nuclear-news

How USA conned Japan into developing nuclear energy

U.S. used atomic power cooperation to remedy Japan’s ‘ignorance’, Mainichi Daily News, Japan) July 24, 2011, TOKYO (Kyodo) — The United States used atomic power cooperation with Japan in the 1950s to ease the Japanese public’s aversion to nuclear weapons and remedy their “ignorance” about nuclear power, declassified U.S. papers showed Saturday.

The U.S. move, which eventually led the world’s only country to have suffered atomic bombing to embrace nuclear power, was initially devised to counter the antinuclear sentiment among the Japanese public after a tuna fishing boat, the Fukuryu Maru No. 5, was exposed to radioactivity from a 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test while operating at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.

The documents, collected by Kyodo News at the U.S. National Archives, show that President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, concerned about Japan’s possible exit from the Western camp, accelerated cooperation with Japan in atomic energy technology to contain antinuclear and anti-U.S. sentiment among the Japanese……

July 24, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Japan