On March 1st 1954, the 23 crew members of the Japanese fishing
boat "Daigo Fukuryu Maru" ("the Lucky Dragon") were amazed to find a fine snow
falling, far out to sea in the tropical North Pacific. For three hours the fine,
yet warm, white substance fell. The curious fishermen gathered it up while they
worked.
But that night they began to get sick. One died, and the others were to spend
the next year in hospital . The "snow" they had sailed into was nuclear fallout;
ashes from an experimental US detonation on Bikini atoll. Misjudging the
strength of the explosion - 1,000 times stronger than that which flattened
Hiroshima - the US government had failed to warn boats in the area, or locally
stationed US personnel and Micronesian islanders.
When the boat returned to Japan it set off a panic. The WWII nuclear attacks
were still fresh in the public imagination, and these new explosions (deep in
the ocean that provided Japan with much of its seafood) rocked public
confidence.
The boat was quarantined until it was deemed to be safe, and then returned to
active service, and was eventually consigned to a scrapheap in a Tokyo waste
dump.
In the 1980s that rubbish tip was transformed into a park through a land
reclamation project called "Dream Island" ("Yumenoshima"). Local residents
recognised the identity of the wrecked ship in the soon-to-be-redeveloped dump,
and decided to preserve it, raising funds for a museum.
Today, the museum in Yumenoshima park houses the battered hulk of the "Lucky
Dragon" and other exhibits warning of the dangers of nuclear war.
Next door, a simple marker commemorates the burying of the ship's cargo - 450
tons of contaminated tuna - which was dumped to prevent it from being sold for
human consumption.
Today this quiet, leafy corner of Tokyo, next to the lapping waters of Tokyo
Bay, bears witness to the whole strange, sad story, one that has otherwise been
all but forgotten.
An oddly touching memorial to a little-remembered nuclear
tragedy. |
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