Why 60 years after?

January 5, 2015

Health Ministry to recheck boat crews for effects of H-bomb test radiation

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150105p2a00m0na007000c.html

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is set to launch follow-up health checks for crewmembers of boats that operated near the site of a 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, it has been learned.

The decision comes after radiation exposure level records for the crewmembers were discovered last year. The ministry has so far conducted follow-up health checks only for the crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru based in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, though some 10,000 people on at least 500 vessels are believed to have been exposed to radiation in the H-bomb test.

The Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a tuna fishing boat, came home on March 14, 1954, after being exposed to radiation in the U.S. hydrogen bomb test in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Radiation was detected from other fishing boats that operated near the atoll and in tuna on some of these vessels.

On March 18, 1954, the government ordered fishing boats operating near the area to return to one of five ports, including Tokyo Port. The government then ordered the crewmembers to discard their catches if their radiation levels exceeded 1,000 counts per minute (cpm) from a distance of 10 centimeters.

Moreover, the government pledged to conduct detailed health checkups on crewmembers if their radiation levels exceeded 500 cpm. However, the government stopped conducting radiation tests on crewmembers at the end of that year.

Japan and the United States settled the dispute over the incident with a Jan. 4, 1955 agreement paying Japan 2 million dollars in compensation -- or 720 million yen at the exchange rate of that time. However, the settlement stopped short of holding Washington legally responsible.

In April 1955, the Cabinet decided to allocate part of the compensation to medical treatments for 123 crewmembers of vessels other than Daigo Fukuryu Maru, and to cover the discarded contaminated fish caught by 992 fishing boats. However, the government has since failed to conduct follow-up health checks on fishermen other than those on Daigo Fukuryu Maru.

In a House of Representatives Budget Committee session in March 1986, then Health and Welfare Minister Isamu Imai denied that records of fishermen's radiation exposure existed, and suggested the government would not take any action because it was difficult to investigate a more than 30-year-old incident.

However, a move by the Kochi Prefecture Pacific Ocean Nuclear Test Suffering Support Center, a citizens group, has prompted the government to drastically change its response to the issue. The center has conducted interviews with boat crewmembers since the 1980s.

After the health ministry disclosed in 2013 some of the radiation test results that it had provided to the U.S. via the Foreign Ministry following the Bikini incident, Masatoshi Yamashita, executive director of the support center, demanded in July 2014 that the ministry fully disclose the data.

In response, the ministry disclosed the records of radiation tests for crewmembers on 473 vessels to the citizens organization in September. A senior ministry official suggested that the ministry had no choice but to launch health checkups on crewmembers on the heels of its disclosure of radiation test results.

"The health ministry is sensitive about being accused of concealing documents, as it came under fire over information on HIV infections caused by contaminated blood products," the official said.

Shin Toyoda, professor at Okayama University of Science, reported to a study group in Hiroshima in August 2014 that checks on the teeth of crewmembers of boats based in Kochi Prefecture that were operating about 1,300 kilometers east of the H-bomb test site showed that they were exposed to up to 414 millisieverts of radiation. The study group was set up by Hiroshima University professor emeritus Masaharu Hoshi, and comprises experts in radiation exposure as well as Yamashita. The group is also examining chromosomal abnormalities in the blood of those exposed to radiation.

According to sources close to the planned follow-up investigations, an expert research team will be set up to assess how victims were exposed to radiation near the H-bomb test site based on ministry records and compare the results with data on Daigo Fukuryu Maru and its crewmembers.

Moreover, the ministry team will interview Hoshi's study group about its research results.

Possible H-bomb test radiation victims have mixed reaction to gov't health checks

Ryoichi Terao, extreme left, and Yutaka Kuwano, extreme right, are pictured with other crewmembers of the Daini Kosei Maru in this photo taken before ship and crew were exposed to radiation from U.S. hydrogen bomb tests near the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in 1954. (Photo courtesy of Yutaka Kuwano)

拡大写真

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150105p2a00m0na009000c.html

Reactions were mixed among fishing boat crewmen who may have been exposed to radiation from U.S. hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific, as well as the families of those who have died, to the government's decision to conduct health checks on the fishermen after decades without providing care.

Many of them wondered why the decision came so late, while others urge the government to thoroughly investigate the matter to provide useful information.

"I'd like the government to conduct thorough investigations and gather data that will be helpful in the future, bearing in mind the Fukushima nuclear crisis," says Masako Terao, 71, wife of Ryoichi Terao, a fisherman who died at age 40 after operating near U.S. hydrogen bomb tests near the Bikini Atoll in 1954.

The Daini Kosei Maru fishing boat he was aboard was sailing halfway between Japan and a designated danger zone when the United States conducted its first hydrogen bomb test on March 1, 1954, and was near the Bikini Atoll when two more tests were conducted on March 27 and April 7 that year.

The vessel returned to Muroto, Kochi Prefecture, where it was based, on April 15 after completing its fishing excursion. It had already been reported that the Daigo Fukuryu Maru was exposed to radiation, and fish on the Daini Kosei Maru were discarded. By that time, however, crewmembers had eaten some of the fish they'd caught during their trip.

In December 1966, Ryoichi Terao married Masako. Some 10 years later, Ryoichi suddenly vomited blood and was rushed to hospital. He died of a ruptured varicose vein about a week later. "He'd shown no symptoms," Masako recalls.

Ryoichi would never talk about his experience off the Bikini Atoll to his family, but he did quit fishing and became a fish vendor instead.

"I'd wondered why he developed that disease even though his job wasn't particularly tough," says Masako.

However, she chose not to keep asking why, and put her energies into her job as a life insurance saleswoman and providing for her sons, one of whom was in kindergarten and the other in elementary school.

Masako began to suspect a causal relationship between the hydrogen bomb tests and her husband's death after an acquaintance looking into victims of the tests contacted her in 2013.

Masako's elder brother, who was on a fishing boat near the test site at the time of the detonations, developed stomach cancer and told her, "My disease may have something to do with the hydrogen bomb tests."

Masako's grandchild will enter a post-graduate course this coming spring. She says she wanted to show that to her husband.

"Frankly speaking, I don't know whether there was causal relationship between the hydrogen bomb tests and my husband's illness because he's already dead and no documents remain," she says. "I'm not hoping that the government will do something for us. I'd rather like the government to use the results of its follow-up investigations as an information resource for the future."

There were reportedly 24 crewmembers on the Daini Kosei Maru, but only three remain living. One of them, 78-year-old Hisashi Kubo, was a junior high school classmate of Terao and began fishing at the same time. He is furious about the government's failure to launch follow-up health checks before now.

"Why now?" Kubo says.

"At the time, we were so young and we didn't even think about being exposed to radiation. People only came to realize how damaging radiation is after the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear crises. The government is slow to begin probes -- it took them 60 years from the time of the incident. We hardly remember what happened," he says. "It's regrettable that Japan did so little about the incident, because Japan was only obedient to the United States then."

Yutaka Kuwano, 82, another crewmember on the Daini Kosei Maru, is also critical of the government's response.

"Just like those on the Fukuryu Maru, all the fishermen who were operating around Bikini should have been made to stay in hospital for about a year. However, the government failed to conduct checkups on people, and only examined the fish," Kuwano says.

"There are people who died while shedding tears and saying, 'Why do I have to die so young?'" he laments.

Kuwano fell into alcoholism for a time as he saw his coworkers die early, and he was afraid of the possible after-effects of radiation exposure on himself.

"I want the government to search for survivors and provide care for them if they show symptoms," he says.

Masatoshi Yamashita, 69, a former high school teacher who now serves as executive director at the Kochi Prefecture Pacific Ocean Nuclear Test Suffering Support Center, urges the government to conduct a survey on former seamen's health at an early date.

"Those who should be given follow-up checkups can be identified easily by examining records of their mariners' insurance policies," he says.

January 05, 2015(Mainichi Japan)