TOTAL CASUALTIES

TOTAL CASUALTIES
There has been great difficulty in estimating the total casualties
in the Japanese cities as a result of the atomic bombing.
The extensive destruction of civil installations (hospitals,
fire and police department, and government agencies)
the state of utter confusion immediately following the explosion,
as well as the uncertainty regarding the actual
population before the bombing, contribute to the difficulty

of making estimates of casualties. The Japanese periodic
censuses are not complete. Finally, the great fires that raged
in each city totally consumed many bodies.
The number of total casualties has been estimated at various
times since the bombings with wide discrepancies.



The relation of total casualties to distance from X, the
center of damage and point directly under the air-burst
explosion of the bomb, is of great importance in evaluating
the casualty-producing effect of the bombs. This relationship
for the total population of Nagasaki is shown in
the table below, based on the first-obtained casualty figures
of the District:

No figure for total pre-raid population at these different
distances were available. Such figures would be necessary
in order to compute per cent mortality. A calculation made
by the British Mission to Japan and based on a preliminary
analysis of the study of the Joint Medical-Atomic Bomb
Investigating Commission gives the following calculated
values for per cent mortality at increasing distances from
X:

It seems almost certain from the various reports that the
greatest total number of deaths were those occurring immediately
after the bombing. The causes of many of the
deaths can only be surmised, and of course many persons
near the center of explosion suffered fatal injuries from
more than one of the bomb effects. The proper order of
importance for possible causes of death is: burns, mechanical
injury, and gamma radiation. Early estimates by the Japanese