Atomic Wounds - Journeyman | Tuppashare Tuppershare Tupper Share Tupashare Tupa
At 89, Doctor Hida, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima, continues to care for some of the other quarter of a million survivors. Atomic Wounds retraces his dedicated journey and highlights how the terrible danger of radiation was concealed by successive American administrations in the 50's - 70's so that nuclear power could be freely developed, with no concern for public health.
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Atomic WoundsPublisher: Journeyman
Length: 53mins
Location: Japan
Copyright: ©Marc Petitjean
Published: 20 Jun, 2008
Last Updated: 29 Oct, 2009
Ref: 4050
Length: 53mins
Location: Japan
Copyright: ©Marc Petitjean
Published: 20 Jun, 2008
Last Updated: 29 Oct, 2009
Ref: 4050
At 89, Doctor Hida, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima, continues to care for some of the other quarter of a million survivors. Atomic Wounds retraces his dedicated journey and highlights how the terrible danger of radiation was concealed by successive American administrations in the 50's - 70's so that nuclear power could be freely developed, with no concern for public health.
“I rode my bicycle towards Hiroshima… I was terrified to go towards it! But I had to go.” Doctor Hida was 28 years old when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. He retells the horrors he faced and how he coped. “If I had cried out at that moment, I would have gone mad, and everything would have been over. Just at the threshold of madness, how to say…I resisted. I was petrified.”
In the wake of the Hiroshima bombing, an American official declared enigmatically that the survivors of Hiroshima, the wounded and those hit by radiation, would play a crucial role in the history of humanity. “It was a test on a human scale, to measure the effects of this new bomb.”
President Truman created a scientific commission, ABCC. The survivors of the bomb, the Hibakushas, were invited to come to ABCC for consultations about their injuries. They were not invited to be cured or cared for, but to be studied and observed. “When patients died, they dissected them… after the dissection, they filled up the body with straw, because it was completely empty. There was only the skin left.”
During the occupation, Japanese doctors and researchers were refused access to ABCC information. This meant that for a long time Doctor Hida couldn’t understand the causes of his patient’s illnesses. However, 30 years after the bombing, Doctor Ernest Sternglass produced a shocking publication, revealing information that the ABCC had striven to keep concealed. “Radiation doesn’t kill only at the moment of the explosion.” He went on to explain how it could continue to kill for decades.
Yet organisations worldwide continue to base radiation limits on the ABCC’s studies, relying on false information. This has had irreversible consequences for people living close to nuclear power plants. “All the effects of radiation on human beings are based on the experiences of the Hibakushas… They are so recognized, that even if one objects saying that all their information is false, ABCC will always be right.”
In 1975 Dr Hida went to the United Nations to testify about the illnesses of the Hibakusha whom he’d looked after for 30 years. “In the request I made to the U.N. I said that there were still many Hibakushas seriously ill… I kept on saying there were radiation victims, and, as the Japanese government denied it , the U.N. didn’t believe me.” It is impossible to prove scientifically that these ongoing diseases are the effects of radiation since the miniscule particles that cause them are impossible to see. “You can’t prove anything. So we try to prove it with statistics. With a list of people who have had such and such effect.”
A powerful documentary that examines the extent of US and Japanese suppression of crucial data with the potential to impact on the global nuclear industry.
“I rode my bicycle towards Hiroshima… I was terrified to go towards it! But I had to go.” Doctor Hida was 28 years old when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. He retells the horrors he faced and how he coped. “If I had cried out at that moment, I would have gone mad, and everything would have been over. Just at the threshold of madness, how to say…I resisted. I was petrified.”
In the wake of the Hiroshima bombing, an American official declared enigmatically that the survivors of Hiroshima, the wounded and those hit by radiation, would play a crucial role in the history of humanity. “It was a test on a human scale, to measure the effects of this new bomb.”
President Truman created a scientific commission, ABCC. The survivors of the bomb, the Hibakushas, were invited to come to ABCC for consultations about their injuries. They were not invited to be cured or cared for, but to be studied and observed. “When patients died, they dissected them… after the dissection, they filled up the body with straw, because it was completely empty. There was only the skin left.”
During the occupation, Japanese doctors and researchers were refused access to ABCC information. This meant that for a long time Doctor Hida couldn’t understand the causes of his patient’s illnesses. However, 30 years after the bombing, Doctor Ernest Sternglass produced a shocking publication, revealing information that the ABCC had striven to keep concealed. “Radiation doesn’t kill only at the moment of the explosion.” He went on to explain how it could continue to kill for decades.
Yet organisations worldwide continue to base radiation limits on the ABCC’s studies, relying on false information. This has had irreversible consequences for people living close to nuclear power plants. “All the effects of radiation on human beings are based on the experiences of the Hibakushas… They are so recognized, that even if one objects saying that all their information is false, ABCC will always be right.”
In 1975 Dr Hida went to the United Nations to testify about the illnesses of the Hibakusha whom he’d looked after for 30 years. “In the request I made to the U.N. I said that there were still many Hibakushas seriously ill… I kept on saying there were radiation victims, and, as the Japanese government denied it , the U.N. didn’t believe me.” It is impossible to prove scientifically that these ongoing diseases are the effects of radiation since the miniscule particles that cause them are impossible to see. “You can’t prove anything. So we try to prove it with statistics. With a list of people who have had such and such effect.”
A powerful documentary that examines the extent of US and Japanese suppression of crucial data with the potential to impact on the global nuclear industry.
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