TOKYO, Aug 6: The approach of August six is always hard for 63-year-old Reiko Yamada, an atomic bomb survivor who is now active in a battle to gain better support for victims of the world's first atomic blast 52 years ago.Yamada recalls all too clearly that midsummer day in 1945, when American warplanes dropped an atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

A second atom bomb was dropped by the US on the southwestern city of Nagasaki three days later, forcing Japan to surrender to the Allied forces and bringing the Pacific war to an end.

More than 140,000 people were killed instantly after the nuclear blasts and many more died in the months and years after. Victims continued to die each year from cancer and radiation-linked illnesses.

``I was in my school courtyard in Hiroshima when the bomb dropped. I saw the B-29 plane and fell to the ground as the explosion rocked the earth,'' recalls the softspoken woman, whose gentle smile belies the pain and hardship that marks the life of ageing survivors in Japan today.

In the next two decades, Yamada lost a father and two sisters to cancer, since they had been closer to the epicenter and thus experienced high doses of deadly radiation.

Today, Yamada is part of a group called Japan Confederation of A and H Bomb Sufferers, made up of survivors like her struggling for a fairer deal in life.

There are tens of thousands of radiation victims who are officially recognised by the Japanese government, but there remains a vast number of those still lobbying the government to give them the status they have been denied for so long.

``Our battle is bitter because progress is so slow,'' Yamada says. ``But still we have learned to appreciate the inches (of progress) we have made.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.