Illegitimate sufferers: A-bomb victims, medical science, and the government

Daedalus

Volumn 128, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 67-100

  Todeschini, Maya ^a  

^a ÉCOLE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; ATOMIC BOMB; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY; JAPAN; LEGAL ASPECT; PERSONNEL; POLICY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; PUBLIC HEALTH; RADIATION; RADIATION INJURY; RADIATION RESPONSE; RADIOACTIVITY; SOLDIER; SURVIVOR; UNITED STATES; WAR;

GOVERNMENT; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; JAPAN; MILITARY PERSONNEL; NUCLEAR WEAPONS; PUBLIC HEALTH; PUBLIC POLICY; RADIATION; RADIATION GENETICS; RADIATION INJURIES; RADIOACTIVITY; RESEARCH PERSONNEL; SURVIVORS; UNITED STATES; WORLD WAR II;

EID: 33751212479     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. The term "hibakusha" includes people who were in the two cities at the time of the bombings, those who were contaminated by radioactive fallout in the days following the explosion, and people affected in utero. There are about 350,000 officially registered hibakusha in Japan today, and they include foreign nationals (especially Koreans). Today, the same term (though written differently in Japanese characters) is applied increasingly to other radiation victims and survivors of nuclear fallout or power-plant accidents all over the world. It is in the same spirit that I use the term as it is, without italics.
2. Among the most serious after-effects are cancers, blood disorders including leukemia, and eye cataracts. A large group of "divergent conditions" are attributed to ionizing radiation, including keloids (hypertrophic burn scars), anemia, liver diseases, endocrine and skin disorders, impairment of central nervous system function, and general weakness. For a detailed summary of the bomb's physical effects, see Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (henceforth, Committee), Hiroshima and Nagasaki - The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, trans. Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 105-334.
3. Henry Vyner's study of "atomic veterans," for example, bears out many similarities in psychological responses between U.S. and Japanese radiation victims. "The Psychological Effects of Ionizing Radiation," Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 7 (3) (1983).
4. Burakumin are associated with trades that have an intimate relationship with the pollution of blood and death, such as butchery, tanning, and the disposal of corpses.
5. Cf. the Dædalus issue on "Social Suffering" 125 (1) (Winter 1996), which presents recent scholarly work on contemporary experiences and appropriations of suffering in a variety of cultural contexts.
6. Hayashi is one of the most prolific hibakusha authors today. She has produced several autobiographical collections centering on the experiences of hibakusha women. The Osaka group, founded by three women in 1967, is currently one of the most active self-help groups in Japan. It not only publishes members' experiences but also is involved in advocacy and counseling on behalf of hibakusha. The Yamashita group, also founded in 1967, has published a series of booklets in which members tell of the bomb's impact on their daily lives and also level a larger critique against Japanese society: Asa (Morning) (1967-1985: privately published).
7. See Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 503-504.
8. See Wilfred Burchett, Shadows of Hiroshima (London: Verso, 1983), 19-20.
9. See Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 509,
10. and Averill A. Liebow, Encounter with Disaster: A Medical Diary of Hiroshima, 1945 (New York: Norton, 1985).
11. For analyses of censorship, see Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed (New York: Sharpe, 1990)
12. and Jay Rubin, "La bombe 'outil de paix,'" in Maya Todeschini, ed., Hiroshima 50 ans: Japon-Amérique, mémoires au nucléaire (Paris: Autrement, 1995).
13. City of Corpses (Shikabane no machi, 1948), trans. and presented by Richard H. Minear, Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
14. Hayashi Kyôko, "Naki ga gotoki" (As Though Nothing, 1980), in Kakusensô no kiken o uttaeru bungakusha no seimei no shômeisha, eds., Nihon no genbaku bungaku (Japanese A-bomb Literature) (Tokyo: Horupu Shuppan, 1983), vol. 3, 367.
15. In one study on pregnant women exposed within 2,000 meters of the hypocenter, nearly 25 percent of the fetuses were stillborn, 26 percent died at birth or shortly thereafter, and 25 percent exhibited mental retardation. Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 218-219.
16. Ibid., 156, 219.
17. "Shôwa nijûnen no natsu" (Summer 1945), in Kaku-sensô no kiken o uttaeru bungakusha no seimei no shômeisha, Nihon no genbaku bnngaku, vol. 3, 258-276, and Naki ga gotoki, 291.
18. Hayashi, Naki ga gotoki, 339.
19. For discussions of pollution beliefs in connection with illness, see Emiko Namihira, "Pollution in the Folk Belief System," Current Anthropology 28 (4) (1987): 65-74;
20. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984);
21. and Margaret Lock, East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
22. Françoise Héritier argues that sterility and other disorders of reproductive function are almost universally attributed to women. "Stérilité, aridité, sécheresse," in Marc Augé and Claudine Herzlich, eds., Le Sens du mal, Anthropologie, histoire, sociologie de la malaide (Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 1984), 129-133.
23. Mitsuharu Inoue, "The House of Hands," in Kenzaburo Oe, ed., The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 145.
24. Kamisaka Fuyuko, Amami no genbaku otome (The A-bomb Maidens of Amami) (Tokyo: Chûôkôron, 1987), focuses on a group of keloid-scarred young women, natives from a small rural community on Amami Island, who are excluded by villagers who feared that their keloids could be transmitted by airborne infection.
25. For an examination of depictions in film of leukemic female hibakusha, see Maya Todeschini, "Death and the Maiden: Female Hibakusha as Cultural Heroines, and the Politics of A-bomb Memory," in Mick Broderick, ed., Hihakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996).
26. The 1993 statistics reveal that a third of all female hibakusha applied for medical aid with complaints of blood disorders, compared to 10 percent of male hibakusha.
27. Cf. Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 293-296,
28. and Hôshasen-hibakusha-iryô-kokusai-kyôryoku-suishin- kyôgikai, ed., Genbaku-hôshasen no jintai-eikyô (A-bomb Radiation Effects on the Human Body) (Tokyo: Igaku-shoshû-shuppansha, 1992).
29. Hayashi, Naki ga gotoki, 145.
30. Studies focused on spermatogenesis, menstrual function, and disorders of pregnancy and childbirth. In all cases, reproductive functions, both male and female, were found to have been at least temporarily disturbed. See Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 151-156.
31. "Procession on a Cloudy Day," trans. Kashiwagi Hirosuke, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25 (1) (1993): 61.
32. Cf. Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 212-214.
33. The ABCC was established by presidential directives, placed under the direction of the National Academy of Sciences, and supported by funds from the Armed Forces and the Atomic Energy Commission. The RERF is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare.
34. See M. Susan Lindee, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors of Hiroshima (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 122.
35. RERF, Radiation Effects Research Foundation: A Brief Description (Hiroshima: RERF, 1991).
36. Matsuzaka Yoshimasa, "ABCC ni kansuru kenkyû-nôto" (Research Notes on the ABCC), Hiroshima igaku 35 (4) (1982): 551.
37. See, especially, Nakagawa Yasuo, "Hiroshima-Nagasaki no genbaku hôshasen eikyô kenkyû: Kyûseishi, kyûsci-shôgai no kashô-hyôka" (A Historical Reexamination of the Investigations into Atomic Radiation Effects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Underestimation of Acute Radiation Effects, Including Acute Radiation Death), Kagakushi-kenyû 25 (1986): 20-34;
38. and Sugihara Yasuo, "ABCC mondai ni tsuite" (On the Problem of the ABCC), Nihon no kagakusba 2 (3) (1967): 232.
39. "Nakagawa Yasuo, "Hiroshima-Nagasaki no genbaku hôshasen eikyô kenkyû: Kyûseishi, kyûsei-shôgai no kashô-hyôka," 131.
40. For example, researchers chose to focus only on mutations believed to be "threatening for the future survival of the species," and thus investigated certain indicators (such as sex ratio, lower birth weight or retarded growth, and higher rates of malformation, stillbirth, and neonatal death) while rejecting others (such as reduced fertility or sterility, early spontaneous abortion, and minor malformations). Lindee, Suffering Made Real, 178-179, 223, 228.
41. Cf. Frank Barnaby, "The Continuing Body Count at Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (December 1977).
42. Mortality from leukemia peaked between 1950 and 1954; for those exposed to high doses of radiation, it was more than thirty times higher compared with those who were not exposed. The incidence of leukemia declined steadily after-wards but remained seven times higher between 1965 and 1971. See Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 240, 255-261.
43. Hayashi, Naki ga gotoki, 366.
44. See Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 175-185.
45. George M. Naglehurst, "An Appraisal of Atomic Bomb Stress and Its Possible Relationship to Present Health and Longevity of People Exposed in Hiroshima Ten Years Ago," 1955, unpublished report, courtesy of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Memorial Collection, Wilmington College, Ohio.
46. Lindee, Suffering Made Real, 257.
47. The same point is made in Hugh Gusterson's study of nuclear weapons scientists, Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
48. Hayashi, Naki ga gotoki, 316.
49. Quoted in "50 Years Later, Scope of A-bombs' Horror is Unclear," International Herald Tribune, 7 August 1995.
50. Elliot Marshall, "Study Casts Doubt on Hiroshima Data," Science 258 (16 October 1992): 394.
51. Hayashi, "No ni" (In the Field), Gyaman Biidoro (Cut Glass, 1978),
52. in Kakusensô no kiken o uttaeru bungakusha no seimei no shômeisha, Nihon no genbaku bungaku, vol. 3, 243.
53. "Watashi no genbaku-shô" (My A-bomb Disease, 1955), in Kaku-sensô no kiken o uttaeru bungakusha no seimei no shômeisha, Nihon no genbaku bungaku, vol. 2, 305.
54. See Margaret Lock, "Protests of a Good Wife and Wise Mother: The Medicalization of Distress in Japan," in E. Norbeck and M. Lock, eds., Health, Illness, and Medical Care in Japan: Cultural and Social Dimensions (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987).
55. Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Basic Books, 1967), 119.
56. Henry Vyner argues that U.S. atomic veterans suffer from a pathological disorder due to their anxieties about radiation effects, the "Radiation Response Syndrome" (RRS). He notes the similarities between RRS and "A-bomb Neurosis." Vyner, "The Psychological Effects of Ionizing Radiation."
57. Ôca, "Watashi no genbaku-shô," 305-306.
58. Cf. Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman, "Suffering and Its Professional Transformation," Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 15 (3) (1991): 275-301.
59. Cf. Stephan Salzberg, "In a Dark Corner: Care for the Mentally Ill in Japan," Social Science in Japan (2) (1994).
60. Kôseishô-hoken-iryô-kyoku-kikaku-ka (Welfare Ministry Health Protection Section), Atarashii hibakusha engo-hô no pointo (The Important Points in the New Hibakusha Relief Law) (Tokyo: Gyôsei, 1995), 38. This amount includes medical and economic benefits for hibakusha.
61. This refers to an old custom in some poor mountain villages where old people were apparently left to die by the villagers. The well-known movie Ballads of Narayama fictionalizes this theme.
62. Committee, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 428, 458.
63. For an anthropological analysis of the politics of memory in Hiroshima, see Lisa Yoneyama, "Taming the Memoryscape: Hiroshima's Urban Renewal," in J. Boyarin, ed., Remapping Memory: The Politics of Time/Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
64. Kôseishô-hoken-iryô-kyoku-kikaku-ka, Atarashii hibakusha engo-hô no pointo.
65. Cf. Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1994).
66. Cf. Mihon-gensuibaku-higaisha-dantai-kyôgikai (Hidankyô: Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers), Hibakusha engo-hô: 20-mon, 20-tô (The Hibakusha Relief Law: 20 Questions, 20 Answers), Tokyo, 1992.
67. For a summary and critique of the report, see Ishida Chû, Genbaku to ningen: Engo-hô to wa nani ka (The A-bomb and Human Beings: The Meaning of the Relief Law) (Tokyo: Kikanshi-rengô-tsûshinsha, 1983), 22-26.
68. Kôseishô-hoken-iryô-kyoku-kikaku-ka, Atarashii engo-hô no pointo, 1.
69. Quoted in Ishida, Genbaku to ningen, 23.
70. Cf. "Nevada's Nuclear Legacy," Boston Globe, 26 February 1989.
71. Cf. "Atomic bomb victim bill touted," Asahi Evening News, 29 August 1994.
72. For comparative analyses of Hiroshima and Auschwitz, see Richard H. Minear, "Holocauste atomique, holocauste nazi," and Alain Brossat, "Epilogue: Si loin, si près, Hiroshima et Auschwitz," in Todeschini ed., Hiroshima 50 ans, 147-159, 217-233.
73. Mainichi shinbun, 2 July 1978.
74. Françoise Zonabend, La presqu'île an nucléaire (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1989), 185.