Contrary to the views expressed at the discussion mentioned in my previous blog, Dr.Hida Shuntaro, a physicist now 95, has been stressing the significance of understanding the internal exposure. I have recently seen a 53-minute documentary on him, entitled Atomic Wounds, made by a French director Mac Petitjean in 2006. Most of the following are from the scenes of the film. The rest is from a 20-minute film which edited his lectures after the 11 March nuclear accident.
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Hida, 28, was in the military barracks there as a physician. He immediately took his cycle to head for the city, and saw hundreds of people walking for help with their skin coming off from the bodies. Some days later his father came looking for him but could not find him as he was busily engaged in rescue work. His family decided that he had been lost, and had a funeral for him!
Hida is still critical of the US for dropping the bomb, as, in his view, they did so to threaten the Soviets, and they fixed the time at 8:15 in the morning, as they had found by their reconnaissance flight that it was the time when maximum number of people were out on the street.
The US, moreover, set up a research institute known as ABCC. It examined 120,000 people. It, however, tried to cure no one, which was not their interest. All the data were sent to the US. The bodies of the dead there were minutely anatomized and sent also. The photos of the destruction taken by the Japanese were confiscated. The publication of research on the victims was prohibited after 1951(Japan was under occupation till April 1952).
According to Hida, the patients who were hospitalized began to suffer from high fever, to show purple spots, and to vomit blood after several weeks, although they were not burnt at all. This was due to the low-level radioactivity, but it was made clear only in the 70s. It can be explained only on the basis of the intake into the body by food, drink, and breathing of very tiny radioactive particles.
Hida says that the experiences from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all that there is to analyze these phenomena. He himself began to suffer a sudden attack of pain at his waist which disabled him from walking. This was shortly before he became 40. He seems to be walking all right now.
Thousands of people have developed some cancerous symptoms after 50-60 years of the bombs. It is not possible to prove that it is due to the radioactivity. But the number itself is the proof.
We should not have nuclear plants, let alone bombs. Why no plants? It is because Japan has not much land-space. It has been reported in the US that the breast cancer has increased in 1,300 counties out of the total of 3,000. The only factor common to these 1,300 is that they are within 100 miles of nuclear reactors. If the same standard is to be applied here, all the land will be easily within the radius.
The only way to fight the radioactivity, Hida emphasizes, is to rise early, retire early, to exercise, to have sunbeams, in a nutshell to go back to more natural life-style, and by so doing to acquire general immunity.
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Hida, 28, was in the military barracks there as a physician. He immediately took his cycle to head for the city, and saw hundreds of people walking for help with their skin coming off from the bodies. Some days later his father came looking for him but could not find him as he was busily engaged in rescue work. His family decided that he had been lost, and had a funeral for him!
Hida is still critical of the US for dropping the bomb, as, in his view, they did so to threaten the Soviets, and they fixed the time at 8:15 in the morning, as they had found by their reconnaissance flight that it was the time when maximum number of people were out on the street.
The US, moreover, set up a research institute known as ABCC. It examined 120,000 people. It, however, tried to cure no one, which was not their interest. All the data were sent to the US. The bodies of the dead there were minutely anatomized and sent also. The photos of the destruction taken by the Japanese were confiscated. The publication of research on the victims was prohibited after 1951(Japan was under occupation till April 1952).
According to Hida, the patients who were hospitalized began to suffer from high fever, to show purple spots, and to vomit blood after several weeks, although they were not burnt at all. This was due to the low-level radioactivity, but it was made clear only in the 70s. It can be explained only on the basis of the intake into the body by food, drink, and breathing of very tiny radioactive particles.
Hida says that the experiences from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are all that there is to analyze these phenomena. He himself began to suffer a sudden attack of pain at his waist which disabled him from walking. This was shortly before he became 40. He seems to be walking all right now.
Thousands of people have developed some cancerous symptoms after 50-60 years of the bombs. It is not possible to prove that it is due to the radioactivity. But the number itself is the proof.
We should not have nuclear plants, let alone bombs. Why no plants? It is because Japan has not much land-space. It has been reported in the US that the breast cancer has increased in 1,300 counties out of the total of 3,000. The only factor common to these 1,300 is that they are within 100 miles of nuclear reactors. If the same standard is to be applied here, all the land will be easily within the radius.
The only way to fight the radioactivity, Hida emphasizes, is to rise early, retire early, to exercise, to have sunbeams, in a nutshell to go back to more natural life-style, and by so doing to acquire general immunity.
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