Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission

Neel and Schull were architects of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission study of survivor populations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Beatty 1988 Lindee 1994). Other notables among the twenty-three attendees included Curt Stern from UC-Berkeley and Milislav Demerec from Brookhaven National Laboratory. The conference proceedings are published in Schull (1962). 

Beatty, John. 1988. Genetics in the Atomic Age The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, 1947-1956. In The American Development of Biology, edited by Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein, 284-323. Philadelphia University of Philadelphia Press. 

Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Journal of the History of Biology 26 205-231. 

But this mixture of contrasts and historical contradictions only served to bewilder me when we arrived that January day in 1950. There had been no briefings. I was the only American doctor. My assignment as chief physician of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (abcc) in Nagasaki had been thrust on me after my arrival in Japan. I had accepted reluctantly, always suspecting that it was a form of exile because I had protested the racial discrimination my family and I had suffered from the British occupation officers in Hiroshima. 

My final decision to go to work for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission came in September 1948 after I was assured of Dr. War-kany s help. That decision in turn led me, early in 1949, to the office of Dr. James Neel, a medical geneticist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. 

No sooner had we exchanged greetings with Peter and our old friends, however, than our enthusiasm was dampened. An administrator from the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission offered official greetings and then informed us that the promised housing was not available. Aki and Paul must remain in Tokyo while I proceeded alone to Hiroshima. I was furious. But what could I do And 1 was eager to get on with the work. 

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission had been reorganized in 1975 as the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (rerf), and it was the leaders of rerf who facilitated my return visits to both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 

Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). A commission established in accordance with a 1946 presidential directive to the National Research Council (the operations arm of the National Academy of Sciences) to undertake long-term investigations of the medical and biological effects of radiation on A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Naga-... 

Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF). A binationally funded Japanese foundation chartered under Japanese law according to an agreement between the United States and Japan. The rerf is the successor to the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission). 

James N. Yamazaki, Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (Quarterly Report, 1 January 1950-31 March 1950, p. 9, subject residual radioactivity investigation by William Menker and Leon Levinthal, Tracer Laboratory chemists, for ten days beginning the first week of March. Their investigation was centered in the Nishiyama Valley and the reservoir, which served as a catch basin for rain-washed fission products. 

Case Summary, Treatment and Disposition to Glen Line, Limited. Re Captain s Steward Ho Lung Yue, aboard MV Glenarm. Head, neck, chest steel fragment wounds incurred in air attack at sea. 17 July 1950, Nagasaki Harbor. Signed, J. Yamazaki, M.D., Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. 

Yamazaki, James N. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission—Nagasaki. Current Status and Discussions of the Pediatric ft-ojects in Nagasaki. IVoceedings of Meetings of the Research Committees of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, abcc, June 4,1951. 

Bugher, John C. Report on the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Field Operation March-May 1951, p. 26 and appendixes. Report to Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D.C., 1951> [Recommends continuing the fundamental program for both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]... 

Tabuchi, M., T. Hirai, et al. Clinical Findings on in Utero Exposed Microcephalic Children. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Technical Report 28 (1967) 67. 

That appraisal and that assessment were to be my challenge as I prepared to leave Nagasaki after completing my work as physician in charge for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. 

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