The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I

Preface to the English-Language Edition

preface to the english-language edition xiii On March 1, 1954, an event took place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that changed the course of human history. It was a hydrogen bomb test that sent enormous amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and contaminated the whole earth. Our Lucky Dragon #5, a tuna-fishing boat operating near the test area, was covered with the “death ash” from that test. Returning to Japan carrying both that death ash and her cargo of now-radioactive tuna, the Lucky Dragon #5 awakened the world to the danger of radioactivity. Using the Bikini and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands as its testing grounds, the U.S. conducted a grand total of sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Pacific. These tests contaminated the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean with twenty-seven different cancer-causing radioactive substances. The force of the sixty-seven explosions totaled 100 megatons (100 million tons). That is the equivalent of dropping one atomic bomb of the size that devastated Hiroshima every day for nineteen consecutive years. Fearsome indeed. Fifty-five years have passed, yet I continue to testify about the Bikini Incident because the dangers the Incident entailed are horrific. If for whatever reason a nuclear war breaks out, what will become of this planet and of the human race? The answer is crystal clear. Byatwistoffate,wesimplefishermenencounteredthehydrogenbombtest. Suffering from prejudice and discrimination for being a nuclear victim, I fled my hometown and tried to hide in the crowded city of Tokyo. But I couldn’t outrun the devil—the radiation that had penetrated deep into my body. It haunted all xiv PREFACE of us, robbed me of my first child, and took the lives of my fellow fishermen, one after another. More than half a century ago the Bikini Incident sent a warning to the human race about the danger of nuclear weapons, but the governments of Japan and the U.S. concealed that danger from the public. Meanwhile, world leaders joined the race to develop nuclear arms. Despite Japan’s earlier experience of atomic bombing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese government overrode public opposition to nuclear arms and even stated in the Japanese Diet that the government supported the U.S. nuclear tests. And before the end of the year in which the Bikini Incident took place, Japan struck a political deal with the U.S. government to close the incident without giving due compensation to the victims. After 1954 nuclear weapons proliferated. At one time there were more than 70,000 warheads in the possession of more than ten countries. Today, many years after giving its support to U.S. nuclear tests, Japan is threatened by the nuclear weapons of its near neighbor, North Korea. The danger of nuclear weapons is greater than ever. Although the Bikini Incident was concealed to a large extent from the public , many citizens became alarmed. In response, the anti-nuclear movement was born under the slogan “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.” In response to the Bikini Incident, 32 million Japanese people signed a petition opposing nuclear weapons. Throughout the world, 670 million people signed the Vienna Appeal against nuclear tests and nuclear weapons. A worldwide antinuclear peace movement was emerging. The movement led, in Hiroshima in August 1955, to the convening of the first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs. That year also saw the Bertrand Russell–Albert Einstein Manifesto calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Eventually, in 1963, these moves led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty and the prohibition on atmospheric nuclear testing. In 1952, two years before the Bikini Incident, the American Occupation of Japan ended, and the censorship imposed on reports about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was lifted. The real damage and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki gradually became known, and the anti-nuclear peace movement gained momentum. Ralph E. Lapp, a U.S. nuclear physicist who played important roles in both the Manhattan Project and the Department of Defense, once said, “If the Lucky Dragon #5 incident hadn’t happened, the world’s people would undoubtedly have continued to live in ignorance .” Although it spurred the movement against nuclear weapons, the Bikini Incident did not transform the thinking of the leaders of the most powerful nations, PREFACE xv who continued to follow the path of nuclear terror. Intent on directing...