SESSION VH
353
You see, a lot of the doctors and nurses dicd, leaving, let's say,
three-quarters of the staff of the Nagasaki medical school who were
in a very strong concrete building or who were out of town that day.
But even there they had brought in patients on doors, and { suppose
a large number walked in. But then the short circuits in the Nagasaki
medical school had caused fires «which burned up the majority of the
wards. I think the second and third floors were pretty badly yutted
everywhere; the beds were burned, and the bedding was burned because
of the maplewood flooring which conducted the fire through the building
wherever there was a little breeze downwind.
could have done a great deal.
DUNHAM:
have occurred.
Sol don't think they
I'm not talking about treating epidemics, once they
Would just their natural habits and degree of sophisti-
cation have scen to it that you didn’t have widespread water-borne
disease?
WARREN: The chances of it being water-borne would depend upon
how good the chances would be for the reservoir in Nagasaki and the
ones in Hiroshima to be contaminated. I think thia is pretty near
zero, although there were people living on the hillside above the reservoir, but it's not very likely that they would have harbored some
returnees who brought the disease in and that it would then spread
from their honeybucket toilet arrangements into this reservoir.
DUNHAM: It takes an awful lot to contaminate a very large reservoir eficctively.
WARREN:
That's right.
DUNHAM:
With the delay in pipes and things.
WARREN: All of the other arrangements which are essentially
barriers to the threat of the disease. It's a different situation where
you've a stream from which a lot of people drink, and thia was not
the case here.
I doubt if anybody drank out of the stream that ran
down the center of the valley.
CONARD:
They drink hot tea, not cuoid water.
How long did it take for voluntary medical personnel
from outside communities to get there to assist them?