Atomic Bomb Japan

Japanese atomic bomb survivors come to Torrance for medical tests

The force of the blast felt like an 18-wheel truck had been dropped on his head, Junji Sarashina said - and when he opened his eyes, he couldn't see or hear a thing.

"It was very scary," Sarashina said of the atomic blast in Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. "It is something that will stay with me forever."

Sarashina, now in his 80s, was about 2 miles from the epicenter of the bomb, dropped by the United States at the close of World War II. He did not suffer any serious physical injuries at the time, but has undergone a battery of medical tests for the past 16 years as part of an effort to track the health effects of radiation exposure.

More than 100 survivors of the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in Torrance this weekend for medical tests, conducted every two years at Providence Little Company of Mary Medical Center and other locations on the West Coast and Hawaii.

Officials said the long-range study will help physicians treat patients and researchers to develop cures for various ailments - lessons of particular interest since the nuclear meltdown in Japan caused by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami

Dr. Akihiko Suyama, part of a team of physicians from Japan visiting for this weekend's examinations, said the exposure levels from the recent meltdown were much different than what survivors of the atomic bombs experienced.

The short-term exposure of the bombs 66 years ago was far higher than the recent scare - so high that the radiation altered the DNA of some of the survivors, he said. The force of the atomic blasts was the equivalent of about 20,000 tons of dynamite.

"What we are seeing today is far less exposure over a longer period of time," he said of radiation that seeped from nuclear reactors on Japan's northeast coast. "We will be studying that. We will have to wait and see what the effects are."

Survivors on Friday described the horror of living through the blasts, and the effects that lingered even after they moved to the United States.

Kaz Suyeishi, president of the American Society of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, said health insurance companies wouldn't offer her coverage when she moved to Hawaii to attend a fashion design school.

"We had to pay cash for everything," she said. "That's a lot of money."

One of the greatest concerns, particularly for women, was whether the radiation would affect their reproductive ability or whether the health effects would be passed on to children.

Background of Japanese Business Development | Business Development ...

When one hears about Japan, luxurious cars, skyscrapers, stock markets, robots, computers, aircrafts and other latest scientific and technological products of the world has always come to his/her mind. However, no one can forget 1945′s tragedy, in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki was deteriorated to the ground by atomic bombs, under the command of U.S President Harry S. Truman.

Comparing the tragedy of atomic bomb explosion with current image of Japan, the lesson of revitalization of Japan after the Second World War is what that everyone shall not ignore. What are the factors that push Japan to its current world status?

Japan is might be luckier than other countries in the world, in that it has nationalistically aspiration leaders. In mid 19th century, while Japan was still under imperialism, in order to make the country survive, Japanese government pioneered three platforms: 1- High military capacity; 2- Swift establishment of capitalism and; 3- Strong education system. The third platform was like what Professor Dr. Seiichiro Yonekura, from the Institute of Innovative Research, Hitotsubashi University, stated “we had no natural resources; gas, mine, oil, … that’s why people are our only resources.” Just in 1890, Japan’s textile exports exceeded imports and up to 1930, Japan had the world’s second highest numbers of registered studies, headed only by the United States.

Unfortunately, the aforesaid developments came to a complete standstill by atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This event forced Japan to resume everything from nothing.

It might be like H.E. SHINOHARA Katsuhiro, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Cambodia said “private sector was our key to success.” After the Second World War, Japan gave up military ambition, staff and work stations hold hands to work together, depend on the United States for security, and the country as a whole came under the administration of Democratic Liberal Party; which all of these led to stable political situation and strong but clean bureaucracy. We can compare the case of stable political situation and strong but clean bureaucracy with China, who has strong bureaucracy, but is not developed as Japan, due to corruption!

From then on, Japanese management system has been open to private sector, as Professor Dr. Seiichiro Yonekura recalled “power of private sector.” By the fact of incentives for power of private sector, four men started Sony company in ruined Tokyo in 1949, and other four men started Honda company in a wooden hut.

Hiroshima

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The making of the atomic bomb

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Atomic bomb, voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki