Arata MUKAIYAMA

Tokyo Physicians for Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

Now more than 140 Japanese Hibakusha have filed lawsuits demanding the Japanese government officially recognize their diseases were caused by the A-bomb. You may wonder why they are making this demand now, nearly 60 years after the bombing.　It is because Hibakusha are still suffering from the after-effects of the atomic bomb. As physicians treating them every day, we support the court struggle from the medical point of view.

The Japanese government, based on the system of dosimetry, known as “DS86”, estimates the so-called “causal probability” between radiation and diseases in order to certify A-bomb diseases. The DS86 method of calculating radiation regards that radiation of the atomic bomb does not affect those beyond 2,000 meters, disregarding induced radioactivity residual radiation. The government does not recognize the effect of radiation on those who were relatively far from ground zero or those who entered the explosion center immediately after the blast to search for their relatives or to engage in relief activity. Those people’s diseases are not certified as A-bomb disease, even though they have cancer.

But the symptoms of acute radiation damage on those people were diagnosed and recorded by medical doctors who themselves were atomic bomb victims and engaged in rescue work. There is no reasonable explanation for this fact other than that they were exposed to radiation, not only to initial radiation but also to a considerable dose of induced and residual radiation.

In addition, there are scientific grounds for casting doubt on the basic data of the Life Span Study (LSS) and Adult Health Survey (AHS) by the Japanese-U.S. joint research organization Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), the predecessor of which was the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). For example, the data which show a significant difference in the increase of cancer incidence does not reflect increases of cancer incidence and mortality results in the past 10 years. And in an epidemilogical survey, those people who were in hiroshima or nagasaki when it was bombed but relatively far from the epicenter or who were exposed to radiation by entering Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the bomb exploded are categorized as a control group. Thus, it cannot be denied that there are possible statistical biases.

On these problems, we will submit an opinion paper from the medical point of view to relieve a large number of Hibakusha, in cooperation with physicists and statisticians.

I want to add that a Japanese lawyers group has begun lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize to be given to the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Hidankyo).