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Artifact

Daigo Fukuryu Maru

Japanese long-line tuna boat, Lucky Dragon No. 5, showered with fallout from the Bravo test on 1 March 1954.

2 links, 2 backed by primary records. 1 more in open data

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Also known as
Lucky Dragon No. 5, Fukuryu Maru
Wikidata
Q510109

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Proof 4 sources
  1. Lucky Dragon No. 5 special exhibit (Tokyo Metropolitan Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall), Let's Look at the Special Exhibit, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (virtual museum). Primary record
    At 6:45 a.m. on March 1, 1954, the crew of the Lucky Dragon No. 5, an ocean-going long-line tuna boat, saw the western sky suddenly light up with a fireball. The fireball was the explosion of Bravo
    These “ashes of death” caused various symptoms in the crew: headache, vomiting, eye pain, bleeding from the gums, hair loss, and more. All 23 were victims of acute radiation poisoning.
    Despite the hard battle fought by the treatment team, Chief Radio Operator Aikichi Kuboyama (then 40) died on September 23.
  2. How the unlucky Lucky Dragon birthed an era of nuclear fear (David Ropeik, opinion), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 28 Feb 2018. Scholarship & press
    The official cause of death was liver failure, from which he had been suffering for years.
  3. I'll never stop talking about my experience at Bikini, Japan Press Service, 2003. Scholarship & press
    Nuclear weapons and their radiation changed my life
    He was 20 when he was showered with the fallout at Bikini Atoll.
    Their first baby was stillborn.
    According to the government, the number of ships affected by the test explosion was 856 in 1954.
    The government has hushed up the calamities and failed to take care of the more than 10 thousand victims.
  4. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report, Chapter 12: The Marshallese, U.S. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (copy on the U.S. Department of Energy Openness site), 1995. Primary record
    Within days, crew members suffered from acute radiation sickness.
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