Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physician's Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands

James N Yamazaki with Louis B Fleming Duke University Press, £15.95, pp 200 ISBN 0 8233 1658 7

On 6 and 9 August 1945 two atomic bombs vaporised 200000 Japanese civilians. James Yamazaki's book vividly portrays the after effects of the world's most horrific weapons. Fifty years on, cancers and genetic disorders are still claiming victims of the first bombs.

The image of a mushroom cloud rising over Hiroshima is probably the most graphic symbol of the postwar period. Unfortunately, that image often hides the human effects of the two bombs and the 2200 or so nuclear tests since. Yamazaki's memoirs include an account of a harrowing meeting with the mothers of pica babies, or children born with severe abnormalities after exposure to radiation in the womb. Ten per …