong burden, one to live with yet try to overcome. One way of dealing with this burden was to write one’s own personal testimony about trying to get on with life.

I hated for people to stare at me…. Yet, every nerve in my body was attuned to the outside world; and to avoid even the slightest sinister look, I walked with a rigid on-guard posture…. Even so, I secluded myself at home and spent hours before the mirror, looking at my own face. What I saw was ugly hunks of flesh, like lava oozing from a crater wall, covering the left half of my face, with the eyebrow burned off and my eye pulled out of shape. My neck was pulled over to one side, and however much I tried to straighten it out, it wouldn’t move back to the normal position. (Nakayama Shiro, Shi no kage [The Shadow of Death]) A boy in my class was burned by the flash; The hair was gone from half his head, It was slick as glass. A younger student in a lower grade Was called “tempura, tempura” by all; He covered his face with one hand As he ran down he hall. Someday they’ll grow up, and . . . I thought,

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What will it be like then? (“Tempura” is deep-fried fish or vegetables) * Both quotes from Impact, p. 152-53 4. Breakdown of families

Life differed somewhat in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki according to one’s residence or physical presence at bombing times, whether city center or surrounding zones. A main concern for all was the rupture of household bonds due to loss of members, and also whether one’s residence was burned or demolished. Loss of parents or other household heads left both “A-bomb orphans” and “the orphaned elderly.” 5. A-bomb Orphans

It is not clear how many A-bomb orphans were in either city. People involved in helping some of them in

Hiroshima reported “6,500 orphans” following the bombing. Estimates based on evacuation data (most children had been sent to the countryside during wartime) indicate between 4,000 and 5,000 orphans in Hiroshima. Records for Nagasaki are especially scarce. Some schools reported registered pupils without known living parents, yet many cried and called for their mothers.

*Two boys looking for their father soon after Nagasaki bombing. (Yamahata Yosuke)

The care of orphans wandering and loitering in the city, as well as those left in countryside evacuation sites, became an urgent problem. Teachers and Buddhists in Hiroshima took the lead in helping them in that city; in Nagasaki, the Roman Catholics made stellar efforts in the care of A-bomb orphans. Then in 1949, programs for financial support of some as “adopted” foster children was initiated by Norman Cousins in the U.S., and from 1952 by Arata Osada in Japan.

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For teenagers in Hiroshima, Professor and Mrs. Seiichi Nakano formed the support group called Ayumi (“Moving on”) to provide counsel and support for these A-bomb orphans. Even so, many were beyond these helping hands; and while some managed to get along well in life, not a few succumbed to delinquency, sickness, and even suicide.

Fortunately, this population group decreased over time; unlike the next, which increased as time passed.

*Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature and advocate of “moral adoption” visiting Ninoshima Orphanage near Hiroshima, January 9, 1951. (Chugoku, The Meaning of Survival, 91)

6. The orphaned elderly

Thousands of older persons, whether they suffered the atomic bombings or escaped them by being evacuated

to the countryside, lost spouses and children and thus had no one to depend upon. Their numbers increased with the passage of postwar years.

An October 1960 survey of A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that victims age 70 and

over were 6.6% of Hiroshima’s population and 5.8% of Nagasaki’s. The aged groups as a whole were only 1.4% in Hiroshima and 1.3% in Nagasaki. Some had employment or were self-employed; but many were without income sources. And many suffered illness or disability.

Of 31 suicides by A-bomb survivors nationwide in the five-year period 1970–75, Hiroshima Prefecture

claimed 25, of whom 8 were orphaned elderly victims, for whom illness was the major motive.

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*A-bomb orphans with elderly Catholic priest at Hiroshima Railroad Station, Jan. 10, 1946. (Impact, 158)

*An elderly couple living in a makeshift shack, November 1952. (Photo by Yuichiro Sasaki, in Impact, 159)

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Section 2 www.AtomicBombMuseum.org/4_ruins.shtml

LIFE IN THE RUINS Hiroshima’s population, down to roughly 83,000 soon after the bombing, swelled to 169,000 by February of 1946. But only some 6,500 lived in the city’s center, i.e., within Close space 1 kilometer of ground zero. For several years more, population growth was concentrated at the same remove from the city’s devastated center. The increase was largely due to the return of evacuated persons, civilians repatriated from overseas colonies, and demobilized military personnel.

* Photo: Ruined residence, Hiroshima (HIMAT 32)

The sudden population expansion, however, caused acute shortages of food and shelter. Many A-bomb survivors faced death from starvation and exposure unless something was done soon. As early as December of 1945, however, a council of “war victims’ associations” had been convened to regulate distribution of lumber, nails and glass panes, as well as charcoal and electrical heating devices. The council also dealt with immediate issues such as care of orphans, community bathhouses, and use of warehouses in neighboring towns for community housing.

*Temporary tents by a river in Hiroshima (HPMM)

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When food scarcity became especially acute in the summer of 1946, the city imposed compulsory

evacuation of 50,000 people to surrounding farm villages, and arranged for relief rice supplies to be provided.

In Nagasaki, reconstruction proceeded slowly. It was the latter half of 1946 before the first simple emergency dwellings were provided in various communities. Such fell far short, however, of meeting desperate housing needs. As late as 1950, applicants for corporate dwellings exceeded availability by ninety times.

*Mother nursing in remains of Nagasaki dwelling. (Yamahata) Reconstruction Gets Under Way Meantime, the national government in November 1945 adopted a “war disaster reconstruction plan” for rebuilding 119 war-devastated cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This enabled Hiroshima to plan for the restoration of its central area, covering 1.3 million square meters and accommodating an estimated 350,000 people. Nagasaki likewise projected a new city concept that would abandon its old war industries, focusing rather on revival of foreign trade, shipbuilding, and fishing industries.

These plans did not bear fruit, however, until the National Diet (parliament) in May 1949 passed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Reconstruction Law and the Nagasaki International Culture City Reconstruction Law. These laws went into effect on the two cities’ respective bombing anniversary dates, August 6 and August 9. Long-term Medical Care and Relief

1. The first desperate years Wartime care for casualties and hospitalization were based on national laws of 1942 that provided only minimal help for two months. The majority of patients needing emergency care were housed temporarily in schools, but they had to be evacuated as children returned from outlying areas and needed to enroll.

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The acute stage of A-bomb injuries reached a peak by the end of December 1945, making the situation desperate. A few Japanese and U.S. army medical facilities were taken over for treatment of A-bomb victims. 2. The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Back in November 1944, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey had been formed to conduct an investigation of bombing effects in Germany; on August 15, 1945, President Truman expanded its mission to investigate effects at all bombing sites in Japan. Its staff included 350 officers, 500 noncommissioned officers, and 300 civilians. In November 1946, Truman ordered a more focused study of A-bomb injuries by a newly founded Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). It studied a wide range of injuries: cancer, leukemia, shortened life-span, loss of vigor, growth and developmental disorders, sterility, genetic alteration, abnormal pigmentation, hair loss, and epidemiological changes. The existing Japan National Institute of Health (JNIH) was ordered to assist ABCC. Located first in Hiroshima’s Ujina township, the ABCC moved in November 1950 to the top of Hiroshima’s highest hill, Hijiyama. In Nagasaki it was based in the Nagasaki Health Center.

*Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on Hijiyama hill, Hiroshima. Chugoku, Survival, 93) While ABCC generated a wide range of scientific and medical studies, it offered no medical care to the A-bombed citizens of either city. Individuals were ordered to report to the ABCC facilities for examination, and often were picked up by U.S. army vehicles. This procedure did not elicit positive attitudes among the Japanese. After the American Occupation ended in 1952, Japanese health officials recognized certain limitations of the ABCC program, and set up the A-bomb Aftereffects Research Council in JNIH, and it in turn sought the cooperation of the two cities’ Casualty Councils (see next). 3. A-bomb Casualty Councils, function and funding

Seven years after the bombings, independent citizens’ movements arose to form A-bomb Casualty Councils in Hiroshima in early 1953 and in Nagasaki about the same time. Funds were raised to provide free care for distressed patients and subsidies for others. The councils were chaired by the mayors of the two cities, and fund-raising campaigns were assisted by Japan’s Central Community Chest and by the national broadcasting corporation (NHK). A ten-day nationwide campaign in August 1953 raised over five million yen for A-bomb patient care.

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4. A-bomb Victims Medical Care Law National concern escalated in 1954 when radioactive fallout from an American H-bomb test at Bikini Island

in the Pacific fell on the Japanese fishing boat “Lucky Dragon No. 5.” [See next section] Public protest aroused by this incident stimulated the national parliament (Diet) to allocate 12,442,000 yen

in 1955 and 25,682,000 yen in 1956 to cover A-bomb victims’ medical expenses. This then led to passage of the national A-bomb Victims Medical Care Law in 1957, with an initial allocation of 267,493,000 yen (trimmed later to 174,589,000 yen). Passage of this law stimulated formal establishment of the A-bomb Casualty Councils in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the national economy recovered, various provisions for livelihood relief, welfare measures, and remedial surgery were made.

*Pathological A-bomb specimens, Nagasaki Medical School, 1984. (DT, 8) 5. Advocacy of an A-bomb Victims Relief Law

Public awareness and concern peaked in 1966 with passage of the A-bomb Victims Special Measures Law, based on the consensus that A-bomb victims experienced unusually severe hardships and injuries. This law provided special allowances for such needs as medical care, nursing, health maintenance, burials, and severe livelihood difficulties.

A 1980 review by the Health and Welfare Ministry, however, reversed this stand, reasoning that “the general

sacrifices of war were suffered by all the people,” and thus “there must be no pronounced inequality between policy for A-bomb victims and that for war victims in general.”

Of far less concern, unfortunately, were the many Koreans living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at bombing

times. Of some 50,000 living in Hiroshima, about 20,000 died in the bombing; and about 27,000 returned to Korea. Of the 12,000–14,000 Koreans in the bombed area of Nagasaki, 1,500 to 2,000 are believed to have died. Most of the rest returned to Korea. Then, in the Japan–Republic of Korea Normalization Treaty of 1965, Korea relinquished all claims against Japan, leaving Korean A-bomb victims still there without access to Japanese legal provisions for A-bomb victims.

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*Korean A-bomb victims with Korea-born Eiichi Hashimoto (back, right), then principal of Hiroshima Jogakuin High School. (HIMAT) The same difficulties applied even more to lesser numbers of Chinese and other Asians, as well as to Japanese-Americans (with U.S. citizenship) who were working or studying in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at bombing times.

Last Modified on 12/1/2005 Copyright© 2005 AtomicBombMuseum.org