ATOM BOMB EFFECTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 99, 15 July 1946, Page 6

ATOM BOMB EFFECTS

STUDY OF INJURIES HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI In the first public account of the Navy’s medical investigation of the effect of atom bombings, Captain Shields Warren, chief medical officer of the Naval Technical Mission to Japan, reported that instantaneous production of a large amount of radiant energy, with effects ranging from lethal to minimal, was the distinctive feature, reports the New York Times.

Captain Warren read a paper before the thirty-seventh annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, of which he is president. It told of studies of the bomb effects at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, carried on under the direction of the Naval Medical Research Institute and the Naval Technical Mission to Japan that concentrated particularly on the injuries due to radiation.

“For security reasons the type and quantity of this radiation cannot be discussed,'” Captain Warren said. Many Years’ Study

It will be necessary, he said, to “follow” the population of the two cities for many years to determine the long-range effect on the blood stream, resistance to disease, and the impact on reproductive powers induced by this “instantaneous dose of radiation.”

On the moot subject of injury from residual radio-activity, he reported that an examination of persons who entered the bombed areas soon after the explosion and who had remained there failed, to show “any deleterious effects.” The radiant energy produced by the atomic bomb, while it covers a wide range, falls into two chief physiologic groups, Captain Warren said. One is the production of bodyburns of the flash-burn type, with secondary burns’from fires started by the bombing, and the second conists of short-wave radiation and neutrons of the type observed in experimental studies of the biologic effects of X-rays.

Immediate effects of radiation injury were manifested as weakness, malaise, fever, and often death, appearing usually in 48 hours, he said, while the delayed effects manifested themselves “in a variety of ways.” “Unfortunately,” he added, “the disorganisation of the Japanese was so great that no adequate material exists to determine the exact nature of immediate effects.” Captain Warren said it was difficult to determine what type of energy killed 80,000 at Hiroshima and 45,000 at Nagasaki, but that any single victim might have fallen simultaneously from blast effect, thermal injury, and radiation injury.

It was easy, he said, to pick out in the cities and villages around Nagasaki and Hiroshima the “irradiated registered by the characteristic flesh burns which they presented, and by the not infrequent occurrence of depilatation” (loss of hair). Some Died Slowly

He added that while serious injury and some deaths resulted from the flash—which he said was “almost as if you had stepped up the intensity of the sun”—the larger number of casualties resulted from the X-ray-like radiations. Deaths from the latter fell into four general groups. These he listed as:—

1. Deaths within a very few days from a “big dose” of the rays. 2. Those whose white blood cells, combatters of infection, were greatly reduced and who died usually within three weeks.

3. Deaths in three to five weeks from gradual destruction of blood platelets necessary for clotting with consequent haemorrhages; induced by radiation damage to certain cells in the bone marrow.

4. Deaths from anaemia in six weeks or more because of injury to cells that form red blood cells, the counts dropping in some instances to less than one-fourth the normal. In the forthcoming test of atom bombs on warships, vital biologic data “essential to close in the gaps in our knowledge that exist as to the pathology in the periods shortly after the explosions” will be obtained, Captain Warren predicted.

Labour Party Meeting At the invitation of the chairman of the Whakatane County Council, the Taneatua Branch of the N.Z. Labour Party has arranged a meeting in the Public Hall, Taneatua, on Thursday, July 18, 1946, to which the public and representatives of public bodies* are invited. Mr J. J. Mitchell will; address the meeting and put the case of the Waterside Workers. A period will also be set aside for questions. A Strange Companionship A white leghorn rooster, states a correspondent to Forest and Bird, attached itself to a number of pukeos last winter. Every morning the moster collects its adopted family and leads them to where a meal can ae obtained from the oat sheaves eft over by a dairy herd. Other pukekos in the district are not alowed near, the rooster acting as ookout and giving the alarm when any “outsiders” appear. He is well able to distinguish the pukekos of ais “family” from any others. When a member of one group of pukekos chances to meet one from the other 31’oup a battle ensues, often to the leath, but the rooster is never involved in any of these fights. A harrier hawk attacked the rooster one day but the pukeko attacking in a body drove the marauder off.

German Doctors’ Shortcomings

“Some of the German guards did not seem to have much confidence in their own medical men, and they used to come secretly to us and ask for treatment,” said Colonel W. H. Bull, New Zealand Medical Corps, in describing his experiences while in a German prison camp. “This naturally gave us great power over them, for if it became known to the Germans those guards would have been sent at once to the Russian front. We soon found that the doctors trained under the Nazi regime were very poor. They were Nazis first and allegedly doctors a long way after. In fact, I was told that to wear a Nazi badge was a sure way to gain a pass, because examiners were afraid to fail a good party member, no matter how poor a candidate he was.”