Activity Report

Visit to Kazakhstan

Stepping into the great land of radioactive contamination

Shigeru KONO

Dean, School of Medicine,

NagasakiUniversity

For one week from September 3, I visited the Republic of Kazakhstan on behalf of NASHIM. During my visit, I managed to interact with local people, mainly through my lectures on NASHIM’s activities centering on Dr. Takashi Nagai’s achievements, as well as on NagasakiUniversity’s evolution since its founding 150 years ago. Incidentally, in 1980, when I was studying at New MexicoStateUniversity, I visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Nagasaki atomic bomb had been developed, and Alamagordo, its nuclear test site. In Kazakhstan, I was led to visit the nuclear test site where the Soviet Union, after its spies had obtained information, had manufactured a Nagasaki-type bomb and conducted its first nuclear test: Polygon.

Before sharing with you my vivid impressions of Kazakhstan I would like to say, to people related to NASHIM, one very important thing. That is, through this trip, I have come to believe that NASHIM could not have made such great achievements there if it were not for the tireless efforts of Professor Shunichi Yamashita. In 1991, Kazakhstan became independent from the former Soviet Union. As is often the case in the former Communist bloc, bureaucracy and the workings of organizations such as the KGB constitute numerous obstacles to NASHIM’s activities, which could be overcome only with perseverance and strong will. Under such circumstances, Prof. Yamashita and Associate Professor Noboru Takamura have made steady efforts, building solid ties with local people, both those working in the field and those in authority. They have located appropriate people, invited students and professors to Nagasaki, and promoted frank discussions with related parties. For over ten years, they have built the foundation for activities we are engaged in today, spending long periods in the field. I simply admire and respect their achievements.

On September 3, Prof. Yamashita, Assoc. Prof. Takamura, Ms. Ainur Akilzhanova, a Kazakh student studying in Japan and I left Nagasaki at 7 a.m. and arrived, via Korea, in Kazakhstan at 20:30 local time (there is a time difference of 3 hours between Japan and Kazakhstan). As shown in Fig. 1, Kazakhstan is located west of Mongolia, north of Tibet and south of Siberia. The ninth largest country in the world, it is at the heart of Central Asia, at a strategic point on the Silk Road. It has rich deposits of uranium, titanium and other metals. Japan accelerated diplomatic ties with Kazakhstan recently. Former Prime Minister Koizumi visited Kazakhstan last year, but I have the impression that his visit did not lead to any sizable results, as the Japanese delegation was lightly dealt with by the savvy President Nazarbayev.

At KazakhNationalMedicalUniversity in Almaty, through the good offices of Dr. Gavit Alipov, who had studied in Japan for 12 years, in Professor Ichiro Sekine’s laboratory, and had recently become the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, I was given the opportunity to speak before fourth-year students of medicine about the 150-year-old history of Nagasaki University School of Medicine, Dr. Nagai’s dedicated work following Nagasaki’s atomic bombing and how our School of Medicine was revived thanks to the hard efforts of many elders’.

After this lecture we left for Semipalatinsk. As expected of a nuclear test site, it was in an isolated area. Our airplane from Almaty had no reserved seats, and we had to follow a first-come, first-served system. Prof. Yamashita told us to do our best to secure aisle seats, since window seats can get very cold at high altitudes. He also told us that Semey Airlines, on which we were flying, was not even a member of IATA and was not insured against crashes. I would say that we were rather scared during the flight!

In Semipalatinsk, Dr. Serik Meirmanov, who has been studying in Professor Sekine’s laboratory for eight years and had left for Semipalatinsk before us, arranged meetings, activities and everything else for us. I strongly felt how important it was to find and train people like him for international cooperation. Through an introduction from Dr.Marat Urazalin, Deputy Dean of the SemipalatinskMedicalAcademy, we paid a courtesy call on the new University President Tolebay Rakhypbekov . In a lecture hall filled with some 160 second-year medical students, we held the 7th Nagasaki International Medical Student Award ceremony. Before fellow students in white hats and coats, Ms. Dilyara Askhadullina, third-year student, and Ms.Gaukhar Zhumagulova, fifth-year student, received the Award. I was particularly impressed by the presence of the awardees’ parents in the ceremony, and the orderliness and courteousness that we tend to forget in Japan these days. At the end of the ceremony, I gave a talk mainly about NagasakiUniversity’s 150-year-long history and Dr. Nagai.

We finally visited Polygon, the great land of radioactive contamination, the most important objective of this visit. The site, on which the former Soviet Union conducted its first atomic bomb test on August 29, 1949, was located about 150 km west of Semipalatinsk. The road that led us there was paved but full with holes. After about three hours on this bumpy road, we arrived in Kurchatov, a city secretly built for nuclear tests, and not marked on the map in the past. We visited the local museum (Fig. 3) to receive a briefing and headed for Polygon, another 60 km away.

We were then joined by a soldier who served as our guide. After one hour’s drive on an unpaved road in a cloud of dust, we arrived at the center of Polygon. On our way, 14 km from the ground zero, we saw the building in which the bomb switch was pressed and from which the experiments were observed. The vast steppe that stretched endlessly between the sky and the horizon made us wonder if we were really approaching a contaminated area. However, as we moved closer to the center, we saw at certain intervals decayed buildings that housed observation equipment or were used to study radiation effects. Buildings near ground zero were totally ruined, creating an eerie atmosphere. We went on and found a large hole about 50 m across just off our path. On the ground around the hole, black stones with strange-looking small holes were scattered around (Fig. 4). I brought a Geiger counter close to them, and it gave out an ominous, high-pitched, continuous beep in the middle of the steppe. This drove home to us that the site continues to emit residual radioactivity at a rate of 40 mSv per hour, even today.

Except for that sound, the steppe was deceptively peaceful. Wild animals and plants continued to live there yet this seemingly normal steppe had been transformed into a horrible site that continues to harm living things permanently. Nuclear tests are said to have been conducted there from 1949 to 1952; in the whole of Polygon in Semipalatinsk, 30 ground-level tests and 88 airborne tests are believed to have been conducted in the 13 years from the summer of 1949 to the end of 1962. The human imbecility of leaving radioactive contamination for centuries to come in the middle of a vast steppe gave us a heavy heart, as we reflected on the relationship between human beings and the global environment, particularly since the beauty of the little poppies that were in bloom there offered such a sharp contrast. What was more, the experiment site hinted at the possibility of tests with human subjects, probably involving local residents. This also put us in deep thought about scientists’ morality and human nature, even amid the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union.

When we went about 500 meters away from the ground zero, the level of radioactivity suddenly dropped to 0.04 mSv, ordinary background level. We then left the bleak steppe for Semipalatinsk. In the village of Chagan on our way there, Ms. Sadako Kamiya, who had joined us from NaganoPrefecture, interviewed two old men about the days of nuclear tests. They both said they had seen reddish black mushroom clouds when they were small children. Before the very first test, the army made an announcement and told the residents to come out of their houses. It would have been understandable if they had told them to stay inside the houses. I felt that the Soviet Union was testing with human subjects, without informing the local residents of the health hazards. As the village was located about 100 km from ground zero, its residents could have been irradiated, depending on the wind direction.

As our car sped away from the bleak steppe, I continued to ask myself what I could do in the future. Although I could not work for Hibakusha on an international scale like Prof. Yamashita, there must be something I could do… as I kept thinking in this way, we arrived in Semipalatinsk well after dusk.

After a long day of such grave thoughts and feelings, we were deeply touched by our Kazakh host’s warm hospitality, expressed in the common-sense Asian manner. We were invited to Dr. Marat Urazalin’s home, which was slightly cool inside. Since his wife was away on a business trip, he himself prepared the dinner, with eggplant, salami, cheese, chicken, soup… relatively simple food, but delicious! We received his heartfelt welcome by raising our glasses of vodka many times. We had pleasant conversations and were able to walk back in the dark street, with happy hearts.

One week passed very quickly. On my first trip to Central Asia, I experienced people’s warmth as well as heavy feelings, having seen with my own eyes the marks of indescribable human imbecility. I am deeply grateful to NASHIM for this precious experience.