Secrets of the A-bomb survivors

摘要

First there was a blinding flash of white light, followed just a second later by the shock wave that smashed into the factory in which Shotaro Kodama was working. "Then everything became dark, because of the dust. Part of the ceiling fell in. I ran outside and saw that houses were broken and damaged. The schoolhouse was smouldering. I don't know how long it was after the explosion, but wounded people started arriving looking for water. They were badly burnt. It was awful to see." Kodama was 15 years old when the Enola Gay dropped its 4000-kilogram uranium bomb just 2 kilometres away, over the centre of Hiroshima. Shielded inside the factory, Kodama was one of the fortunate ones. But he lost an aunt, an uncle and cousins. "Many relatives were killed by the atomic bomb," he says. More than 150,000 people are thought to have died when the bombs fell on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later. Yet surprisingly, 45 per cent of the 280,000 or so people who survived their initial exposure to radiation 60 years ago are still alive today, and they have become the subjects of the largest study ever conducted into the long-term effects of radiation exposure.