6 - Endlessness of Radiation Illness

Summary

Chapter 6 explores US survivors’ activism in the last three decades of the twentieth century through the lens of health, illness, and medicine. Radiation illness – physical and psychosocial – continued to concern US survivors. Women were frequently primary caretakers in Asia and Asian America, spurring female survivors to consider radiation illness from both patients’ and caregivers’ perspectives. This dual challenge became a driving force for US survivors to form trans-Pacific coalitions with Japanese and Korean survivors. US survivors’ understanding of illness that placed psychosocial factors at its center drew attention from the broader Asian American community, also plagued by the lack of resources for culturally aware medical and social services. Unlike the earlier medical exams conducted on US survivors by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, US survivors’ grassroots activism proved capable of producing a solution fitting their needs. One distinct accomplishment of their activism was the creation of biannual health checkups conducted in America by Japanese physicians familiar with radiation illness, funded by the Japanese government and supported by the Asian American community.