Monday, May 4, 2009

Pathos and irony...children of radiation and James Yamazaki

Kobayashi Masao

"They fled with their arms raised in front like a procession of ghosts."

Year of Birth: 1899

Age at time of blast: 45

Age when image created: 74


Will humanity learn?

Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physicians Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands

by

James Yamazaki

ISBN-10: 0822316587
ISBN-13: 978-0822316589

Publishers Weekly:

In 1949, the author, a pediatrician and medical researcher, was sent to Japan to study the effects of nuclear radiation, especially on children still in their mothers' wombs when the bomb was detonated. This report takes a medical look at the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and reviews some of the genetic abnormalities resulting from fetal exposure. The author also passes along information about the fate of Marshall Islanders accidentally exposed to radioactive fallout during the 1954 U.S. thermonuclear test at Bikini. This account is more than a medical report, however; Yamazaki relates his personal story as a Japanese American whose parents were treated roughly in a wartime internment camp in Arkansas while their son fought for America in the Battle of the Bulge. Yet the study is the most involving when he discusses the tragic legacy of the atomic bomb and sounds the alarm about the hazards of radiation in all forms. Yamazaki is on the staff of the UCLA medical school....

Children of the Atomic Bomb

James Yamazaki interview

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