Photo exhibition portrays nuclear radiation victims around the world

The photos were contributed by six Japanese freelance photographers, part of the push for a nuclear-free world.

A 1977 photo taken by Ittetsu Morishita shows the face of a woman who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, with the caption reading, "The white specks in her eyes are atomic cataracts. A sharp pain runs through her body constantly, causing her to frown."

The woman also developed cancer and had both of her breasts removed.

Remembering that the victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki included Koreans, Chinese and allied prisoners of war, Takashi Ito has contributed several photos of Korean hibakusha, still suffering the aftereffects of the bombings.

Seiichi Motohashi's images focus on people living in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster. One of his photos shows a four-year-old boy, named Konstantin, who was hospitalized due to leukemia and lost his hair because of chemotherapy.

A photo taken by Hiromitsu Toyosaki in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, shows a stuffed two-headed calf that was stillborn in October 1986 at a farm about 15 kilometers northwest of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, where a meltdown occurred in 1979.

Hiroto Kiryu has contributed photos of people affected by the nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, one of which, taken in 1993, shows an 18-year-old girl. Her parents were exposed to radioactivity from the nuclear tests and her island is still contaminated.

"She is only 120 centimeters tall, and retarded both physically and mentally due to the effects of radiation. She also has a deformity in her upper jaw," the caption says.

Takashi Morizumi's photos show nuclear radiation victims in Baghdad, Fukushima and Semipalatinsk among other locations.

On a trip to Fukushima on March 12, 2011, a day after a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Morizumi said, "The radiation levels were off the scale of the radiation meters...It was the first time I had ever walked on earth with such high radiation levels. My experience of nuclear radiation contaminated sites throughout the world had not prepared me for this."

"Nuclear weapons-related facilities are always constructed in remote regions, in places where minorities live. When building the testing grounds at Semipalatinsk, in the Nevada desert, and in the Marshall Islands, no consideration at all was given to safety or to environmental contamination," he says in comments accompanying his photos.

Starting in 2002, the World Hibakusha Exhibition of the six photographers has been held in Japan and abroad, including in the Netherlands, South Korea and Taiwan, and its organizer is hoping to hold it in 100 countries by 2020.

The free exhibition will run through May 1 at Waseda Hoshien in Tokyo's Shinjuku District.