BURNS

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 tightly drawn over the skin, such as at the
elbows and shoulders.
The Japanese report the incidence of burns in patients
surviving more than a few hours after the explosion, and
seeking medical attention, as high as 95%. The total mortalities
due to burns alone cannot be estimated with any
degree of accuracy. As mentioned already, it is believed
that the majority of all the deaths occurred immediately.
Of these, the Japanese estimate that 75%, and most of the
reports estimate that over 50%, of the deaths were due to
burns.
In general, the incidence of burns was in direct proportion
to the distance from X. However, certain irregularities
in this relationship result in the medical studies because
of variations in the amount of shielding from flash
burn, and because of the lack of complete data on persons
killed outright close to X.
The maximum distance from X at which flash burns were
observed is of paramount interest. It has been estimated
that patients with burns at Hiroshima were all less than
7,500 feet from the center of the explosion at the time of
the bombing. At Nagasaki, patients with burns were observed
out to the remarkable distance of 13,800 feet.