Chromosome Stories: How Scientists Tracked Radiation Risk After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Chromosome Stories: How Scientists Tracked Radiation Risk after Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“There is no one who can tell what it was like at the center of the blast”—so wrote an artist couple Iri and Toshi Maruki in their 1950 picture book Pikadon.1 Captured in this sentence is the mercilessness of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Building on Maruki’s words, Japanese art critic Noi Sawaragi has described the ground zero as “the place of ‘no one’,” “an eternal no man’s land.” Because thousands of people evaporated with the blast, only the dead know the living hell created by the bomb. There are no witnesses because “eyes could not exist.”2 In this way, Hiroshima and Nagasaki present “the limits of representation.”3 Traditional categories of conceptualization and representation may well be insufficient. These observers suggest that there is no objective, outside criterion to establish that one particular representation is truer than the other.

Yet, some claim to “truth” appears imperative. Such an unprecedented and cruel manifestation of technological “prowess” should not be forgotten and the obligation to record this violent past seems compelling. In fact, despite the obvious impossibility of any single, integrated discourse, artists and scholars have repeatedly grappled with the indeterminacy the event entails. Artwork created in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki has strived to make

1 Maruki Iri and Akamatsu Toshiko, Pikadon (Tokyo: Potsudam Shoten, 1950). Iri Maruki (1901–1995) was a Chinese-ink painter and his wife Toshi Maruki (maiden name Toshiko Akamatsu) (1912–2000) was an oil painter. Iri and Toshi were eyewitnesses to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and they began collaborating on their signature work, the Hiroshima Panels, in the late 1940s, during a time when information on the atomic bombings was still tightly restricted by the censorship enforced by U.S.-led occupation forces. In 1950, the Marukis published a picture book Pikadon but the book was banned by the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the U.S. occupation forces shortly after the publication. Today, reprinted bilingual editions are available. For more about the Marukis and the Hiroshima Panels, see Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, A Brief Guide to the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels (Saitama, Japan: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2005/2015); John Dower, War, Peace, and Beauty: The Art of Iri and Toshi Maruki (Saitama, Japan: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2007/2014); Charlotte Eubanks, The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019); and Okamura Yukinori, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence: Imagination over Life,” in Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, vol 2 (2019): 518-534. 2 Sawaragi Noi, “The ‘Sky’ Seen from the Enola Gay: ‘Pika’ by Chim↑Pom and the ‘Simulated Window’ [katsute enora gei kara mieta “soar”: Chim↑Pom no “pika” to kaiki suru genbakusha tachi no mado]” in Why Can’t We Make the Sky of Hiroshima “PIKA!”? [Naze Hiroshima no sora wo pikatto saseteha ikenainoka], eds. Chim↑Pom and Kenichi Abe (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsho, 2009), 43-46. 3 Saul Friedlander, “Introduction” in Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed Saul Friedlander (Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press, 1992), 18. Here, I use the term “the limits of representation” as was discussed in the context of narrating and representing the Holocaust. For a more general discussion about violence and representation/representational strategies, see Graham Matthews and Sam Goodman eds, Violence and the Limits of Representation, London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013.

1 visible the effects of radiation, the lives of atomic-bomb survivors, and the politics of the atomic age.4 Across fields, scholars have made the atomic bombings subjects of their inquiry, asking a spectrum of questions: what geopolitical factors led to the U.S. dropping of the atomic bombs; what happened, in terms of physics, in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing; what are the longer socioeconomic consequences of the bombing, and what lessons are to be drawn from this tragic incident?5 Each of these efforts has aimed at a specific, in- the-limit, true representation of the event, resulting in multiple inter-related frameworks of interpretation that add to the “thick description”—to borrow from anthropology—of the phenomenon and its implications.6

Scientists are no exception. They too have been drawn to the atomic bombings as historical events, particularly for the opportunities they offer for radiation risk research. As Hans-Jörg Rheinbeger has argued, representation is “the condition of the possibility for things to become epistemic things,” and scientists in the past decades have eagerly engaged in the work of representing the atomic bombings and deriving knowledge therefrom.7 More concretely, scientists have scrutinized the bodies and body parts of the survivors, or the hibakusha, hoping to gain insights into a question that has traditionally posed tremendous scientific uncertainty: What does radiation do to human bodies? By representing the atomic bombings through survivors’ bodies, scientists hoped that they would advance knowledge about levels of radiation exposure, biological consequences of the exposure, and their long-term effects.

4 Often categorized as the atomic-bomb art, work featuring the atomic bombings and radiation exposure abound across the arts—literature, film, drama, music, poetry, and visual arts. For a recent scholarly discussion of the atomic-bomb art in English, see Gabrielle Decamous, Invisible Colors: The Arts of the Atomic Age. Cambdirge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019. For English language catalogues featuring drawings and poetry on atomic bombings, see, for instance, Suzuki Hisao, Tashio Yamamoto, and Kozaburo Nagatsu. Against Nuclear Weapons: A Collection of Poems by 181 Poets 1945-2007 (Tokyo, Japan: Coal Sack Books: 2007) and Kawakatsu, Shigemi ed. Hiroshima Survivors Witnessed the Atomic Bomb Inferno (Tokyo: Coal Sack Books, Japan, 2015). 5 For work in politics and political science, see, for instance, JA Walker, “The decision to use the bomb: A historiographical update” in MJ Hogan, ed. Hiroshima in History and Memory (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11-37; Gar Alperovitz, “Historians Reassess: Did We Need to Drop the Bomb,” in Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds., Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Sony Creek, CI: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), pp. 5–21; Sean L. Malloy, Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to use the Bomb Against Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Malloy, Sean L. “A Very Pleasant Way to Die: Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (2012): 515-545. On the experiences of atomic-bomb survivors, see, for instance, Shi Lin Loh. “Defining Hibakusha in Postwar Japan: The Boundaries of Medicine and the Law,” Zinbun 49 (2019): 81- 92; Naono Akiko. “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor,” Japanese Studies 39, no. 3 (2019): 333-52; Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War (New York, New York: Viking, 2015); and Robert Jay Lifton. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1967. 6 Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-30. 7 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 112.

2 This study is about scientists who strived to track radiation risk after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Specifically, I am interested in cytogeneticists and epidemiologists, who devoted their careers to investigating chromosomes—key biological entities—drawn from the hibakusha. I consider the experiences of these scientists who studied chromosomes, the technologies and infrastructure that facilitated the studies, the complex relationship between the hibakusha and the scientists, as well as the broader community in which the research outcomes shaped the policy and practice of radiation protection. I follow hibakusha chromosomes in their journey across time and space: from the moment they were stored as blood samples in the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC)—later re-institutionalized as the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF)—in Japan, to their trips overseas decades later to be compared with chromosomes from other populations exposed to radiation.

Thus, what I present here are the stories of chromosomes, as they were told by scientists and by survivors. As I will demonstrate, chromosomes reveal much more than the internal working of ABCC and RERF, or the development of the cytogenetics as a field of scientific inquiry. I use the hibakusha chromosomes to contextualize the cytogenetic labor at ABCC/RERF and aspiration of scientists in the larger history of the atomic age; to highlight the complex relationship between diplomacy and science; to shed light on the extensive global infrastructure of radiobiology as a response to emerging geopolitical risks; and to consider the forms of power and violence that are inextricably linked to the work of science. Chromosome stories also invite us to seriously contemplate the roles and responsibilities of scientists, moral conundrums they face, and the ethical dimensions of scientific work that involves human body parts. To sufficiently attend to these aspects, I take seriously the role of affect—wonder, curiosity, fear, anger, and relief—and examine how these emotions defined the work of ABCC/RERF as well as the relationship between ABCC/RERF and the hibakusha. Likewise, throughout the study, I carefully attend to how scientists understood, justified, and sometimes struggled with the purpose of their work.

All in all, this is an exploration of how extreme violence with unique biological consequences became an opportunity and resource for scientific advancement, and the implication of such story to our understanding of science, ethics, and social justice.

3 Bibliography Alperovitz, Gar. “Historians Reassess: Did We Need to Drop the Bomb.” In Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, edited by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, 5-21. Sony Creek, CI: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998. Decamous, Gabrielle. Invisible Colors: The Arts of the Atomic Age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2019. Dower, John. War, Peace, and Beauty: The Art of Iri and Toshi Maruki. Saitama, Japan: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2007/2014. Eubanks Charlotte. The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019. Friedlander, Saul. “Introduction.” In Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” edited by Saul Friedlander, 1-21. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Kawakatsu, Shigemi ed. Hiroshima Survivors Witnessed the Atomic Bomb Inferno. Tokyo: Coal Sack Books, Japan, 2015. Lifton, Robert Jay. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1967. Loh, Shi Lin. “Defining Hibakusha in Postwar Japan: The Boundaries of Medicine and the Law,” Zinbun 49 (2019): 81-92. Malloy, Sean L. Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to use the Bomb Against Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. ———. “A Very Pleasant Way to Die: Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (2012): 515-545. Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels. A Brief Guide to the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels. Saitama, Japan: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2005/2015. Maruki Iri and Toshiko Akamatsu. 1Pikadon. Tokyo: Potsudam Shoten, 1950. Naono, Akiko. “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor,” Japanese Studies 39, no. 3 (2019): 333-52. Okamura Yukinori. “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence: Imagination over Life.” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, vol 2 (2019): 518-534.

Sawaragi Noi. “The ‘Sky’ Seen from the Enola Gay: ‘Pika’ by Chim↑Pom and the ‘Simulated Window’ [katsute enora gei kara mieta “soar”: Chim↑Pom no “pika” to kaiki suru genbakusha tachi no mado]” In Why Can’t We Make the Sky of Hiroshima “PIKA!”? [Naze Hiroshima no sora wo pikatto saseteha ikenainoka], edited by Chim↑Pom and Kenichi Abe, 42-59. Tokyo, Japan: Kawade Shobo Shinsho, 2009. Southard, Susan. Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War. New York, New York: Viking, 2015. Suzuki Hisao, Tashio Yamamoto, and Kozaburo Nagatsu. Against Nuclear Weapons: A Collection of Poems by 181 Poets 1945-2007. Tokyo, Japan: Coal Sack Books: 2007. Walker, JA. “The Decision to Use the Bomb: A historiographical update.” In Hiroshima in History and Memory, edited by MJ Hogan, 11-37. Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996.