The Lucky Dragon
GIs and natives of the Marshall Islands were not the only victims of Operation Castle. Twenty-three fishermen
aboard the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon were sailing eighty miles east of the Bravo shot when it was fired.
Within days they were tormented by symptoms of acute radiation exposure—itching skin, nausea, vomiting. When
they arrived back in Japan two weeks after the Bravo test, the entire crew remained sick; a Geiger counter revealed
their bodies contained radiation from the hydrogen bomb sixteen days after it had exploded. The boat’s rear crew
compartment gave off readings of one tenth roentgen per hour.44
The tuna aboard the Lucky Dragon were extremely contaminated with radioactivity. This, as it turned out, was
not unusual. In 1954 Japan monitoring programs showed that "a total of 683 tuna boats were found to have
contaminated fish in their holds," nuclear physicist Ralph E. Lapp wrote in his book The Voyage of the Lucky
Dragon. "Some 457 tons of tuna fish were detected above the ‘worry limit’ and were discarded, either by dumping at
sea or by burial in deep ditches in land. About one out of every eight boats inspected had contaminated fish on
board."45
As a nation dependent on fish for food and commerce, the high radiation levels in tuna caused outrage throughout
Japan. And the conspicuous dousing of the Lucky Dragon with fallout had caused great publicity and political
sensitivity. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission responded with a public-relations sideshow. Dr. John Morton,
director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, visited the stricken fishermen at the hospital and proclaimed
them "in better shape than I had expected."46 The Japanese considered Morton’s remarks an insult.
After a second hydrogen bomb test AEC chairman Lewis Strauss returned from the Pacific test site and issued a
statement to "correct certain misapprehensions" about the effects of the Bravo test. The exposed islanders and
Japanese fishermen were recovering rapidly, Strauss claimed.47
Seven months after the Bravo test one of the Lucky Dragon’s twenty-three crew members died; the rest were still
being hospitalized. Intensive care included frequent blood transfusions; low sperm counts indicated sterility. In
1955 the U.S. Government paid two million dollars in restitution for damage to the Lucky Dragon, its crew, and its
cargo. The widow of Lucky Dragon fisherman Aikichi Kuboyama later told Ralph Lapp: "To a third person it might
almost seem good to die if your death brings such sums of money. But I can’t buy the life of my husband with
money."48
Reflecting on the Lucky Dragon crew members three years after their encounter with radioactive fallout, Lapp
observed: "The true striking power of the atom was revealed on the decks of the Lucky Dragon. When men a
hundred 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."49
But, in the midst of the controversy over the H-bomb test effects in spring 1954, AEC Chairman Strauss assured
the American public there would be no significant impacts on the continental U.S. The "small increase" in radiation,
he said, was "far below the levels which could be harmful in any way to human beings, animals and crops."50
The AEC chief’s pronouncement provoked disbelief among independent scientists. Particularly disturbed was Dr.
A. H. Sturtevant, chairman of the genetics department at the California Institute of Technology. In an address to the
Pacific division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sturtevant declared there was "no
possible escape from the conclusion that bombs already exploded will ultimately produce numerous defective
individuals." He further stated that an estimated "1,800 deleterious mutations" had already resulted from fallout.51
The AEC was stunned that the nuclear weapons testing program was being openly questioned by a prominent
scientist like Sturtevant.
By early 1955 the AEC released a written response to Sturtevant’s charges. Pointing to a "rather wide range of
admissible opinion in this subject," the AEC dismissed the geneticist’s assessment.52 The AEC failed, however, to
do any of its own calculations of genetic mutations—thus ignoring the scientific basis of Sturtevant’s conclusions,
which were derived from the work of the AEC’s own Division of Biology and Medicine.
Comparing fallout hazards with other sources of radiation like medical X rays and "background radiation," the
AEC concluded that fallout "would not seriously affect the genetic constitutions of human beings." With respect to
the dangers to individuals from isotopes like radioactive strontium and iodine, the governmental report claimed that
the levels of these nuclear products were too "insignificant" to pose any problem.53
44. Ralph E. Lapp, The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), pp. 81-83.
45. Lapp, Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, p. 178.
46. Roger Rapoport, The Great American Bomb Machine (New York: Ballantine, 1971), p. 59.
47. "Statement by Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman U.S. AEC," AEC release, March 31, 1954.
48. Lapp, Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, pp. 192-193.
49. Ibid., pp. 197-198.
50. "Statement by Lewis Strauss," March 31, 1954.
51. A. H. Sturtevant, "Social Implications of the Genetics of Man," Science, September 10, 1954, pp. 406-407.
52. "A Report by the United States Atomic Energy Commission on the Effects of High Yield Nuclear Explosions," AEC release, February 15, 1955.
53. Ibid.