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Event

Fallout on the Lucky Dragon No. 5

The Japanese tuna boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru was showered with Bravo fallout; all 23 crew were made ill and the chief radio operator died on 23 September 1954.

5 links, 5 backed by primary records

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Dates
1 Mar 1954 – 23 Sep 1954

Connections 5

involved

  • United States government its published danger area ended at 166°16′ East; the boat was east of Bikini and, by Ropeik, outside the zone Primary record 123

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Timeline 1 date
  1. 1 Mar 1954 – 23 Sep 1954 Fallout on the Lucky Dragon No. 5
Proof 6 sources
  1. Atomic Energy Commission answers to State Department questions on the Marshallese petition, 9 June 1954 (Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-1954, vol. III, doc. 942), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 9 Jun 1954. Primary record
    The area was bounded by the meridians 160°35’–166°16’ East Longitude and the parallels 10°15’–12°45’ North Latitude.
    After the experience of the first shot of Castle, the danger area was extended to include the above area plus a sector from 240° clockwise to 095° out to a distance of 450 miles from a point 12° North 164° East.
  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
    while the Lucky Dragon was 86 miles from the test site and outside the officially declared warning zone, it was well within the range of the bomb’s impact
    nine minutes later a roaring sound arrives like overlapping avalanches.
    The official cause of death was liver failure, from which he had been suffering for years.
  3. 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
    saw the western sky suddenly light up with a fireball
    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.
    The fireball was the explosion of Bravo, the largest hydrogen bomb tested by the United States at the Bikini Atoll.
  4. 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.
  5. Memorandum on Bikini compensation, 29 December 1954 (Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-1954, vol. XIV, part 2, doc. 844), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, 29 Dec 1954. Primary record
    At its meeting on November 3, the Operations Coordinating Board agreed that necessary funds of up to $2 million should be made available for settlement of Japan’s claims for damages resulting from the radioactive fall-out from the thermonuclear tests at Bikini.
  6. 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
    A 100-ton Japanese fishing vessel with a crew of twenty-three called the Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon) was sailing some eighty miles from Bikini when the bomb exploded.
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