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OCR for page 21
Chapter Ill
A COMPARISON OF HIROSHIMA AND
NAGASAKI
HIROSHIMA, situated facing the Inland Sea on
the southern coast of the Japanese island of
Honshu, was at the time of the atomic bombing
a city of approximately 350,000 inhabitants
(including military personnel). Nagasaki, lo-
cated on the western side of the Japanese island
of Kyushu, was at that time a city of approxi-
mately 250,000 persons. In addition to the ob-
vious differences in size and location, there are
a number of other respects, pertinent to this
study, in which the two cities are not compara-
ble.
3.1 The peopling of Japan; possible dilfer-
ences between; the ir~l~abitar~ts of Horzshz~ and
Kynsha. The origin of the present-day in-
habitants of Japan, like the origins of so many of
the peoples of the earth, is a tantalizing riddle.
Most standard reference works on the subject
recognize the possibility of three distinct pre-
historic streams of immigration into the Japa-
nese islands, one entering Kyushu from the
south by way of Formosa and the Ryukyu Is-
lands, and ultimately derived from southern
China, a second entering northern Kyushu and
southern Honshu from Korea, and ultimately
derived from Manchuria, and a third stream,
represented by the contemporary Ainu and hav-
ing affinities with the present-day inhabitants
of Siberia, northern Russia, Finland, and north-
ern Sweden, entering from the north (Munro,
1908; Brinkley, 1915; Murdoch, 1926; Sansom,
1943; Beardsley, 195 5 ~ . But while Japanese
mythology, the earliest written records, and the
archeological findings all supply reasonably
good evidence for such waves of immigration
towards the end of the Stone Age, it is not at
all clear whether these immigrants found Japan
already inhabited and, if so, the provenance of
~ Some have suggested Indonesia, Malaysia, or
Polynesia.
21
these very earliest inhabitants (cf. Kiyono,
1949~. Almost equally uncertain is the relative
timing of these waves of immigration, and the
proportions in which these waves, together with
the possible even earlier inhabitants, blended
to form the modern Japanese type. Suffice it for
our purposes to recognize the possibility that
some thousands of years ago there existed sig-
nificant anthropological differences between the
inhabitants of the vicinity of Nagasaki in south-
ern Japan and of Hiroshima in central Japan,
and the further possibility that today, despite
the many historical developments which would
tend to obliterate such differences, some vestige
still remains.
3.2 Non-fapanese elements ire the two cities.
The present-day inhabitants of Nagasaki may
differ genetically from those of Hiroshima for
reasons other than just outlined. Historically,
Nagasaki is pre-eminent among all Japanese
cities as a point of contact with Western culture.
The problem to which we must now address
ourselves briefly is the question of the extent to
which these contacts have been accompanied by
intermarriages and arrangements of convenience
which have left a lasting imprint on the biotype
of the inhabitants of this area.
3.2.1 Early Nag~raki contacts with the
West. From our standpoint, the history of
these contacts is best divided into three periods.
The first of these begins in 1542 or 1543, when
three Portuguese traders who had taken passage
in a Chinese junk for Liampo were driven north
by a typhoon and landed on a small island off
the coast of southern Japan. Within a few years
they were followed by Portuguese trading ships,
which also brought Jesuit priests from the mis-
sions at Macao and Goal The next 100 years
were characterized by a considerable Japanese
trade with the West, much of it funneling
OCR for page 22
22 Genetic Efects of Atomic Bombs Chapter III
through Nagasaki. This trade was at first domi-
nated by the Portuguese, but later shared in by
Spanish, Dutch, and English ships. Concur-
rently, Portuguese Jesuit and Spanish Franciscan
missionaries were busy. The activities of these
missionaries, at first readily tolerated, at length
reached the point where, both in terms of num-
bers of converts and political overtones, they
were felt by the Tokugawa shogunate to pose a
threat to the stability of Japan. In 1612, an
earlier ban against Christianity was for the first
time rigorously enforced. The Christian converts
who refused to renounce their faith and
there were many were vigorously persecuted.
At the same time, the entrance of foreigners
into Japan, as well as their movement about the
country, was increasingly restricted. In 1636,
Japanese ships and Japanese individuals were
forbidden to go abroad. By 1639, all foreigners
are reported to have been expelled from Japan,
and the country had embarked on an era of
self-imposed seclusion.
3.2.2 The Dutch or' Deshima. This
severance of ties with the West was not quite
complete. From 1640 until 1853, when Commo-
dore Perry was successful in the first steps at
re-establishing intercourse with the West, the
Dutch, presumably because of the non-political
and non-religious nature of their prior activities,
were permitted to maintain a small trading sta-
tion on Deshima in Nagasaki. This span of 213
years is the second of the three periods we must
recognize. During this period, Chinese were also
permitted to trade at Nagasaki and in much
greater numbers than the mere handful of
Dutch. Thus, Kaempfer (1728) describes a
Chinese section of Nagasaki with upwards of
1,000 inhabitants, and further estimates, on the
basis of the number of junks coming to Naga-
saki and their size, that in the years 1683 and
1684 (which may or may not be representative
of previous years) there were "for each year
not less than 20,000 Chinese visitors." A year
later trade with China was, at least officially,
much more restricted, to 70 junks per annum
with crews of not more than 30. Throughout the
next century and a half the Dutch continued as
in the past to send on the average one or two
ships a year to Nagasaki, while Chinese activi-
ties were still further restricted, only a dozen
junks a year being permitted to visit the port
by 1820 (Murdoch, 1926~.
3.2.3 From the reopening of Japan to
World War 11. The third period may be
dated from 1853 to the outbreak of World War
II. Perry in his negotiations of 1853 and 1854
for port facilities declined the Japanese offers
of Nagasaki, apparently feeling that its past
would be more hindrance than help in establish-
ing his new era, but under an agreement ne-
gotiated in 1857 by Harris, the first American
Consul-General to Japan, Nagasaki became one
of three treaty ports into which American ships
could enter freely. However, the Dutch, from
their beachhead at Deshima, had already profited
from Perry's visit. In 1853, immediately follow-
ing Perry's visit, the Japanese entered into ne-
gotiations with the Dutch for the purchase of
men-of-war. In 1855, the Dutch presented the
Japanese with the Soembir~g, the first unit of
Western construction to be acquired by the Japa-
nese Navy. In that same year, the Japanese
established a navigation school and ship-build-
ing yard in Nagasaki, instruction being fur-
nished by 22 Dutchmen. In 1857 another
Dutchman, Dr. Pompe van Meerdervoort, as-
sumed charge of a newly established school of
. .
mec lclne.
During the first decade following Perry's
visit, while Japanese relations with foreigners
were most unsettled, the number of Europeans
in Nagasaki remained quite small, but begin-
ning with the mid-1860's, and particularly after
the initiation of the pro-foreign Meiji era in
1868, there arose a sizeable "foreign colony"
in Nagasaki, largely concentrated on land on
the eastern side of the harbor specifically set
aside for this purpose. We have found it diffi-
cult to locate any exact data concerning the
"foreign colony" between the reopening of
Japan and 1897, with the exception of some
statistics for 1864-1870, 1882, and 1889. Con-
cerninp the situation after 1897 there appears
to be considerable information, but unfortu-
nately sometimes conflicting in nature. This
conflict is not so great as to invalidate an ap-
proximate evaluation of certain matters perti-
nent to this study.
Table 3.1 summarizes the earliest complete
data on this period which we have been able to
locate, made available through the courtesy of
the Nagasaki Prefectural Library. Between 1864
and 1870 there were on the average 150-200
Occidentals in the city, as well as a rapidly in-
creasing number of Chinese, the number of the
latter growing from 141 in 1864 to 366 in
OCR for page 23
A Comparison of Hiroshima arid Nagasaki 23
1870. The biological significance of this num-
ber of persons can only be evaluated in terms
of the city's total population, which in 1870
was given as 29,127 (Nagasaki since the
Restoration, 1925~. Occidentals thus accounted
for approximately 0.6 per cent of the population
at this time.
Data concerning only two years during the
interval 1871-1896 have come to our attention.
In 1882, when the population of Nagasaki was
39,963, the total foreign population had risen
to 829. Of these, six hundred and some were
Chinese and the rest Occidentals, including
approximately 100 English, 30 French, 30
Americans, and some Russians, Austrians,
Dutch, and Danes (Nagasaki since the Restora-
tion, 1925~. By 1889, when the city population
sure, a manifest impossibility unless "residence"
is defined differently in the two sets of data, a
point not entirely clear. City figures are not
available after 1923, but those for the prefecture
indicate a slow, continual increase in the num-
ber of Occidentals residing in the city, as illus-
trated by the figures for 1930 given in Table
3.3. Throughout the first 40 years of this cen-
tury, something like 0.2 per cent of the popula-
tion of the city was Occidental, and an addi-
tional 0.7 per cent, Chinese.
The ethnic breakdown of the figures for two
representative years, 1910 and 1930, is indicated
in Table 3.3. These simple totals fail to provide
a true insight into the "dynamics" of the situa-
tion. In Table 3.4 figures based on the 1920
census report are given concerning the age
TABLE 3.1 POPULATION FIGURES BY NATIONALITY FOR FOREIGNERS RESIDENT IN NAGASAKI CITY BETWEEN
1864 AND 1870
(Abstracted from "Records of the Investigation by Nationality of Foreigners Resident in Nagasaki City-1864
through 1879," from the official files of the Nagasaki magistrate's office)
Foreign populations
, I
Year Britain U.S.A. Germany France Russia Portugal Holland Others Chinese Total
1864 ........... 49 37 10 10 - 1 24 141 272
1865 ........... 66 33 10 11 2 3 26 - 246 397
1866 ........... 66 36 15 16 5 38 1 224 401
1867 ........... 66 35 19 14 5 30 4 305 478
1868 ........... 81 39 20 15 8 30 6 375 574
1869 ........... 79 23 21 15 1 5 23 2 333 502
1870 ........... 89 29 25 14 1 6 20 3 366 553
was 54,502, there were 354 Occidentals and
701 Chinese in residence (Nagasaki since the
Restoration, 1925 ~ .
Beginning with 1897, more complete data
became available. Table 3.2 summarizes city and
prefectural census reports from 1897 to 1923.2
The data are drawn from different sources, the
city data from a book issued by the municipal
government in 1925 (Nagasaki since the Resto-
ration), the prefectural data from the Japanese
Empire Statistical Annual (Nihon Teikoku
Tokei Nenkan). It is apparent that most of the
foreigners residing in Nagasaki prefecture were
concentrated in the city proper, making it pos-
sible in an approximate treatment such as this
to substitute prefecture for city figures where
the latter are lacking. That one or the other or
both sets of data are not completely accurate is
suggested by the fact that for several of the
years, city figures exceed those for the prefec
2 The prefecture is a geographical unit roughly
corresponding to the state of the U.S.A.
composition and the marital status of four of
the principal ethnic groups, as well as for the
total foreign population. Attention is directed
towards the high proportion of unmarried males
in the 20-39 age interval. Furthermore, in
evaluating the significance of the number of
married women, it should be borne in mind
that in cases of mixed marriages, the wife and
children assumed the citizenship of the husband
(Izumi, 1921; Sasano, 1921~.
3.3 The biological influence of "foreigner"
on Nagasaki arid Hiroshima. It is a manifest
absurdity to attempt to quantitate in any way
the extent to which foreign contacts during
these three periods left a biological imprint on
the face of Nagasaki. However, one is perhaps
permitted certain impressions. It seems unlikely
for at least two reasons that the foreigners who
visited Japan during the hrst of the three peri-
ods defined above contributed in any significant
way to the genetic constitution of the present-
day inhabitants of this area. For one thing, the
OCR for page 24
26~ Genetic Ejects of Atomic Bombs Chapter III
systematic suppression of Christianity, thought
to involve the death of at least 20,000 Japanese
converts, and perhaps 100,000 or even more
(Kaempfer, 1728; Murdoch, 1926; Sansom,
1943), may have decimated the very group in
which the offspring of Caucasian- Japanese
unions were most apt to be found.3 For an-
other thing, the Japanese, during the period
ending in 1639 when they were ridding them-
selves of foreign influences, were systematic
fluences that during the second of the three
periods we have defined, the Dutch were forced
to live on a small, artificial island in the Naga-
saki harbor, termed Deshima, measuring some
600 x 240 feet. The number of Dutch in resi-
dence was severely limited, usually to about
10 to 20, and the movements of these carefully
restricted (cf. Kaempfer, 1728~. But the Japa-
nese are above all else realists. Alone among the
Japanese people, prostitutes were permitted to
TABLE 3.2 THE FOREIGN AND TOTAL POPULATION OF NAGASAKI CITY, AND THE FOREIGN POPULATION
OF NAGASAKI PREFECTURE, 1897 - 1923
Year
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
Foreign population, city Foreign Total
population, population,
Households Males FemalesTotal prefecture city
............... 290 851 271 1,122 73,974
............... 561 1,218 342 1,560 113,307
............... 731 1,345 357 1,702 1,743 120,865
............... 662 1,442 476 1,918 1,983 129,597
............... 526 - - 2,104 2,037 142,811
............... 542 1,304 355 1,659 1,725 148,882
............... 640 1,334 409 1,743 1,698 154,727
............... 538 1,170 367 1,537 1,579 159,041
............... 487 1,121 365 1,486 1,535 163,324
............... 430 1,057 448 1,505 1,553 168,436
............... 416 1,061 402 1,463 1,523 173,118
............... 380 867 395 1,262 1,282 175,936
............... 321 800 419 1,219 1,290 176,970
............... 326 756 389 1,145 1,186 178,074
............... 274 639 329 968 1,127 179,257
............... 276 657 370 1,027 154,351
............... 318 754 396 1,150 1,189 160,450
............... 328 800 405 1,205 164,272
............... 304 763 392 1,155 1,200 174,077
............... 314 772 403 1,175 1,189 182,695
............... 316 772 405 1,177 1,173 188,006
............... 345 804 393 1,197 1,261 197,500
............... 347 810 397 1,207 1,311 205,958
............... 351 810 403 1,213 1,342 233,813
............... 355 806 406 1,212 1,217 245,954
............... 362 822 417 1,239 1,261 256,316
............... 370 832 423 1,255 1,303 264,669
in their uprooting of all traces of the intruders,
to the extent that, among other actions, it is
recorded that they exiled to Macao in 1636
some 287 women and children known to be re-
lated to the Portuguese by marriage or birth
(Kaempfer, 1728; Woolley, 1881~.
It is characteristic of the thoroughness of the
Japanese in ridding themselves of foreign in
3 Exact data on this point are of course unobtain-
able. From our standpoint it is important to recognize
that the permanent flight of Christians from Nagasaki
to more inaccessible regions to escape persecution
may, from the genetic standpoint, have done as much
to obliterate any effects of interbreeding in that city
as the actual death of Christians.
visit Deshima, and periodically such of the Dutch
as desired their numbers perhaps swelled by
the arrival of a ship were permitted to visit
Maruyama, then (and still) the brothel district
of Nagasaki. These activities, like everything
else the Dutch did, were carefully noted. Thus
it is a matter of record that in one year (the
7th year of Kyoho, 1722) there were 270
Dutch visits to Maruyama during that same
year there were 20,738 Chinese visits (Boxer,
1950~. In view of the practice of abortion and
infanticide during the Tokugawa Era and the
official attitude toward foreigners, it would be
strange if any considerable number of children
OCR for page 25
A Comparison of Hiroshima arid Nagasaki 25
from such relationships reached maturity. The
few of whom there is any record are cited in
reference works primarily as "curiosities" (e.g.,
Thunberg, 1795, 1796~.
It is more difficult to evaluate the extent to
which racial admixture occurred during the
period ushered in by Commodore Perry's visit.
The fraction of one per cent of the Nagasaki
population which has been Occidental has been
a very mixed group- diplomats, missionaries,
tacked to mixed marriages or even temporary
arrangements of convenience, as witnessed by
the well-known story of Madame Butterfly, the
locale for which was Nagasaki. One can state
with considerable assurance that limited oppor-
tunities for racial admixture existed in Naga-
saki between 1870 and 1940 4 the data do
not permit one to go much further.
These are the bare historical facts. To what
extent the present-day inhabitants of Nagasaki
TABLE 3.3 THE ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE FOREIGN COMPONENT OF NAGASAKI CITY, FOR THE YEARS
1910 AND 1930
[The figures for 1910 are based on the city alone (Kitano, 1911), while those for 1930 on prefectural
Uncle r~n~rtc 1
Nationality
English ...................
American .................
French ....................
Russian ...................
Danish ....................
German ...................
Portuguese ................
Italian ....................
Austrian ..................
Turk .....................
Rumanian .................
Norwegian ...............
Bulgarian ..................
Dutch .....................
Polish .....................
Belgian ....................
Swedish ....................
Swiss ......................
Canadian ...................
1910
Males Females
52 43
31 48
30 12
17 21
7 9
17 11
3 6
9 4
2 4
2 1
2 5
6 4
1
Total
95
79
42
38
16
28
9
13
6
3
7
10
1
, _ .
Males
129
84
14
9
14
2
2
3
30
31
8
1
2
2
2
1
4
2
1930
at.
FemalesTotal
57186
35119
1327
918
1125
46
35
58
31
36
9
6
4
Subtotal 178 169 347334 150484
Chinese 578 220 7981,883 4412,324
Other - -1 -1
~-
Totals 756 389 1,145 2,218 591 2,809
teachers, and commercial persons many of
whom, of course, did not intermarry or other-
wise contribute to the Nagasaki gene pool.
However, in addition to these permanent resi-
dents, there were relatively many transient sea-
men. The Russian fleet was stationed in Naga-
saki during the winter months prior to the
Russo-Japanese War in 1904. The intellectual
climate of Japan during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries was characterized by
the enthusiastic acceptance in some quarters of
many aspects of Western civilization there
was apparently no particular opprobrium at
differ from those of Hiroshima because of
racial admixture can only be a matter for con-
jecture. On the face of the evidence, it seems
very unlikely that at most more than a few per
cent of the corporate genetic constitution of
present-day Nagasaki is non-]apanese in origin.
This conclusion is borne out by the fact that the
published A-B-O blood group frequencies of
4 The opportunities which arose during the Occupa-
tion, starting with the arrival of the First Marine
Division in Nagasaki, are scarcely pertinent to the
problem of the ancestry of those individuals forming
the parentage of the children under study.
OCR for page 26
26
Genetic Effects of Atomic Bombs Chapter III
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OCR for page 27
A Comparison? of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 27
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OCR for page 28
28 Genetic EJects of Atomic Bombs Chapter III
persons living in Nagasaki do not differ strik-
ingly from those of their neighbors, although
one wonders about the selection for typing
studies of "pure" Japanese (summary in Boyd,
1939~. It is unfortunate that studies on the Rh
gene frequencies are not available inasmuch as
these, because of the difference between Cau-
casian and Oriental populations (summary in
Mourant, 1954), would be expected to be
especially revealing.
That there has been some admixture can
scarcely be challenged. One who visits the three
cemeteries where foreigners were customarily
buried is impressed by the frequency with which
there appear on the tombstones of the past
three-quarters of a century Japanese female
given names in combination with non-Japanese
surnames. Unfortunately, the local church rec-
ords, which might have been of real value in
this connection, fared less well than the tomb-
stones in the atomic holocaust. One of these
cemeteries is the large and picturesque, semi-
o~cial "Foreign National" cemetery, conveni-
ently subdivided into Russian, Dutch, English,
etc., sections. There is a marked preponderance
of males buried here. It would be passing
strange if, during the 70 years preceding World
War II, these men, even more than the casual
sailors from so many ports, failed to leave a
genetic heritage paralleling their socio-economic
stamp.
Finally, some of the authors have the distinct
impression of encountering from time to time
in Nagasaki, individuals who, because of hair
or eye color or facial conformation, strongly
suggested Caucasian ancestry. Such persons are
a very small minority but, in view of the gen-
eral dominance in mixed Japanese-Caucasian
marriages of the straight, black hair, the dark
eyes, and the facial appearance of the Japanese,
cannot be easily disregarded.
In striking contrast to Nagasaki, the Hiro-
shima area, although it has supplied relatively
many emigrants to Hawaii and the U.S.A., has
itself been characterized by very limited con-
tacts with the West, even down to the time of
World War II. It would seem that the possi-
bility of a Caucasian element in this population
may safely be ignored.
In addition to the possible role of historical
(and pre-historical) factors in creating biologi-
cal differences between the inhabitants of Hiro
shima and Nagasaki, certain obvious present-day
differences' should be mentioned. We are in-
debted to Mr. Fu, Chinese Consul in Nagasaki
in 1952, for the information that in February
of that year there were 600 Chinese citizens in
the city. These were not all "pure" Chinese;
on the other hand, there were known to be
many persons in Nagasaki whose ancestry was
in part Chinese who no longer claimed Chinese
citizenship. In Hiroshima there was no signifi-
cant number of Chinese, but, by contrast, a rela-
tively large "Korean colony," numbering, ac-
cording to data supplied by the Hiroshima
Municipal Government, some 5,000 persons in
January of 1952. There is reason to suspect that
because of illegal entry, the number was actually
somewhat larger. There were relatively few
Koreans in Nagasaki.
3.4 The different impacts of the atomic
bombs on the two cities. There are important
differences between Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
respect to their experience with the atomic
bombs.
3.4.1 Types of bombs. Different kinds
of bombs were used on the two cities, that
dropped over Hiroshima being a uranium-235
bomb, whereas the one used against Nagasaki
was composed of plutonium-239. As will be
brought out in the next chapter, the radiation
spectrum of these two bombs differed.
3.4.2 EJects of the bombs or; the two
cities. The over-all effects of the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been
adequately described elsewhere (British Mis-
sion, 1946; United States Strategic Bombing
Survey, 1946; Los Alamos Scientific Labora-
tory, 1950; Oughterson et al., 1951~. Suffice
it to say here that both the mortality and the
morbidity from the bombs differed markedly
in the two cities. Because of the deterioration
in Japanese vital statistics during the war and
the destruction of records in consequence of the
bombings, exact casualty figures will never be
available. However, it is usually stated that in
Hiroshima approximately 60,000 inhabitant
were killed immediately or died within a few
weeks of the effects of the explosion, and an
additional 70,000 sustained overt injury. This
figure may be a very conservative estimate of the
total casualties for two reasons. As the head-
quarters of the Second Grand Army, the chief
concentration of military power in Central
OCR for page 29
A Co mparis or; of Hirosl~imor arid Nagasaki
29
Japan, Hiroshima was a major "staging area" tary data, it can be estimated that in 1949 there
for the South Pacific theater of war. The were some 31,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima who
elaborate facilities of the Second Army were had been within 2,000 meters of the hypocenter
almost completely destroyed. Because of war- at the time of the explosion, whereas the corre-
time secrecy plus the deliberate destruction of spending figure for Nagasaki was 9,850. It can
surviving military records, the military casualties be further estimated that approximately 6,000
will never be known, but they number well into persons then resident in Hiroshima, and 2,000
the thousands. In addition, on the day of the in Nagasaki, had shown such symptoms of rela-
bombing there were a number of work parties lively heavy irradiation as epilation, purpura,
from neighboring towns in the area. The total and/or oropharyngeal lesions following the
number of persons killed may exceed 100,000. bombings (ABCC Semi-Annual Report, Janu-
With respect to Nagasaki, it is usually stated ary-June, 1954). As can be seen from Table 2.1,
among the parents of children falling within
the scope of the Genetics Program, there were
roughly twice as many relatively heavily irradi-
ated in Hiroshima as in Nagasaki.
3.5 Th e d evel o pm ent o f the AB CC program
in the two cities. Despite the number of
persons on the ABCC roster (p. 2 ), there
was, considering the magnitude of the total
problem to be attacked, a chronic shortage of
trained personnel, this imposed in part by
budgetary considerations and in part by recruit-
ment difficulties. The original plan had been
that the ABCC would develop programs in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki which would be quite
comparable in size. From the first, however, the
concentration of personnel and facilities in
Hiroshima far outstripped that in Nagasaki.
The reasons were chiefly two: (1) Given the
personnel shortages alluded to above, and the
greater number of relatively heavily irradiated
survivors in Hiroshima, it was obviously more
economical of available personnel to concentrate
them in Hiroshima. (2) For a number of
reasons which need not be entered into here,
logistical problems, including the matter of
housing, were less serious in Hiroshima. To
those of your authors who found themselves
curiously stirred by the colorful and dramatic
history of Nagasaki- a history whose shadows
confronted one at many turns it has always
seemed regrettable that practical considerations
dictated putting so much more effort into
Hiroshima.
Because of the clear need from the outset for
all the "genetic" data which could be collected
from both cities, the Genetics Program came
closer to an equality of effort in the two cities
than did any other facet of the ABCC's activi-
ties. Every possible attempt was made to ensure
the comparability of the genetics programs in
that there were approximately 33,000 civilian
deaths, and 25,000 surviving injured. Nagasaki
contained no military installations of any sig-
nificance, so that the problem of accounting for
military personnel does not exist for this city.
Since many more records survived here than in
Hiroshima, it is felt that the figures for Naga-
saki are reasonably accurate.
The plutonium-type bomb detonated over
Nagasaki actually had a greater explosive power
than that used on Hiroshima. The reason for the
greater number of casualties in the latter city
is to be sought in large part in differences in
the physical features of the two cities. Hiro-
shima is built on the triangular delta of the
river Ota (Fig. 3.1~. Only one small "moun-
tain" (Hijiyama, height 69 meters) breaks the
flatness of the terrain occupied by the great
majority of the city. As indicated in Fig. 3.1,
the bomb was detonated not far from the
"center" of this delta. The topography of Naga-
saki is very different (Fig. 3.2~. The city lies
at the head of a long, narrow bay, running up
from which there is a "mountain," with a valley
on either side. The city extends along both
sides of the bay and up into the two valleys,
thus roughly resembling in its outlines the letter
"X." As indicated on the map, the bomb was
detonated over one of the valleys, in which there
was a heavy concentration of war industry (and,
incidentally, the largest Christian colony and
church in Japan, and the Nagasaki Medical
School and its hospital). The serious effects of
the bomb were largely confined to this one
valley.
The official statistics concerning the effects
of the bombs are paralleled by the experience of
the ABCC in the two cities. For instance, in
consequence of a Radiation Census carried out
in 1949, together with certain later supplemen
OCR for page 30
30
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A Comparison of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 31
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OCR for page 32
32 Genetic Efects of Atomic Bombs Chapter III
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two chief factors ful. On the other hand, as will become evident
in this effort were the formulation of a rather in Chapter V, some of the reported differences
rigid set of procedures to be adhered to in the in pregnancy termination between the two
two cities, and frequent exchanges of personnel. cities may not actually reflect true biological
It is felt that in the main, this effort was success- differences.
/
Representative terms from entire chapter:
bombs chapter
