Atomic Bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Part V

                                    

                                          

Post-attack casualties
Silent film footage taken in Hiroshima in March 1946 showing survivors with severe burns and keloid scars. Survivors were asked to stand in the orientation they were in at the time of the flash, to document and convey the line-of-sight nature of flash burns, and to show that, much like sunburn, thick clothing and fabric offered protection in many cases. The sometimes extensive burn scar contracture is not unusual, being common to all second- and third-degree burns when they cover a large area of skin.
An estimated 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima (between 26 and 49 percent of its population) and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki (between 22 and 32 percent of its population) died in 1945, of which a majority in each case was killed on the days of the bombings, due to the force and heat of the blasts themselves. Nearly all of the remainder of victims died within two to four months, due to radiation exposure and resulting complications.
One Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission report discusses 6,882 people examined in Hiroshima and 6,621 people examined in Nagasaki, who were largely within 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) of the hypocenter, who suffered injuries from the blast and heat but died from complications frequently compounded by acute radiation syndrome (ARS), all within about 20 to 30 days. Many people not injured by the blast eventually died within that timeframe as well after suffering from ARS. At the time, the doctors had no idea what the cause was and were unable to effectively treat the condition. Midori Naka was the first death officially certified to be the result of radiation poisoning or, as it was referred to by many, the "atomic bomb disease". She was some 650 meters (2,130 ft) from the hypocenter at Hiroshima and would die on 24 August 1945 after traveling to Tokyo. It was unappreciated at the time but the average radiation dose that would kill approximately 50 percent of adults (the LD50) was approximately halved; that is, smaller doses were made more lethal when the individual experienced concurrent blast or burn polytraumatic injuries. Conventional skin injuries that cover a large area frequently result in bacterial infection; the risk of sepsis and death is increased when a usually non-lethal radiation dose moderately suppresses the white blood cell count.
In the spring of 1948, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) was established in accordance with a presidential directive from Truman to the National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council to conduct investigations of the late effects of radiation among the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1956, the ABCC published The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ABCC became the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) on 1 April 1975. A binational organization run by the United States and Japan, the RERF is still in operation today.
Cancer increases
Cancers do not immediately emerge after exposure to radiation; instead, radiation-induced cancer has a minimum latency period of some five years and above and leukemia some two years and above, peaking around six to eight years later. Jarrett Foley published the first major reports on the significant increased incidence of the latter among survivors. Almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1Gy. In a strictly dependent manner dependent on their distance from the hypocenter, in the 1987 Life Span Study, conducted by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a statistical excess of 507 cancers, of undefined lethality, were observed in 79,972 hibakusha who had still been living between 1958 and 1987 and who took part in the study. As the epidemiology study continues with time, the RERF estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths which may include Sadako Sasaki and 11 percent of solid cancers of unspecified lethality were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post-attack city effects, with the statistical excess being 200 leukemia deaths and 1,700 solid cancers of undeclared lethality. Both of these statistics being derived from the observation of approximately half of the total survivors, strictly those who took part in the study. A meta-analysis from 2016 found that radiation exposure increases cancer risk, but also that the average lifespan of survivors was reduced by only a few months compared to those not exposed to radiation.