The Lucky Dragon

Unlucky fishing boat became a symbol of Japanese nuclear dread

By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

In the pre-dawn hours of March 1, 1954, the 23-man crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru, or "Lucky Dragon," watched in awe from their ship in the South Pacific as the sun apparently began rising -- in the west.

"The sky in the west suddenly lit up and the sea became brighter than day," Lucky Dragon crew member Yoshio Misaki recalled years later. "We watched the dazzling light, which felt heavy. Seven or eight minutes later there was a terrific sound -- like an avalanche. Then a visible multi-colored ball of fire appeared on the horizon."

They did not know it at the time, but the Lucky Dragon's crew were witnessing the U.S. "Bravo" hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, about 85 miles away. The blast, equivalent to about 12 million tons of TNT, was 750 to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was also twice as powerful as U.S. scientists had expected.

Several hours later, white ash began falling on the Lucky Dragon. Several crew members collected bags of it as souvenirs. Before dark that day, everyone on board the fishing boat was ill.

The crew of the Lucky Dragon are believed to be among the first people ever accidentally exposed to fallout from a nuclear weapon. All 23 people on board the boat were hospitalized after returning to Japan. One of them, radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama, died seven months later of kidney failure related to radiation. Several hundred inhabitants of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, as well as nearly 30 U.S. personnel connected with the tests, also became ill from the nuclear fallout.

The Lucky Dragon incident triggered a crisis in relations between the United States and Japan -- in part because of Washington's attempts to maintain secrecy over its nuclear tests. Eventually the U.S. government issued an apology and paid $2 million in compensation.

But the incident continued to generate controversy. Fearing nuclear contamination, the Japanese destroyed tons of fish caught in the affected area of the Pacific. As a nation, the Japanese avoided fish for months after the Lucky Dragon incident -- resulting in millions of dollars in losses for the country's fishing industry and related businesses.

The incident also released Japan's anguish over nuclear weapons -- an anxiety suppressed since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Late in 1954, Japan's Toho Studios released "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" -- the story of a massive fire-breathing lizard unleashed by an atomic bomb test. Before being defeated by scientists, Godzilla wipes out military units assembled against him, and in the process destroys Tokyo.

By August 1955, 32 million signatures had been collected among Japanese to protest U.S. nuclear tests. That same month, the first world conference protesting nuclear weapons was held in Hiroshima.

The survivors of the Lucky Dragon, meanwhile, have become icons of the anti-nuclear movement in their homeland. One crew member, Matashichi Oishi, delivers lectures and takes donations for a planned Lucky Dragon memorial. Oishi hopes to erect the memorial at the Tokyo Central Wholesale Market -- where the contaminated shark and tuna brought back by the Lucky Dragon were buried. The remains of those fish have since been removed to make way for subway construction.

The Lucky Dragon itself remains a visible reminder of nuclear dangers. In 1956, the ship's radioactive levels had subsided to a safe level, and it was sold to the Tokyo University of Fisheries as a training vessel. Ten years later, it was sold for scrap to a dealer and remained abandoned on Dream Island, in Tokyo Bay.

In 1968, a letter to a national newspaper renewed interest in the Lucky Dragon. A donation drive began to save the boat -- and by 1976 the Lucky Dragon museum opened in a specially constructed building near Tokyo Bay. The ship itself is the main exhibit. Photographs, equipment and documents relating to the incident are also on display.

An estimated 300,000 people visit the Lucky Dragon museum each year. Several years after the incident, Dr. Ralph Lapp, a U.S. nuclear physicist, noted the importance of keeping the history of the Lucky Dragon alive.

"The true striking power (of nuclear weapons) was revealed on the deck of the Lucky Dragon," he wrote in his book about the incident. "When men 100 miles from an explosion can be killed by the silent touch of the bomb, the world suddenly becomes too small a sphere for men to clutch the atom. For this knowledge, gained so strangely from the adventures of 23 men, the world may some day rank this voyage with that of Columbus."