Panic Grass and Feverfew

On August 18, Father Kleinsorge walked back into Hiroshima on his way to the bank. In the streets he saw “a macabre traffic—hundreds of crumpled bicycles, shells of streetcars and automobiles, all halted in mid-motion.” The Yokohoma Bank was open, and he deposited the money he had taken with him from the mission after the blast. On the way back to the Novitiate he became very weak. By the time he got back, he was thoroughly exhausted and his wounds “had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed.”

Mrs. Nakamura noticed that her hair had started falling out. It kept happening until she became bald. Then, on August 26, she and her daughter Myeko “woke up feeling extremely weak and tired and they stayed on their bedrolls.”

Mr. Tanimoto also started to feel weak and to run a fever at this time. Father Kleinsorge, Mrs. Nakamura, Myeko, and Mr. Tanimoto had all begun to suffer from a disease they had never heard of: radiation sickness.

Miss Sasaki was moved to the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima. On her way, she was amazed to see that, amid the destruction, many weeds and wild flowers were already growing. At the Red Cross Hospital, Miss Sasaki was cared for by Dr. Sasaki, who had lost twenty pounds since the blast. The hospital, although still under-staffed and under-supplied, was progressing in its ability to help patients. Miss Sasaki, although still suffering from the broken leg that had not yet been set, “exhibited only one of the queer symptoms so many of his patients were just then beginning to show—the spot hemorrhages.”

Dr. Fujii moved in with Mr. Okuma in Fukawa. When it began to rain persistently in September, he and Okuma moved into a neighbor’s house at a higher elevation:

Down in Hiroshima, the flood took up where the bomb had left off—swept away bridges that had survived the blast, washed out streets....

Mr. Okuma’s house collapsed and was “washed altogether away.”

A rumor began to spread that the bomb had contained a poison that would affect people for seven years and make it impossible to go back into Hiroshima. This sparked resentment and hatred for the Americans. When Japanese physicists, however, went into Hiroshima to measure radiation, they found that the levels were safe enough for people to return. They also found strange “shadows” that the blast had etched onto walls; the "shadows" were essentially pictures of people, caused by the brilliance of the blast, showing what they were doing at the moment the bomb exploded.

Mrs. Nakamura’s brother-in-law returned to Hiroshima to get Mrs. Nakamura’s sewing machine, with which she had made her living before the bomb dropped, but it was rusted and too damaged to be used.

Father Kleinsorge, still weak, was sent to the Catholic International Hospital in Tokyo. After examining him, the doctor said, “He’ll die. All these bomb people die—you’ll see. They go along for a couple of weeks and then they die.” His white cell count rose and fell, but he eventually recovered.

Mrs. Nakamura and Myeko did not have enough money to see a doctor, so they rested at home. They eventually began to improve without treatment.

Mr. Tanimoto also suffered from radiation sickness and received several kinds of treatment: “he spent a month in bed, and then went ten hours by train to his father’s home in Shikoku. There he rested another month.”

Dr. Sasaki and others at the Red Cross Hospital saw enough of radiation sickness to theorize that it occurred in three stages. The first stage was caused by...