SEATTLE, May 15 (UPI) -- Doctors from Japan made a bi-annual visit to a Seattle hospital during the weekend to examine survivors of the atomic bombs dropped in 1945.
The Seattle Times reports that about 1,000 survivors live in the United States and Canada, with the largest groups in California and Washington State.
Dr. Shizuteru Usui of the 15th Medical Mission for A-bomb Survivors in North America and a colleague tested the survivors who came to a Pacific Medical Center clinic for heart disease, colon cancer and thyroid cancer.
Usui told the newspaper that he thinks the survivors feel more comfortable with doctors who speak their native language. Usui himself lived in Hiroshima and was about a mile and a half from the center of the blast.
He said that most of the survivors are now elderly and acknowledges that any diseases caused by radiation would have shown up years ago. The oldest people he examined during this trip were in their 90s and the youngest was 59, exposed to radiation in utero.
