By Suvendrini Kakuchi
NAGASAKI, Japan, Apr 9 1996 (IPS)

Sakue Shimomura was only six years old when the United States dropped atomic bomb No. 2 on Imperialist Japan during the Pacific War.

“The girls were just coming out of the air-raid shelter when the terrible blast occurred,” she recalls. “I cowered in fright. When I opened my eyes my friends were screaming in pain. A girl next to me was covered in huge red blisters. She died a few days later.”

Those scenes remain vivid in her memory more than 50 years after U.S. warplanes bombed the south-western Japanese city of Nagasaki.

Since then, there has been something else that she cannot get off her mind — fear of sickness and neglect.

The diminutive woman, who lost her mother and sister on that fateful day — Aug. 9 1945 — is one of few remaining survivors to the horror of nuclear weapons.

And while she has suffered various ailments that doctors link to radiation exposure, the 57-year-old woman remains free from cancer — a disease that has stalked and killed many who survived the blast.

More than 78,000 people were killed instantly when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Three days before, Hiroshima, another coastal Japanese city north of here, suffered similar devastation.

The two cities have since been rebuilt and have regained their prosperity, but the wounds left by the atom bombings remain fresh among the survivors who claim they receive precious little help from the Japanese authorities.

Today around 60,000 atom bomb survivors or Hibakusha as they are called here, remain in Nagasaki city. According to government statistics more than 1,000 of them — most in their late sixties — die every year from cancer, leukaemia and other radiation related diseases.

Many spend their last days in the Atom Bomb Hospital — one of two contrasting buildings in the city that carry the title ‘Atom Bomb’ — the other being the Atom Bomb Museum, opened last week.

The hospital is grey and foreboding, with nurses and doctors always seeming in a rush. At the shiny multi-million dollar museum the pace is leisurely as visitors are taken through a maze of memorabilia depicting the horrors of the nuclear blast.

“The stark contrast between the luxurious museum and the struggling, anxiety-ridden lives of the atomic bomb survivors is so painfully ironic that it almost makes me laugh,” says Toshio Tomoike, one of only two counsellors employed by local government to attend to survivors affected by radiation-related disease.

He has lost count, but reckons he has treated more than 10,000 patients in three decades at the hospital.

“Many of these people are now old and ill and very worried about their future,” says the soft-spoken counsellor. “The city government has spent much on the new museum but not enough to ease the suffering of the atomic bomb survivors.”

The battle for better support fought by the atomic bomb survivors against the Japanese government has reaped little success during the past 50 years.

A turning point came last July when then socialist Prime Minister Tomichi Murayama pledged aging survivors better medical care and bigger social allowances.

But that decision has come late — too late for so many who have died or have battled long and hard against sickness.

Shimomura, who has had a number of surgical operations to remove worrying growths in her body, has had to pay thousands of dollars for medical treatment over the years, but will not be compensated.

This is because she does not possess special atomic bomb documents which were distributed by the government soon after the end of the war. For some reason, she was passed by, she says.

Meanwhile the financial support she is entitled to as a survivor — around 30,000 yen (300 dollars) monthly for medical bills — barely allows her to make meets ends. Moreover, her husband is bed-ridden with symptoms of cancer.

“How on earth will I survive then (should cancer spread throughout her husband’s body),” she asks. “The other constant worry is the health of my children who also suffer from thyroid gland problems.”

Surveys taken by case worker Tomoike indicate the biggest worry for atomic bomb survivors and their children is anxiety over their future.

“When I first started working with these people they were dealing with economic hardship. But with age and better medical care, the top worry now is how they can face a future plagued with sickness and no proper support,” he explains.

Tomoike, a public employee is careful not to criticise the government, but says there is a definite need for more doctors for counselling of survivors who should also be given more money to cover medical expenses.”The Atomic Bomb Hospital does not have a psychiatric section which can counsel patients. Isn’t that hard to believe?”

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