Blast Injuries
No estimate of the number of deaths or early symptoms due to blast pressure can be made. The pressures developed on the ground under the explosions were not sufficient to kill more than those people very near the center of damage (within a few hundred feet at most). Very few cases of ruptured ear drums were noted, and it is the general feeling of the medical authorities that the direct blast effects were not great. Many of the Japanese reports, which are believed to be false, describe immediate effects such as ruptured abdomens with protruding intestines and protruding eyes, but no such results were actually traced to the effect of air pressure alone.