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The Radiation That Makes People Invisible: A Global Hibakusha Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Radiation makes people invisible. We know that exposure to radiation can be deleterious to one's health; can cause sickness and even death when received in high doses. But it does more. People who have been exposed to radiation, or even those who suspect that they have been exposed to radiation, including those who never experience radiation-related illnesses, may find that their lives are forever changed – that they have assumed a kind of second class citizenship. They may find that their relationships to their families, to their communities, to their hometowns, to their traditional diets and even traditional knowledge systems have been broken. They often spend the remainder of their lives wishing that they could go back, that things would become normal. They slowly realize that they have become expendable and that their government and even their society is no longer invested in their wellbeing.
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References
Notes
1 “Fukushima stress deaths top 311 toll,” Japan Times (February 20, 2014) (accessed July 31, 2014).
2 Dan Frosh, “Amid toxic waste, a Navajo village could lose its land,” New York Times (February 19, 2014) (accessed July 31, 2014).
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6 Robert Jacobs, “Social fallout: Marginalization after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Issue 28, Number 4 (July 11, 2011) (accessed July 31, 2014).
7 Many doctors at the ABCC did provide “under the table” medical treatment, but it was the policy of the organization not to provide medical treatment.
8 There are many reasons why activists and scholars challenge the integrity of the data in many of these studies. For example, considering the Life Study at the RERF in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many fault the fact that the study was begun after the deaths of most who passed away from the effects of acute radiation, so they are not included in the statistics, the study does not include the health effects of alpha emitting particles in its data, and it is dependent on a process of dose reconstruction that can be seen as aspirational rather than factual.
9 Robert Jacobs, “Fukushima Victimization 2.0,” Dianuke (March 11, 2012) (accessed July 31, 2014).
10 Dana Kennedy, “Chernobyl cleanup survivor's message for Japan: “Run away as quickly as possible,” Desdemona Despair (March 23, 2011) (accessed July 31, 2014, originally published by AOL News).