nuclear-news

Japanese march to recall Bikini atomic bomb test

Japan remembers the Bikini Atoll test, Saturday March 1, 201 4 Nearly 2,000 people have marched in a Japanese city to mark the 60th anniversary of a US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, amid heightened anti-nuclear sentiment in the country after the Fukushima crisis. The 1954 test exposed residents on Marshall Islands to radiation, with the fallout also contaminating the Japanese tuna fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon V), which was near the atoll when the test occurred.

The ship’s chief radioman Aikichi Kuboyama died of acute organ malfunction nearly seven months later at the age of 40, while 15 others among the boat’s 23 crew members died of cancer and other causes later.

While the precise cause of Kuboyama’s death has been disputed, the incident sparked an anti-nuclear movement in Japan nine years after the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that occurred in the closing days of World War II.

Some 1800 people marched on Saturday to Kuboyama’s grave in the port city of Yaizu, 170 kilometres southwest of Tokyo…….http://www.skynews.com.au/world/article.aspx?id=954594Sk News

March 3, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized