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‘ . “4 4 e knew that 3 we could expect ng help) ne iside, By ening we couldn't even’ pet any more sople indoors, ere they would have had some protection from the ha) fallout. Jn the St. Louis area, more than half a mil- n people died that first day.26 The next two days were more horrible than anything y novelist has ever imagined. Our supplies of opiates iausted, we could do nothing to quiet the screams of * burned and mangled patients who lay all around us didn'l eyen have dressings to cover their torn and ured flesh,5 The piles of bodies rose higher -- for a dle it seemed that we should all be buried under heaps of dead. 3On the fourth day a detail of soldiers arrived, equip- with special suits to protect them from fallout. aehow they manaped to dispose of the corpses. A fe jater the siate police brought us two truckloads of -ned food, though we were not to see anything like ‘ad or fresh milk for months, Actually demands on our d stores were not very heavy, because so many of our ients were unable to eat. We had Jittle chance of Jing, them intravenously. iction Sickness Tases of radiation sickness were streaming in by the ond day. We saw very few victims of massive expo- :~ 5000 rads or more -- because they didn’t live long igh to be brought in. Very quickly however we were ing people who had been exposed to 1000-5000 rads, ) people Suffered severe gastrointestinal damage. a day or so, their nausea, vomiting, and fever sided, but then returned with greater intensity, and h followed within about a week.2? Together with the ims of burns, whom we were just unable to deal with, victims of radiation sickness made up the greater of the more than 400,000 in the greater St. Louis who survived the attack but succumbed not Jong wards, 26 another day or so we were secing the largest > of people hurt by radiation, people who had ab- 2d 200-1000 rads. Such patients showed serious ‘ointestinal disorders at first, but recovered in a ow so. Then the further signs of radiation injury ap- od -- faljing out of hair, easy bruising or bleeding the skin and gums, and a return of fever and ness during the third week after the attack. At crime the number of white corpuscles and of the . platelets that are essential for blood clotting ed their lowest levels and remained low for days eks. : at worst problem with these patients was their of resistance to infections. Often they succumbed zroorpanisms that rarely cause discase jn yy people. With heavy antibiotic treatment and ted Liood transfusions over a period of months ght have saved many in this proup, As it was, than half of those exposed to 500 rads died. within onths after exposure. y Cases the people exposed to Jess than 200 rads, half experienced nausea and vamiting, butte a mild 2 in most cases, These and oflers without any 2 symptoms showed a definite Jowerlpp of the tof white comuscles in the blood, beginning. third weed. Most of Giese recovered, or af the y Bowes from causes nol ducctivy conmected with After about three “\ks,- dre stapecring death rate began to decline. But telen for the 200,000 who sur- vived without apparent injury life was very difficult. Here in our refugee center in South Dakota almost everyone is suffering to some extent from malnutrition and exposure to weather. AJ! sorts of infectious diseases are rampant. Antibiotics are still very difficult to obtain, Last spring the camp here was decimated hy pneumonia, Blindness is terribly common, And soon we expect Icukemia and bone cancer to appear among those who lived through fairly heavy radiation doses.28 On the basis of the Hiroshima experience, we think that leukemia cases will show up by the end of the next year, and reach a peak in 5 to 8 years. ii, A HOUSEWIFE IN THE POST-WAR WORLD My name is Marian Swingle. ] call myself a housewife, though the term is hardly apt. My husband is dead, and I] never expect to have a house of my own again. Yet I’m one of the lucky ones, I’m in good mental and physical health, and J still have two of my three children, Not many mothers are so well off, When the bombs exploded, I was down in the basement, washing. For a moment ] thought the washing machine had blown up, but the continued racket soon made it clear that something terrible had happened outside. 1 grabbed Davey and rushed upstairs -- though we were in Ballwin, 18 miles from Lith and Pine, our windows were smashed and a piece of the roof was torn away. When | looked ta the east, ] saw that awful cloud rising over the cily. Fortunately ] had the sense to go backto the base- ment and stay there. Many women rushed outdoors and headed for the school -- there wouldn't have been so mich radiation sickness if they had stayed indoors, It was hard to stay in, not knowing what had happened to Johnny and Edith, but I figured it was best to trust the schoo! authori- ties. ] know that when the kids did get home, they would have only me to depend on, because when I saw that cloud over the city, I felt instinctively that John would not come back, His office was on North 8th Street.5 Children Brought Home The children were brought home on a bus the next night. After a couple of days I took in the two Blanchard boys from next door, Thci: mother was one of those who had rushed out that first day. She died at home, about 10 days later. A neighbor got her to County Hospital, but brought her back again, they just weren’t taking any more patients, 25 Seven of us -- including a neighbor, Helen Stein, who had lost her husband and daughter -- lived in the base- ment unti] February. It wasn’t too bad at first. The water fortunately held out.” We had some canned goods, and some of the food in the freezer was usable for five or Six days. We couldn't cook, of course, with both gas and electricity one, though we madc little fires with waste haunber that John had stored in the basement. During, the winter we chopped up the furniture and burned that. At Jeasi we had our pood bedding, -- | wish [ stil} bad it. After almost a week, Heten ventured out to the Jocal supermarket. Though damaped, it was still standing, and in the hands of the military. Fhey gave her a puckape of powdered milk, some canned tomatoes, and two haps of dricd beans, We didn’t at that point appreciate the pockaged stuff, but a little afer al) Che Carciticer