By SATOSHI MINAKUCHI

　Since I am a student in a field of the nuclear engineering at Iowa State University, I feel deeply that it is necessary to know how awful nuclear weapons are and how much the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been in pain. The following is a summary of some of the records and recent newsreports published by Japanese information media.

　The nuclear bomb which was used in Hiroshima, weighing four tons burst about 1,900 feet above the center of the city at 8:15 a.m.,Aug, 6, 1945. That nuclear bomb contained nuclear fissionable material, uranium, of about 1,000 grams. Only one gram of those 1,000 grams turned to energy, but its destroying Power was equivalent to 20 thousand tons of TNT. The remaining 999 grams turned to the so-called "Death Ash" and fell to the ground. This nuclear bomb was called "Little Boy"

　Thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion is absorbed into the surrounding air at first, and then the air itself becomes incandescent and produces a huge fireball. Small scale tests have shown that The fireballs which were produced at Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been about 90-95 feet in diameter, with central temperatures ranging from 3,000-10,000 degrees centigrade. The brightness of the fireball at a distance of seven miles from its center was about 100 times the intensity of sunshine on the earth. The diameter increased to about 920 feet at one second later, and its surface temperature became 7,000 degrees centigrade three-tenths of a second later. The fireball disappeared within 10 seconds.

　　　　　Blast Furnace

　The temperature on the ground was increased to 3,000-4,000 degrees centigrade by the fireball. from the fact that the melting point of steel is 1,530 degrees centigrade we could imagine the cities were changed to something like blast furnaces. Ceramic tiles on the roofs were burned, and their surfaces swollen like a sponge. All residents within 20 miles were burned by the effects of this thermal radiation, and 20 to 30 per cent of the death toll in both cities was caused by the thermal radiation.

　The pressure at the center of the fireball was several hundred thousand pounds per square inch, and the pressure produced a blast instantly. Weathermen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have conjectured the speed of the wind caused by the air blast was 2,000-2,500 feet per second, ten times that of the worst typhoon which Japan has ever had. The maximum wind pressures were 12 tons per square meter at the center of Hiroshima and 15 tons per square mater at the center of Nagasaki.

　Nuclear radiations such as gammarays, neutrons, beta-Particles, and alpha-particles are produced by fissioning of uranium and plutonium. Gamma-rays and neutrons are the most damaging to the human body because they can easily go through soft tissue. Probable effects of an acute whole-body radiation dose of over 600 rad (measuring unit for radiation) are vomiting within one hour, severe blood changes, hemorrhage, infection, and loss of hair. From 80 to 100 Per cent of Persons exposed to the 60-plus level are expected to die within two months.

　Around the center of Hiroshima there was a gamma-dose of 10,306 rad and a neutron-dose of 14,177 rad. In Nagasaki, there was 25,131 rad for the gamma-dose and 3,900 fad for the neutron dose as the center. This meant that all people who were out of doors within sixtenths of a mile of the center of the burst received a fatal dose rate.

　Another residual radiation is the so called "Death Ash". The death ash fell out in suburbs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as black rain, and they recorded 1.8 rad about 4 miles to the north-east of Hiroshima city and 61 rad in the east hilly part of Nagasaki.

　　　　　　　Unknown Toll

　How many people died by those two nuclear explosions? No one can ever give a correct answer to this question. Each city office is trying to investigate from their records and the later census, but unfortunately their important records were burned on that day. From their estimates, at least 100,000 and at most 300,000 people were killed by the two nuclear. explosions. The population in Hiroshima could be presumed to have been 400,000 at the time of the explosion, and therefore about half of them have died so far because of the nuclear explosion.

　The Japanese government has distributed special identification cards with health record forms to the personnel who were in either city at the time of the explosions or who had visited either city within two weeks after the explosions. The government had distributed 321,699 identification cards by March, 1969. Some of the people who were given cards have died already, some of them are still alive in the hospitals, and some of them are very healthy, normal people. People, even in the healthy group, may suddenly become sick, so they are keeping records of their condition in their health record forms.

　Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were filled with fires all over the cities which were caused by the thermal radiation effects or from inside houses which were leveled down by the air blast.

　In the cases of Hiroshima, almost 100 per cent of the structures within six-tenths of a mile from the center of the explosion were completely burned or destroyed. The total number of the completely burned houses or buildings was 47,969, and the total of the houses completely destroyed by the blast was 3,813. Half burned of half blastdestroyed buildings totaled 18,360. About 92 per cent of the structual material originally standing in the city was completely of half burned or destroyed. Destruction of glass windows extended to over 10 miles from the center of the explosion.

　In Nagasaki, a total of 11,574 houses were completely burned, 1,326 houses completely destroyed by the blast, and 5,509 houses at least 50 per cent damaged by fire or blast−thus 36 per cent of the houses had damage from the explosion. This percentage was quite small compared with Hiroshima because the landscape configuration of Hiroshima is very flat, and Nagasaki is hilly.

　In the region 1,640 feet from the center of the explosion, there were at least 3,160 people during the explosion. Only two of them are known to be alive today−a death rate in that region of 99.9 per cent.

　Now 46 years old, she has been very healthy since that day. She believes the large quantity of fruit she ate at that time saved her life from the residual nuclear radiation, However she has taken 15 years to completely remove pieces of glass from her body. She was married in 1958, and has given birth to a very healthy baby boy.

　During the past 14 years, a total, of 855 people under the effects of the expiosions died in both cities. Prior to 12 years ago, many of the people died of radiation leukemia, but after that, a large number of the people died of hepatitis or cancer of the stomach. The relationship between cancer of the stomach and the effects of the nuclear radiation have not been found.

　　　　　　　Delayed Result

　One of the Nagasaki police officers died of acute bone marrow leukemia in 1970 at the ago of 48. His doctor said his death resulted from the effect of the residual nuclear radiation, While working in Nagasaki after the nuclear explosion, he might have absorbed a great amount of the residual nuclear radiation, Before becoming ill in May, 1970, he had been very strong and healthy. Suddenly he had a very high fever and terrible backache in May, 1970, and then a jaudiced condition appeared over his entire body. In less than one month from his becoming ill, he died.

　One woman in the Hiroshima Atomic Explosion Hospital has been a patient there for the past seven, years. She was not exposed to the fireball or the mushroom cloud, but visited family members in Hiroshima seven hours after the explosion.

　She has had 13 different types of illness, including acute hepatitis, cholecystitis, duodenum ulcer, softening of the brain, cancer of the breast, and liver trouble. She can not move from the hospital bed by herself, and will spend her remaining life in bed.

　As indicated by the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission) report, about 2,000 pregnant women were exposed to the nuclear explosions in both cities. From these mothers, 44 babies were born with irregularly small heads in Hiroshima. The medical authorities say these resulted from the ionization effect on the embryos by strong nuclear radiation.

　He still has some trouble hearing any sound with his left ear and his corpuscle number is not steady, but he is working for a Ship-building Company as if he were normal. Sometimes he makes a joke to his friends as follows: "I was baked well done in Hiroshima, and rebaked in Nagasaki before I became cold. I was just like a piece of sirloin steak."

　The Nuclear Explosion National Medical Treatment Law was established in Japan in 1957. By this law, any medical fee is waived for those sufferers from the atomic disease, and other general sufferers are also treated by the government. This is very good medical treatment, but even this is not good enough to solve the other problems of the people's poverty. The law of cause and effect between disease and poverty could be applied even here. In order to relieve the sufferers from their vicious cycles of the atomic disease and the poverty, an instigation of a National Sufferers Backing Law, including a guaranteed living, must be made urgently.

　We must not bring the sacrifices in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to naught. We must establish world peace based on their precious sacrifices. Their death by the nuclear explosions in the 20th century was equivalent to Jesus Christ's death on the cross twenty Let us call again: "NO MORE HIROSHIMA!".