Content warning: This report includes graphic stories, illustrations and photographs of extreme violence committed against children; detailed descriptions of children’s injuries, suffering and deaths; references to mental illness, suicide and child neglect; and stories of harm inflicted on pregnant women resulting in miscarriages and stillbirths.
Contents
Foreword
Executive Summary
Part I The Children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Part II Children Harmed by Nuclear Testing
Part III Children’s Fear of Nuclear War
Part IV Protecting Children through Disarmament
Foreword
Every day, children are killed or injured in armed conflicts around the world. Thousands of children – including many babies – are now counted among the dead in the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine: a blight on humanity.
In both cases, the main perpetrators of violence against children are states armed with nuclear weapons; and in any war involving one or more such states, there is an inherent risk of nuclear catastrophe.
As this report shows in compelling and often gut-wrenching detail, it is children who would suffer the most in the event of a nuclear attack against a city today.
The Impact of Nuclear Weapons on Children is a dire warning to the governments of all nuclear-armed states and to the global public that urgent action is needed to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
By sharing the stories of children killed or injured in the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and of children harmed by nuclear tests, we hope to honour them and ensure that no one else ever suffers as they have.
Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy cities; to kill and maim whole populations, children among them.
In a nuclear attack, children are more likely than adults to die or suffer severe injuries, given their greater vulnerability to the effects of nuclear weapons: heat, blast and radiation. The fact that children depend on adults for their survival also places them at higher risk of death and hardship in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, with support systems destroyed.
Tens of thousands of children were killed when the United States detonated two relatively small nuclear weapons (by today’s standard) over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Many were instantly reduced to ash and vapour. Others died in agony minutes, hours, days or weeks after the attacks from burn and blast injuries or acute radiation sickness. Countless more died years or even decades later from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses. Leukaemia – cancer of the blood – was especially prevalent among the young.
Left: A display of images at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Right: In Nagasaki, a father searches for a doctor to treat his wounded baby one day after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Yosuke Yamahata)
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the scenes of devastation were apocalyptic: Playgrounds scattered with the dead bodies of young girls and boys. Mothers cradling their lifeless babies. Children with their intestines hanging out of their bellies and strips of skin dangling from their limbs.
At some of the schools close to ground zero, the entire student population of several hundred perished in an instant. At others, there were but a few survivors. In Hiroshima, thousands of school students were working outside to create firebreaks on the morning of the attack. Approximately 6,300 of them were killed.
Those children who, by chance, escaped death carried with them severe physical and psychological scars throughout their lifetimes. What they witnessed and experienced on 6 August and 9 August 1945 and in the days that followed was permanently seared into their memories.
Thousands of children lost one or both parents, as well as siblings. Some “A-bomb orphans” were left to roam the streets, with orphanages exceeding capacity.
Many of the babies who were in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the atomic bombings were also harmed as a result of their exposure to ionising radiation. They had a greater risk of dying soon after birth or suffering from congenital abnormalities such as brain damage and microcephaly, as well as cancers and other illnesses later in life.
Pregnant women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki also experienced higher rates of spontaneous abortions and stillbirths.
Iroji Kebenli, 13 years old, suffered radiation burns when the United States tested a nuclear weapon in the Marshall Islands in 1954. (Photos by the US government)
In communities around the world exposed to fallout from nuclear testing, children have experienced similar harm from radiation.
Since 1945, nuclear-armed states have conducted more than two thousand nuclear test explosions at dozens of locations, dispersing radioactive material far and wide.
Among the general population, children and infants have been the most severely affected, due to their higher vulnerability to the effects of ionising radiation. Young children are three to five times more susceptible to cancer in the long term than adults from a given dose of radiation, and girls are particularly vulnerable.
In the Marshall Islands, where the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests, children played in the radioactive ash that fell from the sky, unaware of the danger. They called it “Bikini snow” – a reference to the atoll where many of the explosions took place. It burned their skin and eyes, and they quickly developed symptoms of acute radiation sickness.
For decades after the tests, women in the Marshall Islands gave birth to severely deformed babies at unusually high rates. Those born alive rarely survived more than a few days. Some had translucent skin and no discernible bones. They would refer to them as “jellyfish babies”, for they could scarcely be recognised as human beings.
Similar stories have been told by people living downwind or downstream of nuclear test sites in the United States, Kazakhstan, Ma’ohi Nui, Algeria, Kiribati, China, Australia and elsewhere.
In Islamabad, children take part in an anti-nuclear protest in May 1998 – the month that India and Pakistan each conducted a series of nuclear test explosions. (Photo from Bridgeman Images)
We have a collective moral duty to honour the memories of the thousands of children killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as those harmed by the development and testing of nuclear weapons globally. And we must pursue the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world with determination and urgency, lest there be any more victims, young or old.
Under international humanitarian law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, governments have a legal obligation to protect children against harm in armed conflict. To fulfil this obligation, it is imperative that they work together now to eliminate the scourge of nuclear weapons from the world.
In this report, we describe how nuclear weapons are uniquely harmful to children, based on the experiences of children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and those living near nuclear test sites. We share their first-hand testimonies and depictions of the toll of nuclear weapons on their lives. And we explain how the ever-present fear of nuclear war – the possibility that entire cities might be destroyed at any given moment – causes psychological harm to children everywhere.
Finally, we make an urgent appeal to all governments to protect current and future generations of children by eliminating nuclear weapons, via the landmark UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021.
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Key findings
So long as nuclear weapons exist in the world, there is a very real risk that they will be used again, and that risk at present appears to be increasing.
In the event of their use, it is all but certain that many thousands of children – perhaps hundreds of thousands or more – would be counted among the dead and injured, and they would suffer in unique ways and out of proportion to the rest of the population.
In a nuclear attack, children would be more likely than adults:
To die from burn injuries, as their skin is thinner and more delicate and burns deeper, more quickly and at a lower temperature;
To die from blast injuries, given the relative frailty of their smaller bodies;
To die from acute radiation sickness, as they have more cells that are growing and dividing rapidly and are significantly more vulnerable to radiation effects;
To be unable to free themselves from collapsed and burning buildings or take other steps in the aftermath that would increase their chances of survival;
To suffer from leukaemia, solid cancers, strokes, heart attacks and other illnesses years later as a result of the delayed effects of radiation damage to their cells; and
To suffer privation in the aftermath of the attacks, as well as psychological trauma leading to mental disorders and suicide.
Furthermore, babies who were in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the attack would be at greater risk of:
Death soon after birth or in early childhood;
Microcephaly, accompanied by intellectual disability, given the higher vulnerability of the developing brain to radiation damage;
Other developmental abnormalities;
Growth impairment due to the reduced functioning of the thyroid; and
Cancers and other radiation-related illnesses during childhood or later in life.
These horrifying realities should have profound implications for policy-making in countries that currently possess nuclear weapons or those that support their retention as part of military alliances.
They should also prompt organisations dedicated to the protection of children and the promotion of their rights to work to address the grave global threat posed by nuclear weapons.
While children played no part in developing these doomsday devices, it is children who would suffer the most in the event of their future use – one of the myriad reasons why such weapons must be urgently eliminated.
Shinichi’s tricycle
Three-year-old Shinichi Tetsutani was riding his tricycle when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He suffered major injuries, including burns that covered his body, and died in agony several hours later.
(From the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, donated by Nobuo Tetsutani)
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Part I The Children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Continued advocacy by children who survived
To begin to comprehend the magnitude of harm that would be inflicted on children in the event of a nuclear attack against a city today, it is necessary to examine the experiences of the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tens of thousands were killed, disabled or disfigured in the US atomic bombings of 1945.
Though many children and babies had been evacuated from the two cities in the months prior to the attacks, thousands remained there on 6 August and 9 August and were among the estimated total of 210,000 people killed.
Most children and adults within one kilometre of ground zero were instantly incinerated, or received such severe injuries and such high doses of ionising radiation that they died within a matter of hours or days.
At a distance of one to two kilometres, the mortality rate remained high, especially for those outdoors and unshielded from the heat, blast and radiation. This included thousands of children on their way to school, in the schoolyard or working to create firebreaks.
Children who survived the attacks have provided harrowing accounts of what they saw and experienced in the aftermath: The charred remains of siblings and parents. Classmates with their eyeballs bursting out of their sockets. Streets filled with the dead and dying.
Many of the survivors experienced various symptoms of acute radiation sickness, such as vomiting, fever, diarrhoea and hair loss, as well as agonising pain from severe burns, broken bones and lacerations. More than a few said that they envied the dead.
Left: Students from the Hiroshima Girls’ Commercial School and the Hiroshima Municipal Junior High School receive emergency care a few hours after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Yoshito Matsushige)
Right: A museum display in Hiroshima of the clothes that children were wearing on the day of the nuclear attack. (Courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
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How many children were killed?
It is estimated that more than 38,000 children were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
According to surveys by the city of Hiroshima, 73,622 children under 10 years of age were exposed to the bombing, of whom 7,907 had died by the end of 1945. Among older children and adolescents, the death toll was thought to be 15,543.
In Nagasaki, authorities estimated that 49,684 children under 10 were exposed to the bombing, of whom 6,349 had died by the end of 1945, with 8,724 older children and adolescents also counted among the dead.
These official estimates, however, do not include the many children who died years after the attacks from cancers and other radiation-related illnesses.
Hiroshima:
Prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, around 23,500 babies and children were evacuated from the city due to fears of possible US air raids. Many went to live with relatives in the countryside, which was deemed safer.
But tens of thousands of children remained in the city on the morning of 6 August 1945, including 26,800 students mobilised to perform various tasks, such as creating firebreaks in the city’s centre – a measure aimed at limiting destruction in the event of an air raid.
Of the 8,400 students performing this particular task, around 6,300 were killed. Most were 12 to 14 years old, in junior high school. Hundreds of students who had been mobilised to perform other tasks across the city were also killed. The total death toll for mobilised students was around 7,200.
Fatalities among mobilised students in Hiroshima
Prefectural Office area: 1,821 students killed (out of 1,891) Dobashi area: 1,264 students killed (out of 1,530) City Hall area: 1,749 students killed (out of 2,331) Hatchobori area: 405 students killed (out of 410) Tsurumi Bridge area: 579 students killed (out of 1,936)
Total fatalities: 7,200 mobilised students
Source: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Note that this table does not include all areas.
In the aftermath of the attack, school officials in Hiroshima made earnest efforts to determine which of their students had died and which had survived. The schools closest to the bomb’s hypocentre (ground zero) generally had the highest death tolls.
In 1951, the US government published a multi-volume report on the medical effects of atomic bombs, which included detailed casualty figures for schoolchildren in Hiroshima as of the end of October 1945.
The report grouped the students according to their distance from the hypocentre. For the first group – those less than one kilometre away – 2,579 of the 3,440 students, or roughly three in four, were confirmed dead. A few hundred more were missing but presumed dead.
“In the centre of [Hiroshima] were some 8,400 students from grades seven and eight who had been mobilised from all the high schools in the city to help clear fire lanes … nearly all of them were incinerated and were vaporised without a trace, and more died within days. In this way, my age group in the city was almost wiped out.”
– Setsuko Thurlow, atomic bomb survivor and disarmament advocate
Many of the students close to the hypocentre were outside at the time of the attack, completely unshielded from the bomb’s effects. They stood little chance of survival.
Of the “unshielded” schoolchildren within one kilometre of the hypocentre, 94 per cent were killed, according to the casualty figures published by the US government. For those between one and two kilometres, around 85 per cent were killed. Relatively few students were indoors at the time of the attack.
Left: A map from a US government report showing the locations of groups of students in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The concentric circles indicate their proximity to ground zero. Thousands were outside creating firebreaks or in the schoolyard.
Right: The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. (Photo by the US government)
At some schools close to the hypocentre, there were no known survivors. For example, of the 174 students attending the First Prefectural Girls’ School on the morning of the attack, all 174 were killed.
Around 400 students from the Honkawa Elementary School, a three-storey concrete building just 410 metres from the hypocentre, were killed. One student, 11-year-old Imori Kiyoko, miraculously survived.
At the First Hiroshima Prefectural Junior High School, hundreds of severely burnt students dived into the school’s swimming pool to escape the unbearable heat of the fires engulfing the city and to ease their pain. They died in the water.
The tattered remnants of school uniforms
Nobuko Shoda, 14 years old, suffered severe burns to much of her body when the United States attacked Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. She was outside, around 1.2 kilometres from the hypocentre, creating firebreaks with her classmates. She died in agony four days later. This is the school uniform she was wearing on the day of the attack.
Nobuko Shoda and her school uniform. (From the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, donated by Mitsuo Shoda)
While detailed records were made of children attending school on the day of the bombing or those mobilised to perform various tasks across Hiroshima, less is known about the fate of the city’s many children who had not yet attained school age, including babies.
In total, around 340,000 to 350,000 people were in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, of whom an estimated 140,000 were killed instantly or had died from their injuries by the end of 1945. In addition, thousands succumbed to radiation-related illnesses years later, adding to the complexity of calculating the overall death toll.
Suffice it to say, the number of children killed in Hiroshima – with a single atomic bomb that US officials code-named “Little Boy” – was staggering.
Many students in Hiroshima were outside at morning assembly when the atomic bomb exploded above them. At Otemachi Elementary School, around one kilometre from the hypocentre, “what appeared to be the entire student body was crouched and charred black – still in formation”, recalled Tojo Sera. (Illustration by Tojo Sera, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
Several thousand students in Hiroshima suffered agonising deaths. Hideo Kimura, who was 12 years old at the time of the bombing, remembered her classmates’ screams for help and the burns that covered their faces and bodies. (Illustration by Hideo Kimura, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
The corpses of girls who had been creating firebreaks in Hiroshima at the time of the nuclear attack. (Illustration by Hidehiko Okazaki, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
A young child with severe injuries in Hiroshima. (Photo by the US government)
Nagasaki:
For Nagasaki, the population on the day of the atomic bombing (9 August 1945) was around 240,000 people, of whom an estimated 74,000 were killed instantly or had died from their injuries by the end of 1945.
Prior to the attack, approximately 17,000 children and elderly persons had been evacuated from the city. It is thought that a large proportion of these evacuees were children, but there is no official record. Despite the evacuations, tens of thousands of children were still in Nagasaki on the day of the bombing.
The bomb devastated the Urakami district, where Nagasaki’s main residential communities and schools were concentrated.
An incinerated boy in Nagasaki, believed to be 13-year-old Shoji Tanizaki. Many of the corpses close to ground zero could not be identified. (Photo by Yosuke Yamahata, courtesy of the ICRC Archives)
“A mother cradled her headless infant and wailed … Tiny, barefoot children squatted in the ruins or wandered past corpses, calling out for their mothers and fathers. One woman whose husband had died, and who would soon lose her four daughters and four-year-old son, came to understand that when one of her children stopped asking for water, it meant that she or he had died.”
From the Shiroyama Elementary School, close to the bomb’s hypocentre, over 1,400 students were killed in the attack; from Yamazato Elementary School, 1,300 students perished. Several other schools near ground zero also suffered high death tolls. In total, an estimated 5,500 students and teachers were killed.
As in Hiroshima, thousands of Nagasaki’s students had been mobilised to perform various tasks across the city, but a smaller proportion of them were outdoors at the time of the bombing. Still, many were killed, including 580 at one of the Mitsubishi factories close to the hypocentre.
Workers there expressed great distress that “many persons who were recognised as only very slightly injured at first gradually deteriorated in health and died” from acute radiation illness, and the “victims include many teenage students”.
Abolish nuclear weapons ‘for our children and those to come’
Senji Yamaguchi, 14 years old, was helping to dig a shelter at a Mitsubishi factory in Nagasaki at the time of the US atomic bombing. The shockwave from the explosion knocked him unconscious, and he suffered severe burns to his face and body.
He spent eight months recovering at the Omura Navy Hospital. In addition to causing him great pain, his injuries made him feel self-conscious, he said. Babies would often burst into tears when they saw his face.
In 1982, almost four decades after the attack, Senji became the first atomic bomb survivor to address the United Nations in New York. “We cannot allow nuclear weapons to cause any more suffering or deaths. For our children and those to come. Not even one soul,” he implored.
For 29 years, he served as a chair of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations. He was a leading figure in the movement for a nuclear-weapon-free world until his death in 2013.
Left: Senji recovering from his burn injuries at the Omura Navy Hospital.
Right: The ruins of Nagasaki in September 1945. (Photo by the US government)
Even among the mobilised students who were beyond the main zone of destruction – more than 1.5 kilometres from the hypocentre – approximately 680 were killed.
Several years after the attack, when US researchers began studying the impact of the Nagasaki bombing on children, they were able to identify just 134 surviving children who had been within one kilometre of the hypocentre. So many others had perished.
Dead bodies scattered over a playground
Fujio Tsujimoto, five years old, was at a school playground with his grandmother when they heard an aeroplane in the distance over Nagasaki.
I grabbed my grandmother by the hand and ran towards the shelter. “Enemy plane!” yelled the watchman on the roof of the school building as he struck the bell. “Look out!” People on the playground came running straight for the shelter. I was the first to plunge into the deepest part of the shelter. But at that moment – flash! – I was blown against the wall by the force of the explosion.
After a while, I peered out of the shelter. I found people scattered all over the playground. The ground was covered almost entirely with bodies. Most of them looked dead and lay still. Here and there, however, some were thrashing their legs or raising their arms. Those who were able to move came crawling into the shelter. Soon the shelter was crowded with the wounded. Around the school, all the town was on fire.
My brother and sisters were late coming into the shelter, so they were burnt and crying. Half an hour later my mother appeared at last. She was covered with blood. I will never forget how happy I was as I clung to my mother. We waited and waited for Father, but he never appeared.
Even those who had survived died in agony one after another. My younger sister died the next day. My mother, she also died the next day. And then my older brother. I thought I would die, too, because the people around me, lying beside each other in the shelter, were dying one by one. Yet, because my grandmother and I had been in the deepest part of the shelter, we apparently had not been exposed to [as much] radiation and in the end we were saved.
Children’s bones at a school playground in Nagasaki, September 1945. (Photo by Teiji Nihei)
Among the victims of the nuclear attacks were people from outside Japan, including many who were brought to Japan from its colonised areas. This included as many as 70,000 Koreans – many of whom were forced labourers – and people from China and Taiwan. Some were children.
Lee Su-yong, from Korea, survived the attack on Hiroshima as a 15-year-old girl but sustained a permanent foot injury and developed uterine cancer and other illnesses later in life due to her exposure to radiation.
“Everything I could see was destroyed,” she said, describing the immediate aftermath. “Children were crying for their mothers. Charred bodies were strewn all over the city. Many people lost their arms or legs … It was horrendous.”
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Burn injuries
The nuclear explosions above Hiroshima and Nagasaki created ground temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius, as hot as the surface of the Sun. Most people close to the hypocentres were incinerated in a flash, or suffered such severe burn injuries that they died within a few hours of the attacks.
Many of those who were beyond the most heavily damaged areas – more than 1.5 kilometres from ground zero and up to 3.5 kilometres away – also suffered severe burns, but had a greater chance of survival.
Infants and children were at the highest risk of life-threatening burn injuries because children’s skin is thinner and more delicate and it burns deeper, more quickly and at a lower temperature than adults’ skin. In addition, because of their smaller size, they have a greater area of skin per kilogramme of body weight than adults.
In many cases, burns from the atomic bombs penetrated all layers of skin, resulting in severe scarring and deformities. Thick raised scars, known as keloids, were common among survivors, including the many students in Hiroshima who were outside at the time of the bombing.
At Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial High School, for example, 95 of the surviving students developed keloid scars, as did 52 of the students from the Second Hiroshima Prefectural Girls’ High School and 41 from the First Hiroshima Prefectural High School.
Burns that took years to heal
Sumiteru Taniguchi, 16 years old, was riding his bicycle at the time of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki. “In the flash of the explosion,” he recounted, “I was blown off the bicycle from behind and slapped down against the ground.” When he lifted his head, he saw that the children who had been playing all around him just moments before were dead.
Despite being 1.8 kilometres from the hypocentre, he suffered severe burns to his back, left arm and left leg. His wounds quickly became infected. He spent almost four years in hospital recovering from his injuries, including 21 months lying on his stomach, during which time he developed severe bed sores and deep wounds in the skin between his ribs.
He underwent several skin graft surgeries and, later in life, 10 surgeries to remove growths from the scarred areas of his body. The pain and discomfort from the injuries never went away. He devoted much of his life to the cause of abolishing nuclear weapons, serving as chair of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers for many years.
Doctors treat Sumiteru’s wounds at Omura Navy Hospital in January 1946. (Footage from the US government)
In 1955, one decade after the bombings, a group of 25 teenage girls and young women from Hiroshima with keloid scars on their faces, hands and other parts of their bodies went on a highly publicised journey to the United States, funded by a charity, to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Known as the “Hiroshima maidens”, they had been school students at the time of the attack on their city. Because of their disfigured faces, some were loath to be seen in public and feared that they might never marry.
A total of 138 surgeries were performed on the women. One of them, Tomoko Nakabayashi, died of cardiac arrest on the operating table due to a medical error.
No similar charitable programme was ever established for the girls of Nagasaki who had been disfigured by the atomic bomb; nor was there any effort by US doctors to assist the many disfigured boys from either city.
The story of a ‘Hiroshima maiden’
Shigeko Sasamori was walking to school at the time of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The blast knocked the 13-year-old girl unconscious, and she suffered such severe burn injuries that her parents struggled to recognise her.
“One-third of my body was burned,” she recounted. “All my face, neck, back, half of my chest, shoulders, arms and both hands.” Because of the injuries to her eyes and mouth, she found it difficult to see and eat.
“My skin, chin, neck and chest were stuck together,” she said.
Surgeons in Tokyo operated on her hands, as her fingers had become fused together with scar tissue, and she later travelled to the United States as one of the “Hiroshima maidens”, where she received numerous operations to reconstruct her face.
Left: A 14-year-old girl with burns covering her body receives treatment at the Omura Navy Hospital, near Nagasaki, two days after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Masao Shiotsuki)
Right: In front of the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, a mother with severe burn injuries pleads to passers-by for water. Her child, also grievously injured, is too feeble to stand. (Illustration by Hajime Tasaka, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
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Blast injuries
The atomic bombs generated fast-moving shockwaves, which hurled people through the air, knocked them unconscious, injured them, trapped them under collapsed buildings, and crushed them to death.
Babies and young children were more likely than adults to suffer severe injury and death as a result of blast effects, given the relative frailty of their smaller bodies.
Setsuko Thurlow, who was 13 years old at the time of the attack on Hiroshima, recalled seeing victims with “parts of their bodies missing”, “their eyeballs hanging in their hands” and “their bellies burst open”.
Knocked unconscious by the blast and pinned under a collapsed building, she was eventually pulled free by a passer-by. “Most of my classmates in that building were burned to death alive,” she said. “I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation.”
Many children, especially the youngest ones, lacked the physical strength to free themselves from destroyed homes and schools; they were completely helpless in the immediate aftermath and dependent on adults for their survival.
Children trapped under a collapsed building
At Dambara Elementary School in Hiroshima, a student tried to free himself from the burning ruins, screaming out to a teacher for help. “Around him I could hear other students moaning. I tried to help, but I couldn’t budge the collapsed mortar frames by myself,” recalled Chieko Matsumura. “I can still hear them crying, ‘Teacher, help!’ I can hardly bear it,” she said three decades later.
(Illustration by Chieko Matsumura, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
A girl with glass embedded in her body
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the blast shattered many of the city’s windows. Dozens of shards of glass penetrated the skin of Ikuko Shintani, a 15-year-old girl. Some (including those pictured here) remained embedded in her body for nine years, causing her intense pain, before they were finally removed.
(From the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, donated by Ikuko Shintani)
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Acute radiation sickness
The nuclear chain reactions that caused the bombs to explode over Hiroshima and Nagasaki released vast amounts of radiation, which penetrated deep into people’s bodies, destroying or damaging their cells and inducing disease. Even at a distance of one kilometre from ground zero, the radiation dose was high enough to cause death from acute radiation poisoning.
Babies and children were the most severely affected, given their significantly higher vulnerability to harm from ionising radiation. They were much more likely to die as a result of the acute effects of radiation than adults who received the same dose.
This is, in part, because children have more cells that are growing and dividing rapidly, and their organs and tissues are also growing. Moreover, they have thinner skin and breathe in more air and drink more water for their size than adults, resulting in greater absorption of radiation.
The damage to bone marrow (where blood cells are produced) from radiation exposure is also more pronounced in children, as they have more blood-forming marrow than adults as a proportion of their bodies.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those suffering from acute radiation sickness experienced a range of symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhoea and hair loss. Some had no apparent external injuries. Those who did have burn and blast injuries had diminished natural defence and repair mechanisms because of their irradiation.
Most of the deaths from acute radiation sickness occurred one to two months after the attacks. Some sufferers recovered from the acute stage of the illness but died several years later from cancers and other illnesses caused by the delayed effects of radiation damage to their cells.
An irradiated brother and sister
At the time of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Toru was seven years old and his sister, Aiko, was nine. They were indoors, around one kilometre from the hypocentre. Within four or five days of the attack, they began losing their hair because of exposure to the bomb’s radiation.
They suffered various other symptoms of radiation illness, including fever, loss of appetite and bleeding gums. While both recovered from the acute stage of the illness, they ultimately succumbed to the delayed effects. Toru died at age 11 and Aiko at 29.
Siblings Toru (left) and Aiko (right) at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital in October 1945. (Photo by Shunkichi Kikuchi)
Even people living in the outer suburbs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, quite some distance from ground zero, suffered from radiation sickness because of radioactive fallout that blanketed their homes. Hours after the explosions, “black rain” poured down from pyrocumulus clouds that were generated by the cities’ massive firestorms.
Haematological (blood) studies of residents in the most severely affected suburbs revealed that children were particularly sensitive to harm. Those under 15 years of age exhibited the greatest increase in white blood cells.
One of 541 girls killed
On the morning of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Sachie Morimoto, 13 years old, was outside helping to create firebreaks with her classmates. When the bomb exploded, she became trapped under the gate of a temple. Her classmates screamed in agony and begged for help. Many had been badly burnt and their eyes were bulging out, she recalled.
“Let’s run as far as we can,” she said. But one of her friends collapsed, saying, “I’m going to die.” Sachie seized another friend’s hand. “Let’s not get separated.” They went down to the river, where the second friend fell into the water, saying, “I’m going to die.” Sachie dragged her friend to dry land, and then fell unconscious.
A few days later, she was reunited with her mother at an aid station. Though Sachie’s burn injuries were not especially severe, she had a fever, diarrhoea and other symptoms of acute radiation sickness and survived only a few more days. Her last words were, “Dad, Mum, sister, thank you for everything. I’ll go ahead. Goodbye.”
At Sachie’s girls’ school in Hiroshima, 541 first- and second-year students were working to create firebreaks at the time of the attack. None survived.
Source: Asahi Shimbun
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Other causes of immediate death
While burn and blast injuries and acute radiation sickness were the main causes of death in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, some children died of other causes. For example, in Hiroshima, many injured students near ground zero drowned when they jumped into the Honkawa River to try to escape the city’s fires.
Others were killed in the mad scramble for relief. At a naval hospital near Nagasaki, for example, a medical intern recalled the arrival of a truck load of “horribly burned” people, who “hardly looked like human beings”. As he lifted them from the truck, he gasped at the sight before him.
“There lay a dead infant stacked underneath so many other bodies, which had been tossed and pitched by the truck’s passage over mountain roads; the life had been crushed out of the small child.”
Injured students in Hiroshima flock to the Honkawa River to escape the inferno. Many of the city’s roads had become impassable. (Illustration by Yoshio Takahara, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
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Searching for lost family members
In the chaotic aftermath of the atomic bombings, parents searched desperately for their children, and children for their parents. Some found only the charred remains or personal effects of their loved ones; others found no trace at all.
Efforts to reunite family members were made more difficult by the fact that many had suffered such severe injuries that they were difficult to recognise. “I found my older sister hardly recognisable among the dying and dead,” one girl in Nagasaki recounted. “Her face was swollen and burnt.”
Left: The devastated Urakami district of Nagasaki. (Photo by the US government)
Right: Two brothers search for their father in Nagasaki one day after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Yosuke Yamahata)
Some injured children managed to find their own way home in the aftermath of the attacks. Yasuo Yamamoto’s son, Masumi, walked for two hours through the city’s smouldering ruins before finally arriving at the doorstep.
“His whole skin had peeled off, and there was a red, naked body standing there,” the father recalled. “If I did not have intuition, I probably would have denied that he was my child.” At the time of the bombing, Masumi had been outside creating firebreaks. He died the next morning.
“A young couple, the woman’s clothing stripped from her body, both of them covered with blood, held a bleeding baby and pleaded for help to find a second child, lost in the wreckage.”
– James N Yamazaki, author of Children of the Atomic Bomb
Identifying victims from personal items found in the ruins
Shigeru Orimen, a 13-year-old student at the Second Hiroshima Prefectural Junior High School, was killed instantly in the nuclear attack. His mother searched for him but found only his burnt, skeletal remains alongside the lunchbox she had packed for him that morning. He had left home looking forward to lunch but never got to eat it, she said.
Mitsuko Kawamura, a 13-year-old student at the First Municipal Girls’ High School in Hiroshima, was working with her classmates to create firebreaks at the time of the bombing. No trace of her body was ever found.
But a month after the attack, Mitsuko’s sister Yaeko, who had spent weeks searching for her, found the bag she had sewn for Mitsuko using cloth from their mother’s kimono. It was near Mitsuko’s assigned worksite.
Mistuko was one of more than 600 students from the First Municipal Girls’ High School killed in the bombing – the highest death toll for any school in the city.
Shigeru’s lunchbox and Mitsuko’s bag. (Both items are from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The lunchbox was donated by Shigeko Orimen and the bag by Toshio Kawamura.)
Rikuo Fukamachi, 13 years old, searched for his father among the corpses in the Otagawa River in Hiroshima. “My baby sister, just one year old, rode on my back, breathing lightly and withstanding the blazing summer sun,” he recalled. “I never found my father.” (Illustration by Rikuo Fukamachi, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
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Cremating dead children
In the aftermath of the nuclear attacks, corpses filled the streets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the foul stench of burnt, rotting flesh lingered. Makeshift crematoriums were quickly set up to dispose of the bodies – sometimes 20 or more at a time.
Parents carried their dead children to these sites, and children carried dead siblings.
Yoshiko Kajimoto, who was 14 years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, recalled disposing of corpses with her classmates. There were so many, she said, that it was impossible to avoid stepping on them. “It was just horrible. Some didn’t have heads … It is not something that young children should ever see.”
A mother in Hiroshima sets out to cremate her dead child. Maggots crawl in the burns on the child’s face. The metal helmet is a receptacle for the cremated bones. (Illustration by Matsumuro Kazuo, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
‘The Boy Standing by the Crematory’
This iconic photograph (left), taken in Nagasaki one month after the atomic bombing, shows a young boy with his dead baby brother strapped to his back, waiting to dispose of the body at a crematorium. The photographer, Joe O’Donnell of the US marine corps, described the scene as such:
I saw a boy about 10 years old walking by. He was carrying a baby on his back. In those days in Japan, we often saw children playing with their little brothers or sisters on their backs, but this boy was clearly different. I could see that he had come to this place for a serious reason. He was wearing no shoes. His face was hard. The little head was tipped back as if the baby were fast asleep. The boy stood there for 5 or 10 minutes.
The men in white masks walked over to him and quietly began to take off the rope that was holding the baby. That is when I saw that the baby was already dead. The men held the body by the hands and feet and placed it on the fire. The boy stood there straight without moving, watching the flames. He was biting his lower lip so hard that it shone with blood. The flame burned low like the sun going down. The boy turned around and walked silently away.
Left: “The Boy Standing by the Crematory”. (Photo by Joe O’Donnell)
Right: Children make their way through the wreckage of Nagasaki a month after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Joe O’Donnell)
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Caring for babies and children in the aftermath
The chaos in the aftermath of the atomic bombings meant that many children waited for days to receive treatment for their injuries. Some died waiting. At many relief stations, doctors prioritised those with less traumatic injuries, for they stood a greater chance of survival.
Many adult survivors felt extreme anguish at being physically unable to assist injured children – or simply too overwhelmed to do so. According to psychiatrists who interviewed survivors, they often bore the psychological burden of guilt and remorse.
As one survivor recalled, “At the time, I couldn’t do anything other than escaping by myself immediately after the atomic bombing. I couldn’t even rescue a small child who was calling for help.”
Another survivor, Iwao Nakanishi, who was 15 years old, remembered hearing a little boy screaming for help in Hiroshima. He had lost both eyes. “I grabbed his arms and tried to help him stand up. His flesh came off and I let him go. I can never forget that … I regret not carrying him on my back and saving him.”
In Hiroshima, a girl died on the Enkogawa riverbed with no one to help her. (Illustration by Masato Yamashita, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
At a relief station at Yano Elementary School in Hiroshima one day after the atomic bombing, an injured mother breastfeeds her baby. (Illustration by Kizo Kawakami, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
Many mothers struggled to care for their babies following the attacks. Because of their trauma, some could no longer produce breast milk and quickly depleted their supplies of rationed milk. They then begged other breastfeeding mothers for help.
Some women gave birth in the wreckage of the cities without the help of a doctor or midwife.
Left: A mother and her baby await treatment for their injuries in Nagasaki. (Photo by Yosuke Yamahata, courtesy of the ICRC Archives)
Right: A day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the sound of a wailing infant drew Hiroko Imanaka and her mother to a large willow tree. There they saw a woman who had died while breastfeeding; her baby still clung to her. (Illustration by Hiroko Imanaka, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
A baby clings to his dead mother
“The girl sitting in the centre is me,” wrote Kiyoko Nishioki, describing the picture she drew of the scene that she witnessed in the courtyard of the Ujina-machi Welfare Hospital as a seven-year-old girl, approximately 3.2 kilometres from the hypocentre in Hiroshima.
“A baby in this picture was clinging to his dead mother. He probably died the next day as he was lying rather still beside her. The young boy in front of the baby died after saying to me, ‘Please hand this lunch to my mother.’ He entrusted me with his hinomaru bento, a lunch of rice and plum.”
(Illustration by Kiyoko Nishioki, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
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Leukaemia and other cancers
Due to the latent effects of radiation, the atomic bombs continued to claim lives long after they were dropped. Even people who had no visible injuries from the bombings fell ill and died from radiation-related cancers and other illnesses years later.
Those who were children at the time of the bombings were at greatest risk of developing cancers in their lifetimes, given the greater vulnerability of children’s cells to radiation damage. The fact that they had longer lifespans ahead of them also meant that cancers had more time to develop.
“Children and adults do not share equally the dreadful short-term effects of ‘the bomb’, and it is clear from all available data that children are also most susceptible to the long-term effects that appear after varying latency periods.”
– Dr Michael S Kappy, paediatric endocrinologist
Leukaemia – cancer of the blood – was one health disorder significantly more common among atomic bomb survivors than the general population, and the high sensitivity of children’s bone marrow made them especially susceptible.
Those under 10 years of age at the time of the bombings had more than 20 times the risk of dying of leukaemia than people not exposed to radiation, and teenagers had approximately 15 times the risk. In general, the younger a person was at the time of exposure, the greater their risk of developing leukaemia.
The incidence of leukaemia among survivors peaked in the early 1950s. Little could be done to treat those afflicted with this illness, as bone marrow transplant technology and effective medicines had not yet been developed. Consequently, almost all of them died.
Left: Sadako Sasaki was two years old at the time of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. She died in 1955, a decade after the attack, from leukaemia caused by the bomb’s radiation. This photo was taken in 1954.
Right: The cover of a popular children’s book based on Sadako’s life.
Atomic bomb survivors also suffered from higher rates of many other cancers, including those of the thyroid, breast, lung, stomach, colon, skin and meningioma (a type of brain tumour). As with leukaemia, children were generally more likely than adults to develop such cancers in their lifetimes.
The first case of thyroid cancer among survivors was reported in 1957. Researchers found that the risk of developing thyroid cancer was greatest among children under 10 years of age at the time of their exposure to the bombs’ radiation, and girls were at especially high risk.
This was also the case for breast cancer, as the immature cells in young girls that are destined to become breast tissue later in life are significantly more sensitive to cancer induction by radiation than mature cells. Girls under 10 years of age when exposed to radiation from the bombs had a risk five times greater than those exposed at age 40 or older.
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Stunted growth in exposed children
Radiation from the atomic bombs also resulted in stunted growth in children, especially those under 11 years of age at the time of the attacks and closest to ground zero. On average, their weight, height and head circumference did not increase at a normal rate.
For some, growth retardation and developmental delay were due to radiation impairing the functioning of their thyroid glands.
This was one of the findings of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, which the US government established in 1946 during the period of its occupation of Japan. Over several years, scientists from the commission examined the health of 1,608 children from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had been exposed to radiation.
Left: Four years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a doctor measures a boy harmed in the attack to assess the long-term health impacts of radiation exposure. (Photo by Carl Mydans)
Right: The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission building in Hiroshima circa 1954.
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Impact on babies exposed in utero
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also had a devastating toll on babies who had been in their mothers’ wombs at the time.
Many were born with abnormalities as a result of their exposure to radiation in utero and became known as “pica babies” – pica being a Japanese word referring to the blinding flash of the atomic bombs.
It is estimated that around 2,000 pregnant women were within three kilometres of the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb.
A group of children and a pregnant woman, all severely burned and naked from the blast, flee Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. (Illustration by Sachiko Fujimoto, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
The risk of radiation damage is even greater for foetuses than for children after birth. Foetuses are most vulnerable to radiation damage between 8 and 15 weeks after conception, as this is the period of intense brain development, with the greatest proliferation of neurons and their migration to the cerebral cortex.
“The immature, developing brain is far more vulnerable to radiation damage than a more mature brain, thus the particular vulnerability of the brain in the foetus,” wrote James N Yamazaki, a physician who studied the effects of the atomic bombs on children and foetuses.
Radiation from the bombs “dismantle[d] the orderly and precise arrangements of layers of brain cells, scrambling them into a tangled confusion of cells of altered size while decimating other brain cells”.
There was a high mortality rate among the babies exposed in utero. Many did not survive beyond one year of age. Growth impairment, including reduced head size, was also common, and they had a high risk of developing cancer later in life.
Radiation damage to foetuses was observed even in cases where the pregnant women had no symptoms of acute radiation sickness.
“To think that the bomb reached into my womb and hurt [my son] leaves me bitter.”
– A Nagasaki mother whose son was exposed to radiation in utero and born with an intellectual disability
In one study of pregnant women who were less than two kilometres from the hypocentre in Nagasaki and who displayed symptoms of acute radiation sickness (hair loss, bleeding skin lesions, and throat and gum ulcerations), almost half of their pregnancies ended in spontaneous abortion, stillbirth or infant death.
Of the surviving babies, around one-third had abnormalities, including eye defects and intellectual disabilities, and their average height and weight were significantly reduced.
While the foetuses’ exposure to radiation was a major cause of the high morbidity and mortality, other factors contributing to the adverse pregnancy outcomes included the women’s extensive burn and blast injuries, psychological trauma and malnutrition.
Researchers also found that exposure to radiation affected survivors’ ability to conceive soon after the attacks. For many women, menstruation temporarily stopped, and transient sterility was observed in women and men alike.
The experiences of pregnant women in Nagasaki
Nishi was 21 years old at the time of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and in the 20th week of her pregnancy. She was around 1.6 kilometres from the hypocentre, in an open field, and suffered extensive burns, which became infected. She lost her hair for almost a year. Her baby was born weak and would not feed properly. “My baby died at two months,” she said.
Fusa was around 1.5 kilometres from the hypocentre and six months pregnant. The force of the bomb caused her house to collapse around her. She felt violent movement from the baby in her womb, and then nothing. The next day, she spontaneously aborted the dead foetus.
Tono was 44 at the time of the bombing and around 1.1 kilometres from the hypocentre. She was in the first trimester of her pregnancy with her son Toshio. The blast from the bomb knocked her unconscious for hours, but she suffered no burns. Her six children were at home and were killed. Toshio was born in February 1946, with a severe intellectual disability. When doctors examined him at five years of age, he was unable to speak, could not feed himself and had no bladder control. His head was extremely small and he suffered heart complications.
Miya, 28 years old, was less than 1.6 kilometres from the hypocentre and eight weeks pregnant at the time of the bombing. She was knocked unconscious but did not suffer any visible injuries. Her husband was killed at his work, but their two young children were apparently unharmed, and Miya’s pregnancy seemed unaffected. A few weeks later, however, she suffered a spontaneous abortion, accompanied by copious bleeding, and her two children – two and five years of age – became weak and started wasting. Both were dead in a matter of weeks.
Source: Children of the Atomic Bomb
In 1972, the first major study was conducted on the relationship between microcephaly and radiation exposure from the atomic bombs. Microcephaly is a condition in which an infant’s head is significantly smaller than average, often as a result of abnormal brain development.
In Hiroshima, researchers identified 48 cases of microcephaly among the babies who were in their mothers’ wombs at the time of the bombing. Ten of them had intellectual disabilities. In Nagasaki, there were 15 known cases; four had intellectual disabilities.
The highest incidence of microcephaly – and the most severe cases – occurred among those exposed during the first trimester of pregnancy and those whose mothers were closest to ground zero.
A boy with microcephaly
Hiroshi was in his mother’s womb at the time of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He was born seven months later, weighing just 1.4 kilogrammes.
“My feeling that Hiroshi’s life is irreplaceably precious to me goes beyond a normal parental feeling for one’s child,” his mother wrote. “I protected his life from the atomic inferno.”
Several years after Hiroshi’s birth, his mother became a member of the Kinoko-kai, or Mushroom Club, an association of parents of children with microcephaly and other atomic-bomb-related conditions. She shared her son’s story in the association’s bulletin:
I first learned that Hiroshi suffered a deformity called microcephaly when an elementary school teacher introduced me to a university hospital doctor and I took Hiroshi to him for an examination. And I took along Hiroshi’s six-year-old younger brother.
Without making much of an internal examination, the doctor led Hiroshi and his brother to a blackboard and told them to draw a picture, any picture they wished. The younger brother drew a picture of a boat. Hiroshi just stood there, not knowing what to draw. Finally, while looking at his brother’s drawing, Hiroshi drew aimless lines of nothing in particular.
“Your child’s head circumference is very small, and the bone of the cranium is thicker than usual. So his brain capacity is quite limited. You can expect his mental development to reach that, say, of a third-grader in elementary school.”
For the first time, I realised the limitations of my child. As I held the hands of my two sons and headed home, my heart was heavy and sad. I was trembling all over.
Source: The Impact of the A-Bomb
The Mushroom Club provided a valuable forum for the parents of children suffering from “A-bomb illnesses”, including microcephaly, to share their experiences with each other. Previously, many had been reluctant to speak of their children’s conditions because of the stigma associated with so-called “pica babies”.
Some expressed annoyance and anger that researchers had examined their children numerous times without being open about their findings. “Why didn’t they explain to me that it was most likely the radiation that caused such difficulties for my child, when all these years they already had so much information about the radiation harming the foetus?” one mother asked.
Other members of the association expressed concern about who would care for their mentally impaired children once they were gone. It constantly weighed on their minds. Some “pica babies” themselves went on to have babies, but were not always able to assume full parental responsibilities and relied heavily on others for help in raising them.
A paediatrician sent to Nagasaki
James N Yamazaki, a Japanese–American paediatrician, spent decades studying the long-term effects of nuclear weapons, especially on children. In 1949, he was sent to Nagasaki as the lead physician for a US medical team tasked with surveying the harm from the bomb.
At times in his career, he felt helpless, wondering what on earth a paediatrician could do “in the aftermath of this terrible, terrible devastation of a generation of children”. He recounted in his memoirs one of his early experiences in Nagasaki:
I was in the small examining room. It was early May 1951. A nurse escorted in a young mother and her five-year-old son. With one glance, I knew I was seeing for the first time the terrible effect that an atomic bomb can have on the unborn.
I concealed my feelings and proceeded with a routine paediatric examination. Finally, tape measure in hand, I confirmed the reduced head size. His erratic and uncontrolled behaviour was evidence that mental retardation was also present.
These were the very symptoms we had expected on the basis of what was known about incidental radiation exposure to the foetuses of mothers being treated [with radiation therapy] for cancer. But that did not lessen the impact of seeing this first case among the survivors of the Nagasaki bomb.
Dr Yamazaki said that one of his hardest tasks as a paediatrician was informing parents “of a deformity or other congenital problem that would change the lives of the entire family”.
Source: Children of the Atomic Bomb
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Cataracts in exposed children
Many of the children exposed to radiation from the atomic bombings developed cataracts (opacity of the lens of the eye) much earlier in life than is usual, limiting their vision to varying degrees. Infants appeared to be at greatest risk, and most suffered without any surgical intervention, as it was not readily available at the time.
In Hiroshima, more than half of all children younger than five years old at the time of the bombing and within one kilometre of the hypocentre developed cataracts during their childhood.
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Chromosomal aberrations
In 1960, researchers first noted the high incidence of chromosomal aberrations among atomic bomb survivors, especially those closest to the hypocentres. Chromosomes are found in the nuclei of our cells and contain our genetic information in the form of large coiled aggregates of DNA.
Radiation from the atomic bombs induced breaks in the chromosomes, and the subsequent mismatching of broken chromosomes resulted in aberrant chromosomes. It is not yet fully understood what impact these aberrations and other types of genetic damage have had on the health of survivors and their descendants.
According to city authorities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, systematic surveys of survivors “revealed a high frequency of chromosomal aberrations in blood cells and lymphocytes of those exposed to large doses of radiation in utero or soon after birth”.
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Intergenerational effects
Several studies have been conducted to determine whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a significant impact on the health of survivors’ children who were conceived after the attacks and, therefore, were not themselves exposed to the bombs’ radiation (unlike babies that were in utero).
While there is still considerable uncertainty regarding the long-term genetic toll of the attacks, it is widely acknowledged that radiation can damage DNA, including in a person’s germ cells – sperm or eggs – and this damage can be transferred to one’s children, and from them to their children. Although our bodies naturally repair some genetic damage from radiation, not all repairs are complete or accurate.
Many women exposed to radiation from the atomic bombings feared that the lingering effects would be passed on to their offspring and chose not to have children. Some even committed suicide for the same reason.
Others suffered scars, deformities, disabilities, shame, mental disorders, stigma and discrimination that interfered with their social functioning, relationships and livelihoods.
For several years after the bombings, doctors routinely examined the newborn babies of survivors to check for any abnormalities. This brought home to many of the families the fact that they were still at risk of harm from the bombs.
According to the US historian John W Dower, the psychological trauma of fearing harm to future generations was, for many of the survivors, overwhelming. “In Japanese parlance, such invisible legacies of the bomb sometimes are referred to as ‘keloids of the heart’, ‘leukaemia of the soul’,” he wrote.
Though the extent of the harm across generations remains unclear, many experts believe that some of the illnesses observed in the children of atomic bomb survivors, and in subsequent generations, were linked to genetic damage caused by the bombings.
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‘A-bomb orphans’
Children who lost both parents in the atomic bombings – or whose parents were so severely injured that they could no longer care for them – became known as “A-bomb orphans”.
Some of the orphans had been in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at the time of the bombing and survived, while others had been living in an outlying town or village after their evacuation from the city due to the risk of air raids.
In the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, it is estimated that there were as many as 6,500 children with no surviving parent or no parent able to care for them, while the number of A-bomb orphans in Nagasaki is unknown.
In both cities, many of the orphans were taken in by relatives or employed to perform live-in jobs such as cooking and cleaning. Others were turned over to social service agencies.
A-bomb orphans pray at a ceremony in Hiroshima on 6 August 1951 marking the sixth anniversary of the nuclear attack. (Photo courtesy of the Chugoku Shimbun)
In Hiroshima, a lost children’s centre was opened at Hijiyama Elementary School, which had withstood the bombing. The centre began admitting children just days after the attack. They ranged from infants to first- and second-graders.
At one point, there were more than 150 children housed there. But according to a report published by the city authorities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “child after child died [due to injuries] while calling for his or her own mother”.
A similar facility was established for Nagasaki’s A-bomb orphans, at Kanayama School in Tairamachi. The children there were aged from one month to one year.
“I have many friends who lost both father and mother at that time.”
– Hiroaki Ichikawa, five years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing
Despite these early efforts to house orphans, in September 1945 many still wandered the cities’ streets without care. Some were harassed by police and other authorities, or exploited by yakuza (gangsters). This dire situation prompted the establishment of several permanent facilities for the parentless children.
In Hiroshima, they included the War Orphans Foster Home, the Shinsei Gakuen and the House of Providence; and in Nagasaki, the Knights of the Holy Mother School and the rebuilt Urakami Orphanage. Foster homes that existed prior to the bombing also cared for A-bomb orphans.
Still, the number of orphans exceeded the occupancy limits of these facilities, meaning that many were left to care for themselves. Their lives were exceedingly difficult, especially given the general lack of food, clean water and shelter in the destroyed cities.
Grim conditions at a lost children’s home
In the aftermath of the attack on Hiroshima, Yoshie Tomasu, a teacher, cared for orphans at the Hijiyama lost children’s centre, which was formerly a school.
At night I would weep to hear a child waking with the cry, “Mama, I want to go to the toilet.” Before I could take him along the dark hall and back, another would waken and cry, and then another and another. Being diarrhetic [a symptom of acute radiation sickness], many could not wait, and soiled themselves on the way. Others soiled their beds without awakening.
The next morning, we would hurriedly wash the blankets and mosquito nets, viscous with bloody excrement, dry them in the sun and use them again that night.
Because of continuous diarrhoea, many of the children grew thinner and thinner by the day. Most eventually died and their bodies were cremated in a corner of the schoolyard. Feral dogs then rummaged among the bones.
Each day, anxious parents would visit the centre in search of their children. But there were very few reunions. When they did occur, the other children looked on in envy.
Source: A-Bomb: A City Tells Its Story
In the 1950s, an extensive survey was conducted of A-bomb orphans from Hiroshima. Researchers identified 1,780 orphans living within the prefecture of Hiroshima and about 1,300 in other parts of Japan. For many, their circumstances were grim.
According to city authorities, “while some [A-bomb orphans] succeeded in their life situations, not a few succumbed to delinquency, sickness and even suicide”. Some of the girls were also compelled into prostitution.
‘My mother was killed on my 10th birthday’
As a boy, Yoshiyuki Midou was 1.5 kilometres from the hypocentre in Hiroshima and would become one of the city’s thousands of “A-bomb orphans”.
My mother was killed by the atomic bomb on my 10th birthday. After being bedridden for two months due to severe burns and injuries, she took her last breath. From that point onward, I was thrust into a world of turmoil as a post-war orphan.
I witnessed numerous deaths and began to question the existence of God or any semblance of morality. Each time I encountered pain and hardship I fell deeper into a cycle of distrust and isolation. I begrudged the selfish adults that started this war and resented the United States.
Source: 1945 Project
A boy left alone in the world
On 5 August 1945, one day before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Tokuso Hamai’s parents and elder sister visited him at an evacuation site outside the city. He had been sent there for protection against possible US air raids.
After Tokuso’s family members returned to Hiroshima, they were killed in the bombing, along with his elder brother. Their bodies were instantly reduced to ash. At 11 years of age, Tokuso was left alone in the world.
Source: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
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Life for children after the nuclear attacks
The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced acute shortages of food and water for several months after the atomic bombings. This had an especially grave toll on babies and children, whose growing, developing bodies were in greatest need of nutrition. Many became emaciated.
Lack of shelter was also a major problem, as most wooden houses had been destroyed in the explosions and the firestorms that ensued. Many families were left homeless and took refuge in partially destroyed and highly hazardous buildings.
There was also no proper sanitation in the cities, and medicines were in short supply. Because of these dire conditions, survivors’ open wounds frequently became infected and communicable diseases spread.
Left: A boy in Nagasaki receives a rice ration after the atomic bombing. (Photo by Yosuke Yamahata)
Right: A girl attends school in Hiroshima in July 1946. Her body and the building around her bear the scars of the nuclear attack one year earlier. (Photo from Bettmann via Getty Images)
It took some time before public schooling resumed, as many school buildings had been destroyed and teachers killed. Moreover, the school authorities were initially preoccupied with determining the whereabouts of their students and whether they had survived.
In Hiroshima, of the 39 elementary schools operating at the time of the bombing, 15 were completely destroyed and 12 were left unusable. The rest suffered varying degrees of damage. Of the 30 middle schools, only one remained usable. Many of the schools left unscathed were transformed into relief stations and temporary hospitals.
When teaching resumed, classes were held outdoors, in temples or in damaged school buildings. Many of the students bore visible scars and were mourning the loss of loved ones. Some were bald from acute radiation sickness. “They seemed to spend their school life cheering one another up,” one teacher in Nagasaki remembered.
“Barefoot Gen”, a popular manga series by Keiji Nakazawa, portrays the suffering of children in Hiroshima following the atomic bombing. It was first published from 1973 to 1987 and is based loosely on Nakazawa’s own experiences as a boy in the devastated city. (Stills from the 1983 movie adaptation)
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Psychological toll on children
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered enormous psychological trauma as a result of what they saw and experienced on 6 August and 9 August 1945 and in the days that followed. Many became stricken with grief, sorrow, anxiety and despair.
An analysis of 1,150 suicide deaths among atomic bomb survivors over several decades after the attacks suggests that younger survivors were more sensitive to psychological trauma and thus more likely to take their own lives.
Many were haunted by the memories of what they had seen, heard and smelled. They were unable to forget the sight of family members’ incinerated bodies, the screams for help from severely injured classmates, the stench of burnt, rotting corpses that filled the cities’ streets.
Seiko Ikeda, who was 12 years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, remembered feeling numbed by the sheer scale of the death and destruction inflicted on her city. “We stepped over people charred totally black. We felt pity for them at first, but the more bodies we saw, the more we treated them as objects.”
“When I see the mothers of my classmates, I suddenly feel so lonely that I want to cry.”
– Sachiko Habu, who was five years old when her mother was killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
Many survivors also felt extreme guilt. Iwao Nakanishi, a 15-year-old boy from Hiroshima, remembered tending to the needs of burn victims and giving them water when they pleaded for it. “They died instantly,” he said. “I was told not to give water, but they begged for it. I was just a kid and didn’t know what to do.”
Some developed fears of lightning and bright flashes or fires – or even simply the outdoors. Ikuko Wakasa, who was five years old at the time of the Hiroshima bombing, remembered searching for her missing uncle in the city’s ruins. “Those dreadful streets … There was a strange smell all over,” she said.
“I had a terrible, lonely feeling that everyone else in the world was dead and only we were still alive. Ever since that time, I haven’t liked to go outside.”
For some survivors, the psychological trauma of the atomic bombings was compounded by their experiences of discrimination and social stigma in the aftermath. This was especially the case for young women and Koreans.
Lee Jong Keun, the child of migrants from Korea, was severely burnt in the attack on Hiroshima as a 15-year-old boy. Following his recovery, he suffered “dual discrimination”, he said, due to his nationality and his status as an atomic bomb survivor.
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Memorials to the children killed
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, numerous memorials have been dedicated to the children killed in the atomic bombings.
The Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima, an initiative of local school students, was unveiled in 1958 “to console the souls of all the children who died from the atomic bombing and to speak out for world peace”.
The students collected money in the streets to fund the monument’s construction following the death of their classmate Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old at the time of the bombing and developed leukaemia several years later – a delayed effect of radiation damage.
While in hospital, she set herself the goal of folding one thousand paper cranes, believing it would bring her good health, but she grew weaker by the day and died at 12 years of age. A figure representing Sadako sits atop the monument, a paper crane held high above her head.
“Let no more children fall victim to an atomic bombing. This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in the world.”
– Inscription on the Children’s Peace Monument, Hiroshima
The unveiling of the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima in 1958. (Photo courtesy of the Chugoku Shimbun)
A separate memorial tower was built in Hiroshima in 1967 for the estimated 7,200 mobilised students killed in the attack. In total, there are more than two dozen monuments dedicated to students and teachers from different schools across the city.
Nagasaki, too, has several monuments honouring the children killed. The Statue of a Child Praying for Peace, unveiled in 1967, bears the following inscription:
May the grief of the children of Nagasaki, Who clutched their mothers and cried Under the atomic mushroom cloud, Never be repeated in our world. May the sound of guns Never echo again in our ears, And may the sun shine ever brightly Over all the children of the world.
Statues in memory of the city’s dead children can also be found at Shiroyama Elementary School, Yamazato Elementary School, Junshin Women’s High School and other schools that suffered high death tolls.
Paper cranes adorn a monument in Nagasaki in 2012. (Photo by Tim Wright)
Each August, to commemorate the anniversaries of the attacks, students from across Japan and throughout the world send bundles of one thousand paper cranes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a symbol of their support for nuclear disarmament. They adorn many of the monuments.
It is also common to find bottles of water at the memorials: an offering to the dead, as so many students and other victims had begged for water before taking their last breaths.
Children’s names etched in stone
James N Yamazaki, who studied the effects of the atomic bombings on children, recounted a meeting in Hiroshima with Akihiro Takahashi. He had been standing in the schoolyard for morning assembly when the city was attacked. He was 14 years old at the time. Many of his classmates were killed, and their names are now etched in stone.
“The all-clear had sounded,” he recalled. “But I saw a lone plane in the sky. Suddenly, there was an explosive wind, so powerful that it tore off my clothes. And then I felt intense burning.”
When he turned his head, I could only see the nub of one ear. That side of his face, and a third of his body, had been literally seared, for he was scarcely a mile from the hypocentre.
“Skin was draped from my arms and body. The exposed flesh was bleeding. I wondered what had happened. Bewildered, I remembered only the drills we had had. Run for the river.”
For ten minutes he could do nothing, see nothing. Clouds of debris, smoke and ash blinded him, darkened the city. When he could see a few yards, he began to run. But he stopped when he heard “Help me, help me” from a friend. The other boy was in excruciating pain, his legs and the bottoms of his feet burned by the blast.
“So I helped him and we made our way to the Fukushima Bridge. It was shattered but we managed to crawl across remaining beams. We had to pass many bodies, many crying for help. Everything was on fire. We had to keep moving.”
He lived, recovering slowly over the next two years, one of 11 survivors in a classroom of 60. His friend died two weeks later.
To the friend who died, and the others like him in the schoolyards of the city, each Hiroshima school had erected its own stone memorial along a lovely parkway. The names of the dead children are etched in the stone. Four thousand, five hundred names. I had to repeat the number to begin to grasp its dimension.
Source: Children of the Atomic Bomb
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Continued advocacy by children who survived
Many atomic bomb survivors, known in Japanese as hibakusha, have publicly shared their personal testimonies of what happened on 6 August and 9 August 1945 to alert the world to the danger of nuclear weapons and to build support for their eradication.
Those who continue this work today were, with few exceptions, children at the time of the bombings, or in their mothers’ wombs. Though some have no personal memories from the time, they still feel a duty to speak out and warn humanity of the horrific effects of nuclear weapons.
Most days of the year, hibakusha speak to visitors at the atomic bomb museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; some also visit schools to inform the next generation of the nuclear threat.
In their testimonies, many survivors emphasise the suffering of children in the devastated cities, and appeal for the total abolition of nuclear weapons to spare other children the same fate.
A lifetime working for disarmament
Setsuko Thurlow, who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a 13-year-old girl, has devoted her life to the cause of nuclear disarmament. Over several decades, she has shared her personal testimony with thousands of people, many of them schoolchildren.
In 2017, she jointly accepted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), in recognition of her leading role in the organisation’s work since its launch a decade earlier. At the prize ceremony in Norway, she said:
Whenever I remember Hiroshima, the first image that comes to mind is of my four-year-old nephew, Eiji – his little body transformed into an unrecognisable melted chunk of flesh. He kept begging for water in a faint voice until his death released him from agony.
To me, he came to represent all the innocent children of the world, threatened as they are at this very moment by nuclear weapons. Every second of every day, nuclear weapons endanger everyone we love and everything we hold dear. We must not tolerate this insanity any longer.
At many of her public lectures, Setsuko shows a large yellow banner bearing the names of the 351 students and teachers from her school, Hiroshima Jogakuin High School, who were killed in the attack on 6 August 1945. As she explained in 2015:
When I use large numbers to describe the massive scale of death and casualties of Hiroshima, people’s minds are numbed and they have difficulty relating to such abstract numbers meaningfully.
As I show this [banner] to you, I want you to feel and imagine that each name here represents an individual human being, a real person who was loved by someone and who was engaged in his or her life until 8:15 that morning.
Setsuko Thurlow in California in 2015. (Photo by Rick Carter, courtesy of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation)
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Part II Children Harmed by Nuclear Testing
The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not the only victims of the nuclear age. Countless others around the world have suffered ill health and died as a result of different aspects of the development of nuclear weapons, in particular nuclear testing.
Babies and children, whose growing bodies are three to five times more sensitive to the cancer-causing effects of ionising radiation than adults, have experienced the greatest harm from these activities.
While the precise death toll from nuclear testing is not known, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War estimated in 1991 that the global dispersal of vast quantities of radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests would eventually result in 2.4 million cancer deaths. The International Council of Scientific Unions published a similar estimate in 2000.
For each person who dies of cancer, another person develops a cancer able to be treated successfully. In addition, excess deaths from other diseases related to radiation, particularly strokes and heart attacks, can be expected to be comparable in number to excess cancer deaths.
“Must our children pay the price of atomic testing in cancer, leukaemia and deformities?”
– A poster published by Women Strike for Peace in New York in 1962
In the 20th century, nuclear-armed states carried out more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions at dozens of sites, about a quarter of which were atmospheric, spreading radioactive isotopes across the entire Earth’s surface.
When inhaled or ingested, these isotopes accumulate in our bones and other tissues and damage our cells, increasing our risk of developing cancers and other illnesses. Ingestion occurs either directly, by consuming contaminated water, plants and dust, or indirectly, by consuming milk, eggs and meat from animals that have ingested the isotopes.
Infants’ and children’s bones and teeth, thyroid glands and certain other tissues have the highest propensity to accumulate radioactive isotopes, contributing to their susceptibility to radiation damage.
Left: A nuclear test explosion in the US state of Nevada in 1957. (Photo by the US government)
Right: A poster published by Women Strike for Peace in 1962 advises parents not to give fresh milk to their children following a nuclear test, given the risk of radioactive contamination.
A treaty imposing a partial ban on nuclear testing was signed in 1963. In justifying the measure, the US president, John F Kennedy, invoked the children “with cancer in their bones, with leukaemia in their blood or with poison in their lungs” because of atmospheric nuclear tests.
“The loss of even one human life, or the malformation of even one baby – who may be born long after all of us have gone – should be of concern to us all,” he said. “Our children and grandchildren are not merely statistics towards which we can be indifferent.”
A comprehensive ban on nuclear testing – covering underground tests, too – was negotiated in 1996 but has yet to enter in force because of the failure of several nations to ratify it.
Intergenerational harm in Ma’ohi Nui
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in Ma’ohi Nui (also known as French Polynesia).
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear campaigner and parliamentarian, has worked to draw global attention to the intergenerational harm wrought by these explosions. She was seven years old when the testing programme ended, and as a young adult was diagnosed with chronic leukaemia.
In an interview in 2024, she said that the suffering in her family from the nuclear tests began with her great-grandmother, who had thyroid cancer. Then her grandmother, mother and aunty all developed radiation-related illnesses.
Now she is afraid that her young children will become victims of the bombs, too. “I really feel that I have poison in my blood,” she said. “So if my kids get sick, I’ll feel that it’s me who poisoned us, you see.”
Hinamoeura as a baby in her mother’s arms in 1989 (left) and with her two sons in 2023 (right). (Photos courtesy of Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross)
A major US study in the 1950s and 1960s known as the “Baby Tooth Survey” discovered high concentrations of the cancer-causing radioactive isotope strontium-90 in children’s baby teeth due to atmospheric nuclear tests, sparking widespread public outrage and concern.
The university researchers examined 320,000 baby teeth, donated by school students or their parents, and found that children born in the early 1960s had levels of strontium-90 around 100 times higher than children born a decade earlier, when nuclear tests had not yet become a common occurrence.
Today, the era of nuclear testing appears to have largely ended, with North Korea being the only country to have conducted full-scale nuclear tests in the 21st century.
But the toxic legacy from past explosions continues to harm communities because of the slow rates of decay of certain radioactive isotopes and the latent effects of radiation damage. Moreover, some radioactive isotopes concentrate up the food chain and are recycled in biological systems.
The last atmospheric nuclear test was carried out by China in 1980, but even the 1,500 or so underground nuclear tests have caused serious long-term harm, poisoning the soil and water table and, in some cases, venting radioactive particles into the air – despite assurances from the governments of nuclear-armed states that such tests were a safe alternative.
In this section of the report, we look at the toll of nuclear testing on children in three countries – the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan and Australia – but the devastating, long-lived effects of these experiments in mass destruction continue to be felt in several other parts of the world, too.
We also describe the disturbing history of highly unethical research on dead foetuses and dead children’s bodies to assess the health impacts of atmospheric nuclear testing.
Along with nuclear testing, other aspects of the production of nuclear weapons – from the mining and enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of plutonium to the storage and disposal of radioactive waste – have caused considerable harm to large numbers of people around the world, including children.
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Nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands
From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear test explosions on Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands, with deadly consequences for the Marshallese people. The most calamitous of these tests, Castle Bravo, had an explosive yield a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
The atolls of Rongelap, Utrōk and Ailinginae were blanketed with radioactive ash, and children played in it not realising the extreme danger. Many suffered radiation burns and acute radiation sickness.
They also developed blisters on their feet from walking in the radioactive sand and in their mouths from eating contaminated foods. Some children lost considerable weight and, over time, showed inhibited bone growth. This was especially the case among infants.
A doctor examines a baby in the Marshall Islands to check for adverse health effects resulting from radioactive fallout from a US nuclear test explosion conducted in 1954. (Photo by the US government, via Getty Images)
On Rongelap atoll, around 85 per cent of the children under five years of age experienced nausea (a symptom of acute radiation sickness), and 90 per cent of all inhabitants suffered skin burns. Epilation, or hair loss, occurred in almost all children, often quite severely, and about a quarter of adults.
Over time, researchers identified reduced thyroid function or thyroid tumours in all but a few of the Rongelapese children who had been under 10 years of age at the time of Castle Bravo.
Irradiation of the thyroid gland, including from the intake of the radioisotope iodine-131, can cause thyroid cancer or reduced thyroid function (hypothyroidism), resulting in severe and lasting damage to children’s growth and development, particularly their cognitive abilities.
Lekoj Anjain, a one-year-old baby on Rongelap at the time of Castle Bravo, later developed leukaemia as a result of radiation exposure and died at 19 years of age. Three babies on the atoll were exposed to radiation while in utero. Two had congenital abnormalities.
Burnt by radioactive ‘snow’
Nerje Joseph was seven years old when the United States conducted its largest-ever nuclear test explosion, Castle Bravo, about 160 kilometres from her home on Rongelap atoll. The sky turned orange and pink, but none of the island’s 64 inhabitants knew what had happened.
Hours later, radioactive ash and coral fragments rained down on their homes, contaminating their skin, water and food. Soon afterwards they began experiencing symptoms of acute radiation sickness such as vomiting and diarrhoea. Nerje’s hair fell out and, like almost everyone else on the atoll, she suffered burns to her skin.
Nerje’s hair loss and radiation burns to her feet after the Castle Bravo test. (Photos by the US government)
Two days after the test, US authorities evacuated the Rongelapese to another atoll because of the extreme risk of the fallout to their health. However, three years later, the authorities encouraged them to return home, even though the danger persisted, as they wanted to study the effects of residual radiation on health. Nerje and others would become “human guinea pigs” in a secret study known as Project 4.1.
“Data of this type has never been available,” Merrill Eisenbud, a US official with the Atomic Energy Commission, said at a meeting in 1956. “While it is true that these people [the Marshallese] do not live the way that westerners do, civilised people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”
For the Rongelapese, their resettlement back home would prove catastrophic. Cancer cases, miscarriages and deformities multiplied, and within a decade 17 of the 19 children who were younger than 10 years of age and on the island at the time of the Castle Bravo test had developed thyroid disorders and growths.
Like many of these children, Nerje had surgery to remove her thyroid because of the accumulation of radioactive isotopes, and she took daily thyroid hormone replacement medication for the rest of her life. In an interview in 2019, two years before her death, she said that she longed for a return to the good days before the nuclear testing.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Women from the contaminated atolls suffered higher rates of miscarriages and stillbirths due to Castle Bravo and the 66 other tests. According to the Marshallese Educational Initiative, a not-for-profit organisation, “women gave birth to what they called jellyfish babies because of their translucent skin and lack of bone structure; other births appeared as grapes”.
In 2012, a UN special rapporteur heard compelling testimony from Rongelapese women on “the alarmingly high rates of stillbirths, miscarriages, congenital birth defects and reproductive problems” they had experienced after the Castle Bravo test. “Some gave birth to babies that ultimately died from foetal disorders.”
Many of the women feared parenthood because of the possibility that their babies would suffer from congenital abnormalities or die during infancy. Some mothers were reluctant to breastfeed out of concern that radionuclides in their milk would make their babies sick.
The UN special rapporteur also noted the high incidence of thyroid cancer in the exposed communities and “an unusually high prevalence of stunted growth among Marshallese children”.
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Nuclear testing in Kazakhstan
From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union carried out more than 450 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan – almost a quarter of all tests conducted globally. Several tests were also conducted at other locations in Kazakhstan. According to the Kazakh–American scholar Togzhan Kassenova, the tests claimed “thousands upon thousands of victims”.
“People drank contaminated water and milk and ate meat from animals who had fed on pastures laced with radioactive isotopes,” she wrote in 2022. Thousands of families went through the heartbreak of losing loved ones to cancers and other diseases caused by the tests.
“Women suffered from miscarriages or had babies with birth defects. The everyday life of people living in the Semipalatinsk region was mired in the stress of constant bombardment from nuclear explosions and the long-term suffering that was their aftermath.”
“The saddest of all is the rise in births of babies who are mentally or physically disabled. Some were born without arms and legs, or with disfigured faces.”
– Syzdyk Takumbekuly, from Karkaraly, Kazakhstan
In the late 1980s, a large protest movement emerged in Kazakhstan calling for an end to the nuclear testing. Thousands of people marched in the streets, inspired by similar mobilisations in other parts of the world. For many of the protesters, evidence of the bombs’ effects on children had motivated them to speak out.
At one of the rallies, an obstetrician from a village near the test site, who had delivered babies for three decades, reported: “In the last six months, out of 48 births, 12 were tragic. Six newborns died, and six were born either without limbs or with Down’s syndrome … I demand as a doctor and as a mother, stop nuclear tests!”
An artist born with no arms
Karipbek Kuyukov grew up in the village of Yegyndybulak, one hundred kilometres from the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. He remembers the furniture and crockery shaking each time a nuclear explosion took place during his childhood.
Before he was born, his parents would sometimes climb a hill near their home to get a better view of the bright and vast mushroom clouds that rose high into the sky. “They didn’t even know about the health threats and devastating consequences of the crimes being committed against them,” he said.
Karipbek was born in 1968 without arms. He has devoted his life to speaking out against nuclear testing, often alongside nuclear test survivors from other parts of the world. He is a renowned artist, using his feet and mouth to paint. Many of his artworks convey an anti-nuclear message.
“My main mission on this land is to do everything I can for people like me to be the last victims of nuclear tests,” he said in 2012. “I do not want the repeat of these events at any place or time, anywhere on the planet … Let our sky be clean and our children be healthy!”
One of Karipbek’s anti-nuclear artworks (left). Karipbek at an ICAN forum in Vienna in 2014 (right). (Photo by Marko Kovic for ICAN)
Source: The ATOM Project
For decades during and after the testing period, high child mortality rates were recorded in the Semipalatinsk region. In 1989 – the final year of the nuclear test programme – 33 out of every thousand newborns died.
After declaring its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan initiated various studies on the health impacts of ionising radiation on the people of Semipalatinsk. They showed that those directly exposed to radiation from the tests were more likely than the general population to die from various cancers.
They also confirmed an elevated risk of serious illness among the children and grandchildren of those exposed, with DNA tests revealing a significant increase in chromosomal aberrations. The descendants have a higher risk of developing various malign tumours and other illnesses.
In the villages next to the former nuclear testing site, the legacy of Soviet nuclear tests persists. Some children suffer from severe health issues, such as cancers, extremely rare blood diseases or missing fingers. They are the fourth and fifth generations of survivors.
Children join an anti-nuclear protest near Karaul, in Kazakhstan, in the late 1980s. (Photo by Juri Kuidin)
A painful genetic disorder
Dmitrii was born in Semipalatinsk in 1976. His grandmother and mother lived in the area during the period of atmospheric nuclear tests and were exposed to ionising radiation.
Dmitrii is officially recognised in Kazakhstan as a third-generation nuclear test victim. He suffers from a rare genetic mutation that resulted in altered skull bones and missing collarbones, and his arms are not properly connected to his shoulders. He regularly experiences sharp, debilitating pain. During such episodes, he cannot even lift a spoon.
“The saddest thing for me is that I decided not to have children,” he said. “Nobody can guarantee my children will not have my genetic disorder. I do not want to inflict this pain on anyone.”
Source: Atomic Steppe
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Nuclear testing in Australia
From 1952 to 1963, the United Kingdom conducted 12 full-scale nuclear tests and around 600 “minor trials” in the Australian desert and on islands off the west coast. They had a devastating toll on Aboriginal people living near the Monte Bello, Emu Field and Maralinga test sites, as well as test site workers and their descendants.
On one occasion in 1957, authorities found two Aboriginal children and their parents camped on the edge of an atomic bomb crater, which remained highly radioactive from the explosion just eight months earlier. The officials took them away and showered them but did nothing to monitor their health afterwards.
According to an official Australian inquiry into the nuclear test programme, which published its report in 1985, the mother in the bomb crater, Edie Milpuddie, “was pregnant at the time [of the incident]. The baby was born dead. Edie and other Maralinga women believe that this happened because there was ‘poison’ on the ground where they had been.”
Many Aboriginal people continued to enter the exclusion zone around the Maralinga test site throughout the testing period, following ancient travel routes, with just one or two officers patrolling an area of 78,000 square kilometres. “The resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture,” the inquiry found.
“If you love your own children and care for the children of the world, you will find the courage to stand up and say ‘enough’ – always keeping in mind that the future forever belongs to the next generation.”
– Sue Coleman-Haseldine, Australian nuclear test survivor
Edie Milpuddie’s experience was not uncommon. Many of the people living close to Maralinga and Emu Field or working at the test sites reported stillbirths and infant deaths in their families, which they attributed to their exposure to radiation. Some have taken legal action against the British government for their loss and suffering.
At a cemetery in the small town of Woomera to the east of Maralinga, many of the graves are for children who died during the testing period, including 23 stillborn babies, 34 newborns and 17 children over the age of one year.
As the Kokatha elder Sue Coleman-Haseldine noted in 2014, “These were just the non-Aboriginal children. There’s no record of how many Aboriginal children died. The Aboriginals were not allowed to be buried in white cemeteries.”
She lamented the permanent disconnection of many Aboriginal people from their ancestral lands due to residual radiation from the tests. “Their children and their children’s children will never know the special religious places it contains.”
Left: A British nuclear test explosion at Maralinga in 1956.
Right: A cemetery in the small town of Woomera to the east, where many of the graves are for children. (Photo by Ray Acheson)
Aboriginal children harmed
Yami Lester, of the Yankunytjatjara people, was 10 years old when the United Kingdom conducted the Totem 1 nuclear test explosion at Emu Field, near his home, in 1953. Radioactive fallout in the form of “black mist” descended on his community, resulting in widespread illness. Yami’s eyes stung for weeks, and within four years he had lost all sight.
It was in the morning, around seven. I was just playing with the other kids. That’s when the bomb went off. I remember the noise; it was a strange noise, not like anything I’d ever heard before. The earth shook at the same time; we could feel the whole place move. We didn’t see anything, though. Us kids had no idea what it was. I just kept playing.
It wasn’t long after that a black smoke came through. A few hours later, we all got crook [ill], every one of us. We were all vomiting; we had diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes. I had really sore eyes. They were so sore I couldn’t open them for two or three weeks. Some of the older people, they died. They were too weak to survive all of the sickness.
June Lennon, of the Yankunytjatjara, Antikarinya and Pitjantjatjara peoples, was four months old at the time of Totem 1. She and her siblings started showing signs of sickness one week later, according to her mother. “We were vomiting and just really sick … From that point on, [my elder sister] Jenny and I have both suffered from seizures.”
Source: Black Mist
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Experiments on dead foetuses and children
In some nuclear-armed states, government authorities are known to have carried out highly unethical research on dead foetuses and dead children’s bodies to evaluate the health impacts of atmospheric nuclear testing. The most notorious example is “Project Sunshine”, a series of secret studies in the United States beginning in the early 1950s.
Having determined through earlier research that the radioactive isotope strontium-90 posed the most serious threat to human health from fallout, the US government sought to measure the isotope’s concentration in the tissues and bones of dead people, particularly the young.
Infants and children were of greatest interest to the researchers because their developing bones have the highest propensity to accumulate strontium-90 and are most susceptible to radiation damage.
In 1955, at a secret meeting about the project, one of the officials in charge, Willard Libby, said: “I don’t know how to get [human samples]. But I do say that it is a matter of prime importance to get them and particularly in the young age group … [I]f anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country.”
Ultimately, the researchers would obtain tissue and bone samples from thousands of dead bodies without the consent or knowledge of family members. Some only became aware of the studies decades later; others may still be unaware.
In some cases, families were denied access to their dead children’s bodies without explanation. Many foetuses were discarded or buried anonymously.
In Australia, where the British government carried out atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s, researchers took samples from around 22,000 bodies at autopsy as part of a strontium-90 testing programme. Like Project Sunshine, it focused on the bones of babies and children. The research continued until 1978.
Families in the United Kingdom were also affected by a similar programme. The British atomic energy authority confirmed in 2001 that the femurs (thigh bones) of approximately 4,000 young children had been taken between 1954 and 1970 without their parents’ consent.
One British mother, Jean Prichard, reported that hospital authorities cut off the legs of her stillborn daughter in 1957. When she asked to dress her baby’s body for the funeral, they forbade her – presumably because they did not want her to discover what they had done.
“That upset me terribly,” she said. “No one asked me about doing things like that – taking bits and pieces from her.”
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Part III Children’s Fear of Nuclear War
At the height of the Cold War – as the United States and the Soviet Union each amassed tens of thousands of nuclear warheads – several large-scale studies were conducted to assess the psychological impact of the arms race on children and adolescents.
Researchers found that the ever-present threat of nuclear war contributed to severe anxiety, chronic fear and related mental illnesses among young people.
In their responses to surveys, many school students described the threat of nuclear war as their greatest worry in the world. Some had difficulty imagining a positive future for themselves so long as the threat persisted. They shared their feelings of helplessness and disillusionment.
In some countries, generations of schoolchildren were made to perform regular drills in their classrooms to prepare for a possible incoming nuclear attack. They ducked under their desks and covered their heads. Such drills had a profound psychological toll.
Left: A poster for the 1952 animated short film “Duck and Cover”, which advised children to find shelter in the event of a nuclear explosion. It was funded by the US government and widely distributed.
Right: Students at a school in Brooklyn, New York, participate in a “duck and cover” drill in 1962.
Though the fear of nuclear war has receded in some parts of the world since the end of the Cold War – due more to complacency than any significant reduction in the threat – it remains prevalent in certain “hot spots”, such as the Korean peninsula and Kashmir.
In 2019, the International Committee of the Red Cross surveyed over 16,000 young adults in 16 countries on their attitudes towards war. More than half considered it likely that nuclear weapons would be used in the next decade.
When leaders issue nuclear threats or there are false alarms involving nuclear weapons, this can be especially traumatic for children and adolescents.
‘This is not a drill’
In 2018, Hawaii’s emergency management agency sent a text message to the mobile phones of the state’s residents warning of an inbound ballistic missile – causing widespread panic. Parents took frantic steps to protect their children.
Meredyth Gilmore, an elementary school teacher, said that many parents tried to stay calm throughout the ordeal for the sake of their children. “The most heartbreaking thing was seeing these little kids with tears running down their faces,” she said. Many feared for their lives.
For 38 minutes, Hawaiians had no idea that the message they had received – which included the words “THIS IS NOT A DRILL” – was in fact sent in error.
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Children’s actions for disarmament
Refusing to be victims of a nuclear war, many children around the world have taken part in demonstrations for disarmament, often alongside their parents. They have carried banners bearing such slogans as “Kids Want to Grow Up, Not Blow Up” and “You Can’t Hug Your Children with Nuclear Arms”.
In the 1980s, many student-run anti-nuclear groups emerged, with names like the Children’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Children’s Nuclear Disarmament Network. Students organised sit-ins and concerts to advance the cause, and published anti-nuclear newsletters. Often, they conveyed the injustice of being threatened every day by the existence of weapons they played no part in creating.
Each year since 1995, children from around the world have held a peace summitin Hiroshima and presented a “commitment to peace” on the anniversary of the atomic bombing, vowing to do their bit to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again.
A number of studies in the 1980s showed that children and adolescents who engaged in activities supporting disarmament were less likely to suffer from anxiety about nuclear war, as they felt that they were contributing to a solution.
Left: School students from Hiroshima send bundles of paper cranes to the leaders of all nations in 2012 urging them to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. (Photo by Tim Wright)
Right:Children’s artworks for peace in Hiroshima in 2011. (Photo by Tim Wright)
School students in Melbourne, Australia, paint an anti-nuclear banner in 2008. (Photo by Tim Wright)
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Part IV Protecting Children through Disarmament
Today, several thousand nuclear weapons still exist in the arsenals of nine countries, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere, especially children. Many have vastly greater explosive yields than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
To protect humanity from the catastrophic harm that nuclear weapons are designed to inflict, governments must act with urgency to eliminate them completely – the only guarantee against their further use and testing.
This would be a great service to the current generation of children and to all future generations, who would grow up free from the threat of nuclear war.
The alternative is to pass on to them a world still teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Or, quite unthinkable, a world reeling from the horrors of another nuclear attack, perhaps with a death toll orders of magnitude greater than that of the atomic bombings of 1945.
Children’s rights under international law
Though children are afforded special protection under international law, they account for many of the civilians killed in wars today.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted at the United Nations in 1989 and ratified by almost every country in the world, requires its parties to “take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict”.
It also recognises that “every child has the inherent right to life” and stipulates that parties must “ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child”.
Every day, children’s rights are imperilled by the continued existence of thousands of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the full realisation of their rights is undermined by the diversion of tens of billions of dollars annually towards the production and modernisation of such weapons.
Nuclear weapons threaten not only current generations, but also generations to come, including as a result of the genetic damage they cause. The Maastricht principles on the human rights of future generations, adopted in 2023, affirm: “Human rights extend to all members of the human family, including both present and future generations.”
An artwork used by the organisation Save the Children in its 2019 report “Stop the War on Children”. (Illustration by Tomas Drefvelin)
Under international humanitarian law – the body of rules aimed at limiting the effects of armed conflict – attacks against civilians are prohibited, and warring states must make efforts to protect the civilian population. Civilians include all children, unless they are directly participating in the conflict as combatants.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their additional protocols of 1977 afford special protection to children in armed conflict, given their particular vulnerability. Article 77 of Additional Protocol I states: “Children shall be the object of special respect and shall be protected against any form of indecent assault.”
Any use of nuclear weapons would violate these and many other rules of international humanitarian law, including the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks and the prohibition on the use of weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.
Since 1997, the UN secretary-general has appointed a special representative for children and armed conflict “to promote and protect the rights of all children affected by armed conflict”. The representative has reported alarming levels of violence inflicted on children.
In any conflict involving one or more nuclear-armed states, there is an inherent risk that nuclear weapons will be used, and any such use would almost certainly involve the mass killing and maiming of civilians, with countless children among them.
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Prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons
The vast majority of countries in the world are committed to the goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In 2017, 122 governments voted to adopt the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which builds on earlier initiatives aimed at addressing the nuclear threat.
Specifically, the TPNW bans the use, threatened use, testing, development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, and establishes a legal framework for their time-bound, verifiable elimination.
Its preamble acknowledges the unacceptable suffering of victims of the use and testing of nuclear weapons, and requires countries to provide them with age- and gender-sensitive assistance.
Naked from the blast and covered in burns, a family flees the smouldering ruins of Hiroshima, death and destruction all around them. (Illustration by Kazuhiro Ishizu, from the collection of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum)
Our task now is to ensure that every country in the world ratifies the TPNW and fully implements its obligations – for everyone’s sake, but most of all for the sake of the world’s children.
The alternative is to burden them and future generations with a scourge that threatens their very existence. Indeed, this is precisely the legacy that governments of nuclear-armed states are currently creating as they invest vast sums of money in decades-long programmes to modernise and enhance their nuclear forces.
In the words of the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, “Nuclear weapons are the most destructive power ever created. They offer no security – just carnage and chaos. Their elimination would be the greatest gift we could bestow on future generations.”
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By Tim Wright
Many thanks to those who reviewed this report, or sections thereof, prior to its publication, including Tilman Ruff, Akira Kawasaki, Melissa Parke, Annelise Giseburt, Meri Joyce, Susi Snyder, Dimity Hawkins, Togzhan Kassenova, Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Alistair Burnett and the paediatricians Kim Oates and Hasantha Gunasekera.
Thanks also to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Chugoku Shimbun for providing several of the photographs and illustrations that appear in this report. (They may not be reproduced without the written permission of the museum/newspaper.)
The audio version of this report was produced by Jesse Boylan, with the support of 3CR community radio’s “Radioactive Show”. The Japanese translation of the introduction was prepared by Peace Boat.
ICAN would welcome your feedback on this report (info@icanw.org), as well as suggestions for content to be included in future iterations.
Published in August 2024Image at top of page: A child receives treatment for burn injuries at a temporary hospital set up at Shin Kozen Elementary School in Nagasaki. (Photo by Yasuo Tomishige, via Getty Images)
