The author is a member of the Hiroshima City University Hiroshima Peace Institute. She earned her doctorate in the history of literature from Doshisha University in September of 2003; after that, she wrote this book. She has mainly used official documents from the National Archives and Records Administration in the U.S. as her resource material.
The purpose of this book is to clarify the fact that the US government controlled information about the influence of radioactivity on the human body. The US government controlled information for Japanese and US citizens and underestimated the influence of radioactivity. On the other hand, the US government recognized that radioactivity had a serious influence on the human body and studied A-bomb survivors as guinea pigs. The originality of this study is that double standard of the US government regarding the influence of radioactivity on the human body is made clear.
This study has four important points. First, this study clarifies the actual situation of collection, investigation of the information, and research about the A-bomb by the US government. The US government recognized the dangers of radioactive materials from the first development of the A-bomb. Radioactive materials were recognized as “poisons” in the document from the Radioactive Poisons Subcommittee, which was initiated in May of 1943 by the request of General Leslie Groves, who commanded the Manhattan Project. Researchers from the Manhattan Project, such as James B. Conant (chemist) and Arthur H. Compton, director of the Metallurgy Laboratory at the University of Chicago, were included as members of this committee.
