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From International Socialist Review, Vol.18 No.4, Fall 1957, p.124.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Don’t try to use an atomic blast to burn off your fingerprints. It won’t work. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from a study reported by the Finger Print and Identification Magazine.
The before-and-after study, made by a technician of the National Police Agency, Tokyo, demonstrated that the fingerprints of victims were not altered by the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion.
A difficulty in making the comparison was lack of fingerprinted persons.
“Most of the criminals in the Hiroshima Penitentiary or police stations in the city had been killed by the explosion.”
However, two ex-convicts were found.
“One had been about a mile and a quarter from ground zero at the time and the other only 1,000 feet away. In neither criminal was there any change in the fingerprint patterns.”
As controls, to make the study strictly scientific, two police officers were used. Their hands had been badly injured in the explosion, but like the two criminals, their fingerprints “had not been changed or obliterated” by either the searing heat or the radiation.
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Last updated on: 23 April 2009