People in the Marshall Island were not the only victims of the tremendous blast. One and a half hour after the explosion, a 140-ton tuna fishing boat from Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture which was sailing 100 miles east of Bikini were also heavily contaminated by the radiation. Despite being a secret, the test gained international attention because the fallout from the explosion poisoned the Daigo Fukuryu Maru crews. This created an international concern regarding atmospheric thermonuclear test and severed the diplomatic relationship with Japan.
Since the fishermen were operating outside of the danger zone given by the US authorities, they were unaware of the danger of the atomic explosion they saw. After seeing a bright flash light in the sky that lit up like a sunrise, eight minutes later they heard the sound of the explosion and continued by the rained of cloud of white radioactive ash for approximately 3 hours. This ashes which was later known as “ashes of the death” contaminated not only the 23 crew members, but also the fishes that they had caught.
Soon after being exposed to this fallout, the crew members start to suffer from itching skin, nausea, and vomiting. On their way back home, their skin began to darken, hair loosened and started to fallout, pain in the eyes, and bleeding from the gums. On Sunday, 14 March 1954, they arrived in their home port, Yaizu, Shizuoka. The next day, 2 of them were sent to Tokyo University Hospital for an examination. And on 16 March, they were officially announced to be exposed by the fallout. The remaining 21 crew members were then hospitalized in Tokyo for about a year. The ship was quarantined and later in 1967 it was abandoned at Yumenoshima, a graveyard for wooden ships in Tokyo Bay. Now, the ship is in the Tokyo Metropolitan Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall as a monument.
Fukuryu Maru brought back 12.000 pounds of sharks and tuna which was sent right away to the fish market in Japan. A young professor called Yashushi Nishiwaki discovered that the fishes were also heavily contaminated. Contaminated fish were then deeply buried, but some had been sold. This automatically feared the entire Japan. People stopped consuming fish and as the result, price of fish fall down and bankruptcy of fish-dealers. By the end of 1954, 856 Japanese fishing boats were confirmed exposed by the radiation.
On 23 September 1954, Aikichi Kuboyama, the chief of radio operator passed away after fell into a coma and suffering from low white blood cell counts. He was the first Japanese victim of a Hydrogen bomb although America has never declared that he died because of “Bravo”. His last words before he died were "I pray that I am the last victim of an atomic or hydrogen bomb." This incident also triggered Japanese film makers to create “Gojira”, monsters that are mutated because of the impact of radiation.
2 comments:
Do you know why Aikichi Kuboyama died first??
I mean, all the crews got the same effect of the radiation, but they were not as bad as Kuboyama, and in fact, some of them are still alive until now.
isn't it because he was the one who licked the fallout?
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