On March 14, 2011, New York Times guest columnist Peter Wynn Kirby examined the recent disaster in Japan through the lens of their popular culture.  As the initial devastation from the recent Tsunami gives way to the far greater threat of a looming nuclear disaster that could eclipse the damage seen at Chernobyl, Japan again faces a crisis that threatens her very existence. A decade after Atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a nuclear test conducted on a Pacific atoll went awry, raining radioactive ash down on a Japanese fishing trawler cruising nearby. The fisherman aboard that boat returned to port, dragging the aftereffects of radiation poisoning in their wake. It is believed that the tuna caught by the trawler made its way into the food chain, causing further outbreaks of radiation poisoning like that seen in the aftermath of the bombings. In response to this event, and the bombings, filmmakers in Japan created a literal monster –Godzilla (Gojira in the original Japanese)- and unleashed it on the cities of Japan. While me may laugh at the low-budget special effects and the obvious rubber-suited actors that appear in the Godzilla films, this monster helped give a voice to the inexplicable horror seared onto the Japanese psyche (Kirby, 2011). While Godzilla serves as a visible avatar for the devastation of nuclear war, the human costs are often hidden away and harder to see. The renewed threat of nuclear devastation in Japan reminds us again of these costs. While there have been numerous studies conducted on the physiological effects of the Atomic bombings in Japan, there have been few that examine what psychological effects the Atomic bombs had on the people of Japan; we will discuss two of them here.

The first study is entitled “Psychiatric sequelae in atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki two decades after the explosions.” The method utilized in the study was in the form of a self-administered questionnaire; it was completed over a three year period beginning in 1962. There were 9,421 participants, and the focus of the study was on such conditions as generalized anxiety disorder, somatization disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other conditions. These participants were further examined based on factors such as age, gender, city (Hiroshima or Nagasaki), acute radiation symptoms, proximity to the blast center, deaths of family members, and disease history (Michiki& Izumi, 2002).

The results of the study revealed a higher prevalence of all of the listed psychological conditions among those with acute radiation symptoms than those without them. The prevalence of anxiety disorders was significantly higher among those who were in one of the cities at the time of the explosion than those who were not in the city, irrespective of whether or not they suffered from acute radiation sickness. Other factors, such as disease history, did have a correlative effect on the prevalence of psychological disorders, but related factors in family members were seen to be unrelated to manifestations of psychological disorders(Michiki& Izumi, 2002).

The authors of the study concluded that the prevalence of anxiety and stress-related symptoms was elevated in Atomic bomb survivors even 17-20 years after the bombings had occurred. The results of the study were seen as proof that the Atomic bombings caused significant and long-term psychological effects in addition to the more visible physiological effects. Further, psychiatric sequelae were independent of physical sequelae; it was not necessary to have suffered physical effects from the bombings in order to have been affected by psychological effects(Michiki& Izumi, 2002).

The next study, entitled “Mental health conditions among atomic bomb survivors in Nagasaki,” was intended to “elucidate the effects of the bombing on the…survivor’s mental health.” This study also utilized a self-administered questionnaire; 3526 questionnaires were received from respondents in Nagasaki (Honda et al, 2002).

As in the case of the earlier study, the authors noted that far more studies have been conducted on the physiological effects of the Atomic bomb than on the psychological and psychiatric effects.