<Begin Segment 41>

TI: So going back to your study, so you went there and you sort of understood now what happened, you talked to all these doctors, and at some point you decide what the study's going to be our how you're going to...

JY: Well, there was study outlined in Hiroshima, of basic problems, especially genetic problems well outlined. And it was already, initial steps were underway in Nagasaki. And it didn't require a hospital, because the examination of the babies were done in the home. And so the groundwork had already been established in how to conduct that.

TI: And so your job was to visit newborns and actually do examinations?

JY: Yes, we had to get a team to do that. I wasn't involved in actually going to the home. I had to administer, I became an administrator.

TI: So you were just coordinating that, but you would continue to make sure...

JY: Yeah, make the program that Dr. Neill outlined was, had to be followed, and it was an excellent program.

TI: And so how many years did this program go on?

JY: Five years.

TI: And how many examinations?

JY: Seventy thousand.

TI: And what were the findings of the study?

JY: There was no statistical evidence that there was a genetic effect.

TI: Really? I'm shocked.

JY: Well, there were, of course, critiques about the design of the studies, that, first of all, those that received the heaviest radiation got killed. And so those that received the heaviest radiation maybe were infertile. There were questions of that sort.

TI: But when you think about... I would think that how you studied, sort of, the influence on genetics, you would look for mutations in the newborns. And so you're saying that there wasn't a higher level of mutations?

JY: Yes, that's exactly what they were looking for. And at that time, that stage of genetics, what they were looking for is what would happen to the pregnancy, if that'd be more stillbirths, miscarriages, or would the babies die soon afterwards, or would there be malformations. And those were some of the significant criteria that they were looking for.

TI: And you're findings showed that there wasn't a higher incidence of those?

JY: No.

TI: Oh, that surprises me.

JY: No, they weren't surprised. That's what they were... because the number of individuals that received a high radiation dose was not great. And the radiation dose that would kill a person in units would be, say, 416 radiation units called Rad. And the average radiation dose of the survivor was thirty-five. So that's about fifteen-fold greater to kill them. And the laboratory studies were done with much larger doses and in a far greater population, especially in the fruit flies that they studied.

TI: So after the five years, you then returned back to the United States?

JY: I just stayed there two years.

TI: Oh, two years, okay, two years. So I'm curious, in those two years, how did this experience change you? I asked the same question about your wartime experiences. Now you spend two years, you've looked at the devastation of an atomic bomb and lived in Japan for two years, in Nagasaki. How did this change you?

JY: Well, of course, the striking thing that atomic war, just in a flash, ends a battle. And you have this huge population, a city is killed. Hiroshima was 120,000 humans eventually dies in a short time. Nagasaki estimated around 70,000. That alone would be enough to uncork the person who had seen it. And then the other devastation that followed, to the city and to the people.

TI: Yeah, the long-term effects.

JY: That's still unknown, what malignancies, or just the actual thought. Even though the genetic studies that was conceived and undertaken was still undergoing studies now, because now they have all these new modalities to study genetics, DNA techniques. Even that is still in the developing stages. And there are a lot of genetic study that show that certain of the genes are very susceptible to radiation, those studies still could reveal more findings.

TI: The thing the strikes me, just in a period of several years, you were exposed to something like, going back to the 106th, the Battle of the Bulge. When you look at a more macro level, fifty thousand people, fifty thousand soldiers were killed in this in a matter of four weeks. And in some ways, in such horrendous ways. In that case, it's more one death at a time. And then a few years later, you look at something where seventy thousand people were killed in an instant almost, or because of one bomb. You know, there's two instances of horrific...

JY: Well, then we were in Nagasaki when the Korean War broke out, and that lasted for two or three years. And it took all that time to kill fifty thousand Allied soldiers. And the Vietnam War took ten years. And here you do it in a second. And just basic facts would tell you there's something new in warfare that it's changed the whole concept of people's tendency to violence of what could happen in the future.

TI: So what do you want people to take away from this? When you see this, when you witness it and you live with it, and you have to work with it, most of us don't have to, or are never exposed to that, especially people of my generation. What do you tell us?

JY: Well, one of things I... it's a difficult question because that's why I try to say, "What should I tell them?" And I say the human family is basically the same everywhere. There's a feeling of compassion for your children, your family, and the point of things in life is love among two individuals and develop a family. It's common everywhere, and I show that it's, you see it in all the violent structures, not only in war, but in natural disasters like the tsunami. People really do feel for each other. But when it comes to war, they somehow lose control of all that feeling and justify something that violence okays, and that killing is a methodology you can revert to. But now, with the tools of war like the nuclear weapons, it could mean... it's not far from annihilation as we've been told repeatedly by the most concerned citizens of the world.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.