Terufumi Sasaki

rdf:langString Terufumi Sasaki

rdf:langString Terufumi Sasaki (Japanese: 佐々木 輝文, Hepburn: Sasaki Terufumi) was a surgeon at the Red Cross hospital in Hiroshima in 1945 and was personally situated 1,650 yards from the hypocenter of the Little Boy explosion. Twenty-five years old that year, out of an initial 30 interviewed, he became one of the six central biopics found in the 1946 book Hiroshima by John Hersey. He lived at his family home in Mukaihara district prior to the detonation and practiced medicine in communities with poor health care without a permit. After the detonation occurred, he was one of the first to observe, document and attempt to treat "atomic bomb sickness", now known as acute radiation syndrome. Terufumi Sasaki led intensive research into the syndrome in the weeks and months post-detonation, leading to the establishment of three recorded stages of the syndrome. Within 25–30 days of the explosion, Sasaki noticed a sharp drop in white blood cell count and established this drop, along with symptoms of fever, as prognostic standards for Acute Radiation Syndrome. In the years afterward he would become one of the leading surgeons continuing to document and treat the Hibakusha (explosion-affected) community, serving as an important source of knowledge for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, and later Radiation Effects Research Foundation, who began and continue the Life Span Study of atomic bomb survivors, respectively.