‘Abandoned’ sufferers of US nuke tests may offer lessons to Japan
Hundreds of fishing vessels were in the area of nuclear bomb tests in 1954 and the struggle of victims to win compensation continues to this day
As Japan edges towards recovery from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, there may be lessons to be learned from what critics view as mistakes made by the government in dealing with a serious nuclear fallout incident in the Pacific 62 years ago that also affected Japanese fishermen.
The incident has taken its name from a tuna fishing vessel called the Fukuryu Maru No. 5 that was doused with radioactive fallout on the high seas after a US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954 that saw one of its 23 crew members die due to acute radiation symptoms.
But the full scope of the impact of the incident on Japanese fishermen is still unclear because the government did not conduct follow-up health studies of crew on ships other than the hardest-hit Fukuryu Maru.
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In all, hundreds of Japanese vessels were said to have been in the vicinity in March and in the following months when the US continued to carry out nuclear tests.
Masatoshi Yamashita, who has studied the issue for some 30 years, told a recent gathering in Tokyo that crew from ships other than the Fukuryu Maru were “abandoned” by the government, which closed the case after reaching a political settlement with the US over reparations in January 1955.