I'll never stop talking about my experience at Bikini

A U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean on March 1st, 1954 changed the life of an ordinary Japanese fisherman, Oishi Matashichi, 69. He was a crew member of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon #5) from Yaizu Port in Shizuoka Prefecture.

"Nuclear weapons and their radiation changed my life," says Oishi.

In March last year, Oishi had an opportunity to visit the Marshall Islands as a member of a Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) delegation and talked with islanders who fell victims to the H-bomb test explosion conducted by the United States on March 1, 1954.

"I was struck to know the fact that March 1st is designated by the Marshall Islands government as the Day of Nuclear Victims. This is in stark contrast with what the Japanese government is doing concerning investigations of the disaster and compensation for the victims."

He was talking about the Japanese government's insincerity about the Bikini tragedy and its after effects.

At the news about the Daigo Fukuryu Maru showered with the fallout from the U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion, the Japanese government immediately instructed all fishing vessels that passed through Bikini waters to undergo an examination for radiation. According to the government, the number of ships affected by the test explosion was 856 in 1954.

However, the government ended such examinations at the end of the same year.

In January 1955, the U.S. government agreed to pay two million dollars in consolation money. This was how the U.S. and Japanese government found a political settlement without holding the United States responsible legally. Oishi and other crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru received about 5,500 dollars.

Oishi says, "The government has hushed up the calamities and failed to take care of the more than 10 thousand victims."

This is why he made up his mind to write everything he has experienced during the past 50 years and have it published.

On February 23, Oishi was at the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Museum in Tokyo. About ten students of Waseda University, who are members of the group "Peace Walk", were listening to Oishi relating his experience.

"I became a fisherman at age 14. It was scary to go on voyages in a wooden ship for deep-sea fishing. Our fuel and food were almost exhausted, when the tragedy occurred. I cannot forget the memory of that day. "

On that day, Oishi, whose job was freezing the harvest, was taking a nap. He woke to find an evening glow covering the waters and the sky. Several minutes later he heard a rumbling noise from under the water.

Several hours later, he was showered with white powder like snow mixed with rain. The powder covered crew member's heads and shirts.

Oishi tasted the powder. It was not hot. It had no smell or taste. That was the radioactive fallout.

Crew members soon began to suffer from headaches and nausea. Two weeks after the event, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru arrived at its home port in Yaizu.

They had a medical examination in a hospital in Tokyo. All of the 23 crew members were diagnosed as having acute radiation sickness. Kuboyama Aikichi, a 40-year-old radio operator, died. Those crew members who died after Kuboyama as well as the survivors have had great difficulty maintaining their lives without the government certifying them as Hibakusha (nuclear weapons victims).

Yamamoto Chuji, former Daigo Fukuryu Maru engineer, died at 50. When Oishi saw him after an interval of several years, Yamamoto had liver and lung cancer. When Oishi touched his hand on Yamamoto's hardened stomach, he felt very sad.

"I'm doing this in the honor of his colleagues who fell victim to radiation," says Oishi.

He gives such a talk about the Bikini tragedy more than 30 times a year.

Oishi also had liver cancer 10 years ago. He looks all right now, but he says his health is not as good as before.

He was 20 when he was showered with the fallout at Bikini Atoll. After this, he abandoned his hometown, Yaizu and moved to Tokyo to open a laundry.

He got married in 1959. Their first baby was stillborn. He says, "I knew why I could not tell my wife the reason."

It was 40 years later, when a friend of his was hospitalized for the very expensive treatment for hepatitis C. Acting as his proxy, Oishi applied for the re-issuance of the sailor's insurance. In the application form, he wrote, "My baby was born with a deformity. I hear this is peculiar to children of Hibakusha."

Oishi says: "I want as many people as possible to know that we are haunted by 'terror' due to the radiation we were exposed to 50 years ago. That tells how horrible nuclear weapons are."(end)