Grateful that my host arranged for a wheelchair and nurse to facilitate local travel, I did make it to Japan and back home this August! It was wonderful to renew old friendships and again participate in the commemoration on 6 August. This year, for the first time, when adding the names of Hibakusha who died within the past year, the organizers added the phrase:“and also those victims who were never recognized as Hibakusha”. There is growing concern in Japan about those who were outside of the “magic cutoff” of 2 kilometers from the epicenter of the bomb at the time of the first flash, used to identify victims of radiation exposure. This is especially true since the U.S. military are compensated for cancer if they served anywhere within 10 miles of the epicenter for the first year after the bombing.

In September, my paper on DU was published in the International Journal of Health Services. It is available on the IICPH website (http://iicph.org/occupational-hazards-of-war-du). I hope to submit a paper soon to the Military and Global Security Journal where Frank von Hipple published his study on the trivial radiation dose received by the military in Desert Storm. Then, if I succeed, I will try to get a piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.

Thank you for your continued support of the work of the IICPH!