A-bomb survivors
Saloff, Stephen
placed under public financing. Repeated efforts since that time to extend public financing to House and Senate races have failed with resistance traditionally coming from members ...
...They find tempted suicide on the anniversary of the baby's death, failing their own terrible pains, for the most part, undiagnosed by the in each attempt...
...This bill would extend limited members of the government...
...These portant, it would work against the growing tendency of con- victims, principally U.S...
...The serious nuclear committees, and their growth, phenomenal as it has been, has reactor accident at the Three Mile Island power station and the just begun unless action is taken...
...Representatives in January 1979 by Congressman Edward ("Back-benchers" are those M.P.s who are not, formally, Roybal (D., Los Angeles...
...Seeing the report in a gossip manageable, but as the Hibakusha reach their middle and later column, Miss Seberg went into labor prematurely and the baby years, they report greater susceptibility to disease, and a died soon after birth-to be buried, reportedly, in a glass slower recovery rate from illness...
...However, the bill has thus far been "ombudsman" -despite the fact that the latter can only -work blocked by Cdtigressmen close to the Defense Department, on cases brought by M.P...
...The FBI tried to drive Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Repeated efforts since that time to extend public financing to House and Senate races have failed with resistance traditionally coming from members Nuclear politics elected from safe disticts, Southern and urban Northern Democrats who feared that the availability of public money would encourage strong opposition at election time-which A-BOMB SURVIVORS may well be true, and a good thing too...
...most imtional, and financial hardship here in the United States...
...Many of them are only in junior jobs: neverthepushing since 1972, died in the House Judiciary Committee in less, they are bound by the doctrine of collective government 1978, but bill 1129 stands a better chance of passage...
...servicemen and civilians exposed to radiation at the Defense Department's nuclear weapons testing sites have led many others to realize that they are also Hibakusha...
...Their daily lives are for the most part by a Black Panther leader...
...Since they were the actress because she supported the black nationalist cause, strong enough to break their roots and emigrate, their number...
...Congress, it is perhaps worth outlining the government's The U.S...
...As things stand now, altogether too many congresnuclear radiation and to recognize a clear syndrome of sional decisions seem to be bought and sold by political action maladies arising from nuclear radiation...
...The Hibakusha may also find it difficult Parliamentary procedure this century...
...Since it has been said that the idea is to develop November 24, 1961 that the use of nuclear weapons is a committees on the analogy of those which already exist in the violation of international law and a crime against humanity...
...However much M.P.s can say, in the end they will then also seek grounds to demand financial compensation...
...The need for sophisticated knowledge about radiaTHE SEBERG CASE tion dangers and for treatment of radiation-related illness is now more than ever urgent...
...s themselves...
...They result from vivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic disasters, and the an all-party Parliamentary investigation into the best way of thermonuclear fallout calamity at the Bikini Atoll in March reasserting the power of the elected members of Parliament 1954...
...then they were in "Queen Victoria's golden days" when 12 October 1979: 549...
...In the case of Jean Seberg, however, it may have are a special group among the nearly 370,000 survivors who succeeded...
...Even his role as watchdog and advocate for his Medical Association, whose members have treated the local own constituents, in their disputes with the state, has been Hibakusha populations, and finally by the American Medical somewhat diminished by the introduction of the Association in 1978...
...seeking reelection spends almost $7,000,000 or $13 a vote to Until recently, the poorly understood maladies of these buy a second term, as happened in 1978, something is radiA-bomb survivors were considered idiosyncratic even in adcally wrong...
...STEPHEN SALOFF No man can face with equanimity .. . (Stephen Saloff based this article on interviews carried out Nevertheless it seems to be generally agreed by those with long with the principals in the campaign for government-sponsored experience in Parliament that things nowadays are a lot worse medical care for nuclear explosion survivors...
...An exclusion clause in many Blue Cross health insurance Commonweal: 548 contracts disallows claims resulting from "war injury," which would include the many radiation and other A-bomb afflic- Report from Britain tions in the Hibakusha of 1945...
...This for public financing of congressional campaigns, modeled on struggle is now at a new turning point with medical relief that already followed in presidential races...
...U.S...
...servicemen, have long been engaged in leadership...
...VICTIMS STILL IN NEED OF CARE The compromise bill now before Congress has much to commend it, even with the addition of amendments designed TROUGH LARGELY unknown to their fellow citizens, to sweeten the measure for opponents...
...At least, that is to obtain, through Blue Cross, Medicare and medical insur- how it was presented by the "Leader of the House" (i.e., the ance policies, the preventive medicine they require...
...to suicide...
...that our society will and should be judged...
...In an effort to discredit Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan...
...Remember Jean Seberg" might be a cancel or raise the cost of their health coverage, or amend good message for wavering Congressmen who think the pro- policies to exclude infirmities resulting from the atomic bombposed charter is somehow too hard on that organization...
...Parliament, it is widely which clearly fears that if 1129 is enacted, victims of past (or felt, has become nothing more than a talking shop and a future) "conventional" wars (such as Indochina and Korea) rubber-stamp...
...If they've a brain and cerebellum, too, The obligation which many now feel to aid the Hibakusha They've got to leave their brains outside suggests a more general obligation of the United States to And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to...
...ings...
...when a senator legislation before Congress...
...government, which voted against this resolution and suggestions for American readers...
...Every year thereaf- They vividly recall the monstrous injuries, deaths and linter, said Romain Gary, her second husband, the actress at- gering radiation poisoning of the A-bomb shocks...
...medical claims of U.S...
...One has to remember that a fair medical coverage to U.S...
...ridden Hibakusha attribute their complaints to the holocaust...
...government's floor-manager) when he announced the new The" United Nations General Assembly resolved on proposals...
...A new charter for And yet, if the Hibakusha openly reveal their tragic histories the FBI that would prevent such abuses is currently being and distressing psychic trauma, insurance companies may considered in Congress...
...just have to file into the "yes" or "no" lobbies according to Medical relief advocates have countered that the damage and the wishes of the whips...
...Roybal has informed me that 30-40 percent of the Judiciary The job of, the back-bencher, in recent years, has been Committee now favors his measure...
...W. S. Gilbert expressed it, immortally, nearly a "unprecedented difficulties in maintaining and rebuilding century ago: the lives of the Hibakusha, which distinguish them from the When in that house M.P.s divide, rehabilitation problems faced by victims of non-atomic war...
...This would make COMMITTEES COME TO WESTMINSTER impossible insurance against future radiation release from nuclear misfortunes such as Three Mile Island...
...Of course, this is not a new conception after-effects of the A-bombings create a special complex of of Parliament...
...Compared to the Any symptom, to the Hibakusha, is a possible sign of premaslaughter in Vietnam, to the plight of the boat people, the slow ture death, and their worries are heightened by apprehension starvation of the Cambodian people, one death does not add up that their children and grandchildren may suffer serious health to very much...
...coffin to demonstrate that it was not black...
...In one way this is an insignificant story...
...In fact, Blue Cross specifically absolves itself of claims resulting from "atomic explosion or other release of nuclear energy" occurring after the PARLIAMENT U.S: STYLE effective date of the insurance agreement...
...A few weeks ago she finally succeeded in the medical profession, so it is not surprising that the anxietyeffort...
...it The Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims residing in the U.S...
...citizens and permanent residents proportion of M.P.s-perhaps about a hundred altogether at who were injured by the atomic bombings...
...have been medically registered as A-bomb sufferers by the Newspaper readers know the story...
...It would markedly cut 1,000 or more survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki the flow of PAC funds and reduce the present tendency toward atomic bomb catastrophes lead lives of physical, emoWashington-based centralization of PAC activity...
...responsibility...
...citizens of Japanese ancestry studygressmen to be more responsive to oil money or various special ing or working in Japan when World War II broke 'out and interests than to their constituents or to their national party postwar brides of U.S...
...accept both the 1961 United Nations resolution outlawing But then the prospect of a lot nuclear war, and belated responsibility for the human and Of dull MPs in close proximity environmental destruction caused by the blast, burn and All thinking for themselves is what radioactivity of nuclear weapons...
...But for now that reform seems impossible to vanced non-military medical circles of North America...
...over the executive and the civil service...
...Predecessor any one time, out of the six-hundred-plus total-are in the Hibakusha aid legislation, which Roybal has been patiently government...
...But in another way it is in such "little" things deficiencies and physical deformities...
...The extent to which anemia or more serious blood diseases, such as THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT is currently considering a proleukemia, which debilitate the Hibakusha, are insurable with posal which is arguably the most important reform in Blue Cross is unclear...
...in 1970 it spread information that was false and known to be automatically excludes the grossly injured and sufferers of false, to the effect that she was pregnant not by her husband but acute radiation diseases...
...The "back-bench" Despite thisa priori legal-political barrier, an Atomic Bomb M.P., it is generally agreed, has become less and less imporSurvivors Bill (HR 1129) was introduced in the House of tant in the last thirty years, except as "lobby-fodder...
...We are still convinced, we should add, of the need a tenacious struggle to obtain adequate medical care...
...has opposed subsequent attempts to withdraw legitimacy from It should be said at the outset that the suggestions are not just nuclear war,, denies any ethical or legal liability for the sur- those of the new Conservative government...
...But the achieve, and the present House legislation represents a positive and much needed step to curb PAC power, at least to some Japanese term " Hibakusha," literally "A-bomb received person," is now entering general use to designate all victims of extent...
...whittled away by various factors, until his role has become The Roybal bill has been backed by the entire medical largely that of voting for whatever his party in Parliament tells community, first by the Los Angeles County and California him to vote for...
Vol. 106 • October 1979 • No. 18
