A Nagasaki Survivor And Physician Recounts His Life's Work

Dr. Masao Tomonaga was 2 years old when the US bombed Nagasaki. Eighty years later, he reflects on a lifetime of treating other survivors.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:52Ira Flatow?

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. Hey there, it's Ira Flatow, and you're listening to Science Friday.

• 1:15Ira Flatow?

  Eighty years ago, the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So today on the show, an atomic bomb survivor and physician recounts his life's work in understanding how radiation affects the body.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  I have a fear I should be a leukemia patient. So I finally decided to go to medical school and to learn why leukemia was induced by radiation.

• 1:48Ira Flatow?

  An estimated 210,000 people died instantly or within five months of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another 210,000 survived and became known as Hibaksha in Japanese.

• 2:03Ira Flatow?

  For decades, Hibaksha have been receiving medical care at specialized hospitals designed to care for atom bomb survivors. And to this day, those hospitals are busy and filled with survivors who have suffered the medical consequences of the bombings. Dr. Masao Tomonaga was a doctor at one of these hospitals. He was just two years old in Nagasaki when the US bombed the city. Years later, he became a physician and ultimately ran a Red Cross hospital in Nagasaki that cared for Hibaksha, just like himself. Now, he directs a nursing home for Hibaksha and still sees patients regularly. Dr. Tomonaga is my guest on Science Friday today. Welcome to the show.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Nice to meet you.

• 2:49Ira Flatow?

  Thank you. You were only two years old when the US bombed Nagasaki. What was your first memory of the aftermath?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I have no memory of atomic bombing in Nagasaki, especially what happened in our house. Later, when I became age four or five, my mother explained what happened. My mother was preparing lunch in the first floor, and I was sleeping on the second floor. But suddenly, the blast came, and our Japanese wooden house half-broken, not completely, half-broken.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  So my mother came up to broken second floor and found me in a narrow space under the roof, and she took me out successfully. If she was not successful to take out me from the space, maybe I was burned by a firestorm, firestorm, after one hour or two hours. But so I was a lucky boy. I was a lucky boy.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  There were many unlucky boys and girls, yeah.

• 4:23Ira Flatow?

  Your father was a physician, he was a doctor.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:27Ira Flatow?

  Was your father working as a doctor during the bombings?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  No, my father actually stationed in Taiwan. He was serving Japanese Army Air Force as medic. My father first received information about Nagasaki disaster by bombing. He first thought his wife and the newborn son already dead. But one month later, a letter from my mother reached him. So he was so glad to read.

• 5:11Ira Flatow?

  So he came back to Nagasaki. Did he take care of the survivors when he returned?

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, he became one of the main doctors who take care of atomic bomb survivors. Especially as a hematologist, it's a blood disease specialist. And later, my father found among children acute leukemia case started to increase.

• 5:43Ira Flatow?

  So the leukemia was due to the radiation?

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, this was actually due to radiation. Because the distance from the ground zero, this distance shorter, the distance, the increased incidence of acute leukemia among citizens was increased. We call it dose dependent dependency was clearly shown.

• 6:13Ira Flatow?

  So your father was one of the first people to realize that the leukemia he was seeing was becoming more common in the survivors, correct?

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Correct, correct. That was happening also in Hiroshima city.

• 6:29Ira Flatow?

  Uh huh.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Simultaneously, as if there were two experiments of massive radiation on citizens.

• 6:40Ira Flatow?

  So let's move a little bit ahead. Why did you decide to become a doctor?

• 6:46Speaker 03

  My family was actually from my grand grandfather all doctors. So I was growing up surrounding doctors. So it was my natural will to become a doctor. And more than that, I, when I became a high school boy, I must prepare for examination to in medical school. I, I, my knowledge about atomic bomb induced leukemia was increased.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  So I have a fear I should be also becoming a leukemia patient. So I finally decided to go to medical school and to learn why leukemia was induced by radiation, atomic bomb radiation. Yeah.

• 7:54Ira Flatow?

  After you graduated medical school, why did you want to study and take care of other survivors? Why was that important to you?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I become a doctor and I decided to enter hematology to study and treat leukemia patients as a hemophilia care doctor. Yeah, so this continued over entire my life. Because the diseases which developed from atomic bomb survivors continued even now, even now.

• 8:40Ira Flatow?

  Are there still any cases, do you think of? Of illnesses from the radiation, whether it's leukemia or others, still being discovered left from the bomb?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, actually, we first observed leukemia increase in the first 20 years, but leukemia began to decline gradually. We thought this was the end of radiation effect on human being, but it was not true. Around this 20 years phase, cancer, solid cancer such as lung cancer, colon cancer and so on, began to increase among many survivors.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  So it continues long, very long, until present time. And other than leukemia, we discovered that in 1980s, almost 40 years after atomic bombing, another disease which is similar to leukemia, but quite different disease of the elderly people, elderly leukemia began to increase. That name is Myelodysplastic Syndrome. We abbreviation is MDS. This is the first discovery in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is continuing now.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  So after 80 years, radiation effect is continuing.

• 10:23Ira Flatow?

  Is that surprising? Was that surprising to you?

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Yes, surprising, surprising. So we decided to begin research on why such a long time induction of malignant diseases by radiation actually happens. There must be some mechanism for this. We finally discovered that those radiation cause genetic abnormality in each cells of organs. And some of the... Such cells are called stem cell, very primitive, primitive cells, which every day produce red cells, white cells, and so on.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  But still, these cells are not leukemia cells. This condition continues for more than 60 years, 70 years. They, some of them began to develop actual MDS. MDS, and the MDS is also a lethal disease. Because after four, five years of mild clinical course, many MDS patients develop acute leukemia and finally die. The treatment is very inactive. So we must say leukemia and other cancers related to radiation

• 11:53Speaker 03

  are lifelong effect of atomic bombing.

• 11:58Ira Flatow?

  Wow. Those are the long-term effects.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Very long term.

• 12:02Ira Flatow?

  Yeah, they certainly seem surprising. Who would have thought back 80 years later?

• 12:07Speaker 03

  No one, no one. Actually, we didn't at all.

• 12:12Ira Flatow?

  Yeah. But there were those short-term, immediate effects from the bomb itself, right? We had miscarriages, birth defects, not to mention the severe burns.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yes, severe burns was most popular injury given by atomic bomb heat rays, heat rays. Those who died of severe burn, the number was the greatest among early deaths of Iraqis.

• 12:49Ira Flatow?

  Coming up after the break, how the atomic bomb lives on.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  She said, I was confident that atomic bomb is surviving in my body, deep, deep body.

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• 15:36Ira Flatow?

  What about the psychological effects?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, we doctors responsible for HIBACIA care began to see many HIBACIERS who are exposed to high dose radiation began to complain every year during the atomic bomb season. That starts about June, July, August. They often complain of sleeplessness, anxiety, and the flashback of atomic bomb experience. And their psychological condition deteriorates remarkably.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  So we performed 8,000 large-scale psychological examinations by using WHO questionnaires, which is a powerful scoring methodology. 12 is the highest scores. So we found within 1.5 kilometers from the ground zero, almost all survivors showed very high score, over 10 to 12. So this was our surprise.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  That was done in 1995, 50-year anniversary of atomic bombing. We performed this large-scale study.

• 17:13Ira Flatow?

  What about now?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I began to feel that their memory is fading, fading out. In their 50s, 60s, their memory was very clear, and they always complained of their experience. But recently, when they got over 80 years, their memory seemed to be fading, fading, fading. So that is maybe a good point for them to... They have been relieved from the anxiety and depressive states. They are now spending very calm days.

• 18:01Ira Flatow?

  Yeah, and I know that you follow them because I understand you run a nursing home for other survivors. Tell me about that. How many people there?

• 18:10Speaker 03

  450, 450 in total. And every day I examine 20 to 30 patients who suffer from transient fever, diarrhea, and sometimes coronavirus infection, influenza, and so on. But among such daily diseases, we sometimes find MDS and cancer in cases of short-distance survivors.

• 18:44Ira Flatow?

  I read that some patients describe it like the atom bomb is still in their bodies.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was an astonishing moment for me when I conveyed my diagnosis, actually to her, to patients. She was 76 years old at the time. She said, "I was confident that the atom bomb is surviving in my body, deep body."

• 19:15Ira Flatow?

  Tell me more. What did she mean by that?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  She meant not radiation itself. Most Cibokshas have no such residual radiation, except plutonium. About 20 years ago, one of our researchers at Nagasaki University found plutonium particles deposited in several organs of autopsied cases of atom bomb survivors, most often lungs and bones. Those calculated from this deposited plutonium particles was

• 19:55Speaker 03

  so small, very tiny amount. So it is impossible to suspect there after bombing, the induction of cancer was maybe negligible, negligible.

• 20:10Ira Flatow?

  Negligible. Do you have a, do you have a message for, for those of us on this 80th anniversary of the bombing?

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Yes, 80 years is enough period if we can understand the atom bomb.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  It's inhumane weapon. When a large scale nuclear war happens, the human being could be cessation. So why our society cannot abandon nuclear weapons? That is my largest problem. I'm working for the realization of nuclear weapon free world. And I want to talk to leaders of nuclear weapon states.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  And I urge their decision to make the nuclear weapon be abandoned. Yesterday, I met some youth at the United Nations. And I talked and they clearly understood. But how these new generation will protest to their government, especially in nuclear weapon states government? That is very unclear, unclear. Yeah, that is the biggest problem.

• 21:48Ira Flatow?

  Dr. Tomonaga, I want to thank you for joining us today.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  You are very much welcome, yeah.

• 21:54Ira Flatow?

  Dr. Masao Tomonaga is a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and director emeritus of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital. Special thanks to Laura Pelisser for her help with this interview.

• 22:13Ira Flatow?

  This episode was produced by Rasha Aridi. I'm Ira Flatow. Thanks for listening.