Japan Press Weekly

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2014 March 12 - 18 [ANTI-N-ARMS]

Fifth Lucky Dragon and Akahata

An Akahata report had contributed to the preservation of the Fifth Lucky Dragon (Daigo Fukuryu Maru), a Japanese tune fishing boat exposed to radiation fallout in the U.S. hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini Atoll.

The headline reading, “Radiation fallout-exposed Daigo Fukuryu Maru at dumpsite” – along with a black and white photo of the Fifth Lucky Dragon that Akahata ran on March 2, 1968 informed the public that the fishing boat would be buried and supposedly forgotten.

After the nuclear fallout incident at Bikini Atoll in 1954, the Japanese government bought the Lucky Dragon No.5 and remodeled it into a training vessel of the Tokyo University of Fisheries (currently Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology). The name of the fishing boat was also changed to “Hayabusa Maru (Falcon)”. After serving as a training ship for 10 years, the Fifth Lucky Dragon was sold out to a commercial company and abandoned at a dumpsite on an artificial island called Yumenoshima (Dream Island).

Shirai Chihiro, who wrote the Akahata report, in his memoir recalled that at the beginning of 1968 when he was working on a story of a fly outbreak on the dumpsite at Yumenoshima, he learned from dock workers at Tokyo Bay and workers engaged in peace movements that the Daigo Fukuryu Maru had been abandoned on the island.

He searched everywhere around Yumenoshima and found the site where the boat had been dumped. The site was called the “graveyard of old vessels”. Many deserted wooden and iron vessels were located there along with the Lucky Dragon No.5.

Getting into the mud in order to access the site, Shirai checked and photographed the hulk of the abandoned Lucky Dragon No.5, and wrote an article on its demise.

His report created a sensation among readers, which resulted in nationwide civil movements calling for the rescue and preservation of the radiation-exposed fishing boat. Following the Akahata report, other major dailies also reported about the Daigo Fukuryu Maru. The Tokyo Governor at the time Minobe Ryokichi announced that Tokyo will cooperate in rescuing and preserving the boat.

People’s efforts bore fruit in the form of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall which was constructed by the Tokyo government in its Yumenoshima Park. Operation of the pavilion began on June 10, 1976.

Shirai in his memoir said that when he found the Daigo Fukuryu Maru at the dumpsite, he was filled with anger. “Although the Japanese government is the supposed government of the only A-bombed nation, it treated the boat, which is the sole vessel proving the death and destruction associated with U.S. hydrogen bomb tests, as just another boat to be discarded and failed to use its potential as a symbol of the urgent call for abolition of nuclear weapons,” he added.

Shirai started his career as a public high school teacher in Miyagi Prefecture. In 1950, he was fired from his teaching position on the ground that he engaged himself in a signature-collection campaign in support of the Stockholm Appeal. He changed his career to become an Akahata reporter in 1960 and died in 1993 at the age of 63.