Medical findings show that no person was injured by radioactivity who was
not exposed to the actual explosion of the bombs. No injuries resulted
from persistent radioactivity of any sort.



BURNS


Two types of burns were observed. These are generally differentiated as
flame or fire burn and so-called flash burn.

The early appearance of the flame burn as reported by the Japanese, and the
later appearance as observed, was not unusual.

The flash burn presented several distinctive features. Marked redness of
the affected skin areas appeared almost immediately, according to the
Japanese, with progressive changes in the skin taking place over a period
of a few hours. When seen after 50 days, the most distinctive feature of
these burns was their sharp limitation to exposed skin areas facing the
center of the explosion. For instance, a patient who had been walking in a
direction at right angles to a line drawn between him and the explosion,
and whose arms were swinging, might have burns only on the outside of the
arm nearest the center and on the inside of the other arm.

Generally, any type of shielding protected the skin against flash burns,
although burns through one, and very occasionally more, layers of clothing
did occur in patients near the center. In such cases, it was not unusual
to find burns through black but not through white clothing, on the same
patient. Flash burns also tended to involve areas where the clothes were