English-language panels feature at radiation
exhibition
By Kakumi Kobayashi
HIROSHIMA, Aug. 4 Kyodo - A visitor from
Singapore was surprised to see panels with
English-language explanations at the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum, one of them stating
''The atomic bomb was not merely a bigger
version of a conventional bomb.''
''I had learned something about the atom
bomb, but didn't know much about the effects
of radiation,'' said John Tee Hui, 19, on
visiting an exhibition called ''The Atomic
Bomb: Devastation by Unseen Radiation.''
''Radiation goes through cells...at this
stage chromosomes in the cell nucleus are
broken...the damaged cells die or, if they
survive, usually have genetic abnormalities,''
one illustrated panel says.
In the atomic-bomb attack Aug. 6, 1945, an
estimated 140,000 people died in the western
Japan city.
Besides the dead, a number of survivors have
since developed such diseases as leukemia,
believed to have been caused by radiation
from the atomic explosion, and have been
subject to discrimination.
The atom bomb's most distinctive characteristic
''was the release of harmful radiation, a
power no previous weapon has ever possessed,''
another panel says.
The museum states that 1 kilogram of fissioned
uranium in the atom bomb killed 140,000 people,
while a conventional attack killed 1,359
in Takamatsu, western Japan, using 833,000-kg
bombs a month earlier.
''I regard radiation and radioactive materials
as the really special thing, rather than
the power of the atom bomb,'' visitor Norimi
Kawada, 45, said, mentioning the two workers
at a Tokaimura uranium-processing plant who
were killed in an accident Sept. 30 last
year.
A bar graph in the exhibition shows that
Hisashi Ouchi, one of the two workers at
the Tokaimura plant who died nearly three
months later, was exposed to twice as much
radiation as the fatal level.
The first ''Godzilla'' film which hit the
cinemas in 1954 featured a monster that could
blow radiation from its mouth, an episode
which deliberately played on the Japanese
fear of radiation.
The film was released after 23 crew members
of the tuna fishing boat Fukuryu Maru (Lucky
Dragon) No. 5 were exposed to radiation during
a U.S. nuclear test at the Bikini Atoll in
the Pacific Ocean in March that year, one
of whom later died apparently due to radiation.
The exhibition began July 19 and will last
until Oct. 16.
The museum has held similar exhibitions once
or twice a year since 1994. This time, however,
curators set up question-and-answer style
panels, with English-language explanations,
so that children can easily understand the
dangers of radiation.
One question says, ''If there was such terrible
residual radiation around, why did people
enter Hiroshima?'' The answer is, ''People
at that time had never heard of an atomic
bomb and knew nothing about the danger of
residual radiation.''
The curators have added a further explanation
-- ''Because of reports from the United States,
the Japanese government knew the day after
it was dropped that the bomb was atomic,
but fearing that the people would lose their
will to fight, they kept the disastrous conditions
caused by the A-bomb a secret.''
As to why the U.S. dropped the atom bomb
on Hiroshima, the curators say the city's
size was appropriate for observing the effects
of a weapon that had not yet been used.
''On Aug. 6, reconnaissance planes flew over
to check the weather in Hiroshima, Kokura
(Kitakyushu) and Nagasaki, and reported clear
weather in Hiroshima. At that instant, Hiroshima's
fate was sealed,'' another panel says.
==Kyodo
