Of those who lived through the initial explosion in Nagasaki, thirty-five thousand died within twenty-four hours; those suffering from ARS lost their hair within one or two weeks, and then experienced bloody diarrhea before succumbing to infection and high fever. Another thirty-seven thousand died within three months. A similar number survived for longer but, after another three years, developed leukemia; by the end of the 1940s, the disease would be the first cancer linked to radiation.
