Features

by Masaki Kadowaki, Staff Writer

When a woman is exposed to a high dose of radiation in the early stage of pregnancy, the baby's head can be abnormally small in size, resulting in mental and physical disabilities. The condition is known as A-bomb-caused microcephaly. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has granted official certification to 22 patients of this disease (as of the end of fiscal 2003). Many of the patients and their family members hoped to increase understanding of the condition, but at the same time, have felt fear of encountering prejudice and so wound up withdrawing to the margins of society. Sixty years have passed since the atomic bombing. [This series was originally published in July 2005.] Before the memories borne of that day fade, let us pass on the experiences of the bombing by tracing the personal history of one family affected by microcephaly.

Five years before the atomic bombing, she left her parents in Yamaguchi Prefecture--after they expressed opposition to the man she wished to marry--and eloped with him to Hiroshima. The morning of the bombing, the woman, who was then 24, saw off her husband, 37, who was helping dismantle buildings to create a fire lane. She then went out to pay for some miso [soy bean paste] that had recently been rationed to her.

The peaceful morning was instantly annihilated in a flash. And the woman's life, now 84, entered a time of turmoil.

Their house was located about one kilometer northwest of the hypocenter. She lost consciousness in the blast and when she came to, she thought the sky had disappeared. She wrestled off a beam that had fallen on her and fled north carrying her wailing 5-year-old son. They were surrounded by fire near Yokogawa Bridge, but jumped into the river to avoid the flames.

She was relieved to find that she hadn't been injured in the blast. However, she didn't realize that her body had been penetrated by invisible radiation or that she was carrying a new life inside her.

After the day grew dark, she found her husband at Omei Elementary School (now Furuichi Elementary School in Asaminami Ward). His burned back was covered with ointment and gauze. He was dying. Three days later, he faced toward the east [the direction of the Imperial Palace], groaned "Long live the Emperor," and took his last breath.

The woman returned to her parents' home in Yamaguchi Prefecture with her son. While they were wandering near the house, hesitating to approach it, her younger sister found them and brought them inside. Later, when the woman was taking a bath, she discovered purple spots all over her body. Soon after, all her hair fell out. Local doctors arrived, one after another, and offered her painkillers. "They were just curious," she said. "They didn't provide much treatment."

By the end of November that year, her strength returned. She moved back to Hiroshima and erected four posts where her house had once stood and made walls of corrugated iron sheets. She began living in the humble hut with her son and, around that time, developed morning sickness.

In March 1946 she gave birth to a baby girl, weighing only 500 grams. The baby was so small that she could hold her in two hands.

Even after her daughter turned 6, she was still frail and had difficulty speaking, so the mother decided to send her to school two years later than other children. "She couldn't walk a long distance and needed my help with her personal needs," she recalled. The daughter was hospitalized on and off and finished elementary school when she was 15. Because of the mother's job, they moved to Kitakyushu, where the daughter completed compulsory education when she was 21.

In the same year, 1967, the former Ministry of Health and Welfare recognized that this condition was caused by exposure to radiation and named it "short-distance early prenatal exposure syndrome," certifying six people as microcephalic patients. Still, because they were living far from Hiroshima, it took more than 22 years before the daughter's condition could be identified and she was recognized as a microcephalic patient.

(Originally published on July 12, 2005)