susan@phs.UUCP (01/27/84)
.nr PO 1i .ce .The Legacy of Nagasaki .PP ..."Months and even years [after the bombing of Nagasaki] physicians saw symptoms of "bomb illness": leukemia; cancers of the breast, lung, thyroid, and salivary glads; and cataracts. Babies irradiated .ul in utero were born with skulls no larger than a monkey's. Some survivors, their bodies turned to sponges as the cells deteriorated, lived on for years. These victims are called .ul hibakusha; 37 years after the bombing there are 370,000 in Japan who continue to die slowly. Among .ul hibakushu, doctors have found up to five times more physical ailments than in the rest of the population. In Nagasaki 60% of hospital beds are filled with bomb survivors; last year in that city 1,800 .ul hibakusha died.....Many "A-bomb orphans" also have been ostracized in this society where belonging to a family group is fundamental socially. Employers have long hesitated to hire .ul hibakusha because of their poor physical condition. The unemployment rate for .ul hibakusha is two to three times the national average. .sp Reprinted without permission, originally appeared in World Press Review 30(10):53, Oct 83. .sp 2 .ce Hiroshima Bomb Yeilds More Secrets .PP ...."The latest results of the work into the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were revealed...by Warren Sinclair, of the American Natl. Council on Radiation & Measurements. He was speaking at the 7th International Council of Radiation Research. Sinclair's work is the most up-to-date research in an investigation that has continued for 38 years. Sinclair's work is unfinished. But he has come to the preliminary conclusion that, at Hiroshima, "the effects [such as cancers] previously attributed to the neutrons now are due to the increased gamma ray dose at the further distances." This means, he said, that scientists have lost the knowledge they thought they had of the long-term effects of neutron radiation. "Thus we are thrust back...to reliance on studies in animals and other biological material." .sp Reprinted without permission, originally appeared in New Scientist 99(1366):83. .PP I submit these articles in reply to a net.news article recently submitted that questioned the deaths in Dresden WWII from standard bombs vs the deaths in Japan from the atomic bomb. .sp S. Feely