Success Stories

Hiroshima Fallout Expert Visits Cytogenetic Biodosimetry Laboratory

Dr. Akio Awa, one of the world’s foremost leading cytogeneticists, recently visited Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to work along side Drs. Gordon Livingston and Mark Jenkins in the Cytogenetic Biodosimetry Laboratory analyzing blood cultures and plotting chromosomes.

Visiting ORAU through a contract admnisted by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation on behalf of the Armed Forces Radiation Research Institute, Awa shared his unmatched experience with the CBL staff for six months.

Awa is widely considered to have performed the most extensive radiation cytogenetic population studies in the world, including nearly 30 years spent studying the effects of “Little Boy,” the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Awa was in sixth grade in his hometown of Hokkaido when Little Boy fell, nearly 1,000 miles from Hiroshima. And because not much was known about radiation and the possible effects of exposure at the time, seven years passed before Awa’s town learned more details about the bombing.

It wasn’t until Awa began working for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (the ABCC, which was reorganized into the Radiation Effects Research Foundation [RERF] in 1975) that he became aware of the gravity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Awa focused on two projects while with the ABCC, and later with the RERF. He studied blood cultures of A-bomb survivors looking for any chromosomal aberrations that may have resulted from bombing, and he studied blood cultures from children of survivors, looking for any genetic effects, hereditary problems, and/or increases in mutative diseases.

Over 16 years with the agency, Awa studied cultures from 16,000 children—8,000 children of A-bomb survivors and 8,000 children whose parents were not exposed to the atomic radiation. His research proved that up until that time no ill effects of radiation were observed in the children.