by David Laskey

In the decade after 1945, when survivors needed the most help, the Japanese government gave none. The victims felt that others did not understand the horrors of atomic destruction, and they saw themselves as terribly alone and abandoned. Immediately after the bombings, Japanese medical scholars and natural scientists exerted strenuous efforts to determine the details of the atomic disasters. During the early postwar months, their labours yielded a considerable volume of solid research, which the Science Council of Japan later compiled (SRIABC 1951; CRIABC 1953).
On September 6, 1945, the General Headquarters of the Occupation Forces (GHQ) issued a statement that made it clear that people likely to die from A-bomb afflictions should be left to die. The official attitude in early September was that people suffering from radiation injuries were not worth saving. Nippon Eiga-sha participated in the documentation of A-bomb damages as a supporting agency of the Japanese Scientific Research Council’s Special Committee. This company had organized a documentary film crew, and an advance party left Tokyo on September 7, 1945. The main crew began operations on September 25, filming in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They completed the first phase of their work by October 29. On October 17, an assistant cameraman was arrested in Nagasaki by American military police, while filming near the hypocenter. On October 19, the GHQ prohibited the filming of A-bomb scenes. An official prohibition on filming was issued by the GHQ Civil Information and Education Section on December 12, and an order was given on December 17 to submit all films concerning the atomic bombs to the General Headquarters. Since the documentary was not completed, and as a result of negotiations with GHQ, the Nippon Eiga-sha was engaged to produce and complete the documentary film at the request of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. The film, entitled, The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was completed by the end of April. American authorities requisitioned all films and data, classified them as top-secret, and sent them to the US.
On September 19, a press ban was put into effect, which censored all radio broadcasts, news reports, and magazine articles dealing with A-bomb damages, including information about medical treatment of related symptoms. Except for a brief period before the ban was imposed, all accounts of A-bomb damages disappeared from the media. However, GHQ warmly welcomed articles that publicized the power of the atomic bomb. Allied Occupation policies had imposed strict controls on all Japanese research into A-bomb affairs; under directives issued in late November 1945 by GHQ, Japanese scientists could neither undertake studies of A-bomb damages without permission, nor publish their findings. In the first 15 years after the bomb, limited studies were conducted, but since 1960, Japanese scientists have undertaken extensive research to ascertain how seriously the atomic destruction damaged the social fabric. As the victims’ realities became more widely known, people began to realize that nuclear weapons endanger all mankind. Another reason for the incomplete data on A-bomb damages derives from the restrictions that were imposed by Allied Occupation Forces of Japan.
These restrictions were enforced until the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the Occupation Authority on September 8, 1951. In Article 19 of the treaty, Japan had to relinquish all rights to press claims on the US for the use of nuclear weapons, which contravened the Geneva Convention’s Articles of War. The Japanese Government later interpreted the articles’ conditions as including any claims made by Atomic bomb victims. Further, during the Occupation, which actually ended in 1952, one year after the signing of the treaty, the public school system could not inform students about the A-bomb. The textbooks authorized during that period by the Japanese Ministry of Education make almost no mention of atomic bomb damages. Perhaps most surprising is the fact that on the monuments erected at that time to memorialize the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Chinese characters for genbaku (shortened form of genshi bakudan, “atomic bomb”) cannot be found. Indeed, it was a time ruled by a “genbaku taboo.”