Kazak radiation victim's paintings donated to museum

Aug. 5, Kyodo - Paintings by a Kazak girl suffering from deformities caused by exposure to radiation from nuclear bomb tests were donated to the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima on Thursday.

Twelve works by Renata Izmailova, 17, who is only 82 centimeters tall and weighs 14 kilograms, were handed over to museum director Minoru Hataguchi by her father, Feat Izmailov, 47, who was in Hiroshima to take part in an international antinuclear conference.

The family is from the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakstan. The former Soviet Union conducted about 500 nuclear tests from 1949 to 1989 at a test site in the region without informing residents. About 300,000 local people have developed illnesses as a result of being exposed to radiation released during the tests.

Izmailov told Hataguchi that his daughter used her two functioning fingers to paint the scenes of forests, mountains and grassy plains in the hope that such nature would continue to be preserved.

Hataguchi, who himself was exposed to radiation as a fetus during the 1945 atomic bombing, said he sympathized with Renata. He said her pictures would ''give museum visitors courage to live.''

The museum, which displays artifacts showing devastation by the 1945 bombing, held an exhibition in May of photographs of people affected by radiation in Semipalatinsk.

Izmailov also donated one of Renata's paintings to Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba later in the day.

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