In Utero

One of the most conspicuous signs of the horror is the children whose mothers were hit while carrying them. Most of them perished before birth, but of those who survived some were born with heads abnormally small and are severely mentally-retarded. The medical term for these children is in utero. The following is an account, entitled "With This Child", made by the mother of one of these children:

(We were living at Funairi-nakamachi. On the day of August 6, I was participating, in place of my husband Kunizo who had been drafted, in works for civilian service at Tokaichi with 50 of my neighbors. I was then carrying on my back my son Masaaki who was barely one year old. I was also three months pregnant. Since I was carrying a baby, my chore was to take care of lunch some distance away from where the bomb hit. That's why I was spared.

Within an instant after the bombing, the scene of the town underwent a complete change. I frantically wandered around with Masaaki. His head was bloody, hit by broken glass. We were showered by black rain, in the Koi area, I think. Then for two days we stayed in the shelter at Funairi-honmachi. In the afternoon of the third day, we were brought by a truck to the city of Ohtake where my mother was living.

A week later, the often-mentioned atomic disease hit me. All my hair was gone, and I had a rash all over my body. My teeth were shaken up as bloody pus kept coming out from the gums. Because of vomiting blood and bloody excrement I felt so weak that I almost gave up. Masaaki was suffering diarrhoea caused by the bombing, too. But the doctor nearby treated it as an ordinary gastrointestinal trouble. He died on August 21...

I may have been lucky; I survived and made a steady recovery. I delivered Yuriko on February 24 next year without much trouble. She was small indeed and the midwife told me, "You really have to take care of this baby". Yuriko weighed less than four pounds. When I gave her the first bath, I felt her right leg was bent inside and she could not straighten it. I tried several times to straighten it by massaging her knee. The leg looked normal from the outside, though.

She was brought up mostly on milk. When her first birthday came, she could not say a word. At the second birthday it was same except that she could barely manage to crawl. When she was four or five years old, I tried hard to teach her to walk and she started walking. But she was lame, so I brought her to the Ohtake National Hospital and had her X-rayed. The doctor said her joint at the waist had not developed but the thigh bone would fit as she grew up. But she is still lame.

She came to school age. But I thought she could not keep up even in kindergarten. So I obtained a doctor's certification and petitioned to postpone her schooling. Her condition was the same the following year. We kept our hope every year but to no avail. The sixth year came and Yuriko was exempted from schooling. Around that time doctors of the Hiroshima University Medical School came to survey the survivors in the Ohtake area. They examined her and took her picture. She was found to have the small-head syndrome caused by the atomic bombing. Up until recently I thought Yuriko was the only example.

At that time we owned a shop in front of the railroad station and Yuriko stayed at home with her grandmother. Yuriko loved dogs and cats. One day she disappeared with a small dog and threw the whole family into a big turmoil. We became careful not to let her go outside. In the meantime we failed in our business and moved to the city of Iwakuni. There was a movie theater nearby and it became her hobby to go to the theater with her grandmother. Having had no pleasure in her life, she became very fond of movies. No matter how bad she is feeling, she quickly becomes happy when we talk about a movie.

She must look strange—standing lame, muttering something to herself in front of a movie poster. People look back at her from curiosity. School-children play lame before her or try to drive her away as if she were a dog. Yuriko herself seems embarrassed to be stared at or have somebody around. Nowadays she tends to stay all day at home and spends the time with TV and radio. That makes her physically weak; she gets easily tired even just by taking a short walk.

When she sleeps at night she holds a book in one hand and sucks her finger like a baby. I tried to break the habit but without much success. Nevertheless, the major problem for her is going to stool. She is so occupied with movie, TV and radio all day, from morning till she goes to bed that she can't make it to the bathroom on time. Even if she is admitted to an institution for mentally retarded children, that is my biggest headache because I worry that she won't be able to make them understand. Our family can guess somehow what's in her mind. I have a grandchild who is three years old. I think Yuriko is little bit more immature than him. She is now twenty years old...)

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was founded by the United States government in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for conducting research on the survivors. The ABCC found, between 1947 to 1954, that the small-head syndrome and its accompanying mental retardation are related to the amount of radiation to which those in utero were exposed. But it was only in 1961 that this fact was disclosed in one of Japan's medical journals. It took six more years for the Japanese government to acknowledge that the suffering of the in utero was caused by the Bomb and start giving relief to them, fully twenty-two years after the bombing.