Impact of Radiation after Hiroshima - Essay Example

Dr. Fujii is living at a friend's house in nearby Fukawa and is beginning to treat patients again," ("Hiroshima", p.1).From an individual standpoint, the dropping of the atomic bomb would not be the only traumatic thing that the survivors would have to endure for however long. In that respect, survivors would also have to suffer the ramifications of radiation poisoning. Often times used as a treatment option for those suffering from cancer, exposure to radiation can have very harsh results, not just for the diseases that its meant to kill, but also the surrounding internal system of the person.

Since every individual person is different, their levels of being able to recover from radiation exposure can be drastically different, but equally as intense.For the citizens of Hiroshima, there would be short term, as well as long term effects of the atomic bomb that was dropped on their city. Those effects would take the form of being displaced from their homes and their lives, as well as in more serious instances, being inflicted with the harsh pain and suffering that would come from being exposed to radiation.

"Radiation sickness baffles everyone well into September and afterward. In the next few months, Mrs. Nakamura and Mr. Tanimoto gradually get better, but Father Kleinsorge continues to have a high fever and low blood cell count, and he is sent to a hospital in Tokyo," ("Hiroshima", p.1).In the end, "In Hiroshima, as Japanese physicists make observations about the blast area, Dr. Sasaki and his colleagues develop new theories about radiation sickness by observing their patients. Miss Sasaki's infection lingers on eleven weeks after the bomb, and she remains in the hospital through November.

She becomes extremely depressed, especially since her fiance will not visit her. Father Kleinsorge, who has since returned to the city, comes to visit her in the hospital. For the next several months, Miss Sasaki seems to draw strength from the priest. By the end of April, her infection is gone and she is able to walk on crutches," adding that, "One by one each of the characters, like Miss Sasaki, begins to resume some sort of a normal life. Dr. Fujii opens a new clinic and capitalizes on Japan's new visitors by treating American patients.

Father Kleinsorge and another priest commission a three-story mission house exactly like the one they had lost; Father Kleinsorge eventually becomes so busy that he falls ill again and must return to the Tokyo hospital to rest. Mr. Tanimoto attempts to restore his own church in the city, but he does not have as much money as the Jesuits. Mrs. Nakamura, when her hair has grown back, scrapes together her money and rents a small shack near the site of her old house, while putting her children back into school in Hiroshima. Dr. Sasaki, after almost never leaving the hospital building in the four months after the blast, begins to focus on his own life and marries in March," ("Hiroshima", p.1).After the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the ramifications of such an incident would take many forms.

Those forms being the individual citizens that were placed into the circumstances of rebuilding their lives, as well as regaining their health, after such a catastrophic event. For people like Mrs. Nakamura, after she regains some semblance of her health, her next priority is to put back together with the pieces of her life for herself, as well as her children. The radiation would not only affect their bodies to varying degrees, but it would also impact the ways in which they were able to go on with their lives.