Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

U.S. secrecy hampered research on Nagasaki radiation effects

Everything the federal government could disclose about radiation exposure fit on a three-by-five card when U.S. officials asked Dr. James Yamazaki to study atomic bomb effects in Nagasaki children.

After the United States tested the first atomic device, "Trinity," on July 16, 1945, in secret in the New Mexican desert, two nuclear weapons were dropped on Japan. The first bomb was released over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and the second bomb on Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945.

In the aftermath President Harry Truman, informed of the impact on Japanese people, ordered the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a long-term study. Yamazaki was asked to join the study by Col. Stafford Warren, the U.S. medical officer in charge of protecting atomic workers and the American public from radiation exposure while nuclear weapons were developed.

Yamazaki, now 79, went to Nagasaki in 1949, heading up the U.S. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission for the year.

"Our group focused on the developing brain," Yamazaki said in a telephone interview from his UCLA office Thursday afternoon.

Yamazaki plans to discuss his research on nuclear effects in children at 2 p.m. Saturday when he lectures at the Atomic Testing Museum at 755 E. Flamingo Road and Swenson Street, a free public lecture.

Scientists knew from studies of pregnant women exposed to X-rays done in the 1920s that a moderate amount of radiation can cause mental retardation in fetal brains up to 18 weeks old, Yamazaki said.

At the time Yamazaki prepared to go to Nagasaki, he asked other researchers for information on what was known about radiation.

When Warren handed him the single white card with some data, Yamazaki didn't realize that government secrecy prevented the colonel from telling him much.

The medical laboratory where the scientific team worked stood right near where the bomb exploded. Japanese scientists discovered that 40 percent of those inside concrete buildings when the nuclear bomb fell on Nagasaki survived, but virtually all of those in wooden buildings perished.

Yamazaki's wife, Aki, who is a dietician, had agreed to go to Japan with him. He also credits her with inspiring him to study pediatrics and environmental threats and genetic impacts from toxins, radiation and nutritional deficiencies.

"My life has been shadowed by our stay at Nagasaki," Yamazaki said after spending 1949 in the Japanese city.

As a clinical pediatrics professor at UCLA's School of Medicine since 1951, Yamazaki said his experience as a U.S. combat surgeon in World War II, where he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge by German forces and held prisoner until the end of the war, also inspired him to find work that could change the lives of those exposed to environmental risks.

Governments have never adequately funded research into radiation's effects on people, Yamazaki said.

As a first step, the U.S. government should dedicate 5 percent or so of federal funds used to develop new weapons to train scientists to pay attention to the consequences of developing bigger nuclear weapons, such as the current discussion of a bunker-buster bomb, he said.

"It seems it would be a reasonable thing to do, especially after 9/11," Yamazaki said referring to the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and fears that a nuclear 9/11 is possible. "People are more at risk now."

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