Kuboyama died of acute organ malfunction nearly seven months after the test, while 15 other crew members later died of cancer and other causes. The plight of the crew is well known in Japan and on Saturday nearly 2,000 people marched to the grave of Aikichi Kuboyama – the chief radio operator of the boat – in the port city of Yaizu to mark the anniversary. ![]() “I remember the brilliant flash in the west, the frightening sound that followed, and the extraordinary sky which turned red as far as I could see,” he said. Photograph: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Photograph: Jiji Press/AFP/GettyĪlso attending the week-long commemorations was 80-year-old Matashichi Oishi – one of 23 fishermen aboard the Japanese boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon), which was 60 miles from the bomb when it exploded. ![]() In Yaizu, Japan, a man holds a portrait of Aikichi Kuboyama, chief radio operator of a Japanese fishing boat who died from the effects of the Bikini Atoll nuclear test, at the head of a march to mark the anniversary. “After they were exposed like that I can never trust what the US tells us ,” said Kramer, adding that she wants justice for the generations forced to leave. ![]() “As a result of being displaced we’ve lost our cultural heritage – our traditional customs and skills, which for thousands of years were passed down from generation to generation,” she said. It is not just their homes that have been lost, said Lani Kramer, 42, a councilwoman in Bikini’s local government, but an entire swathe of the islands’ culture. The report called for the US to provide extra compensation to settle claims by nuclear-affected Marshall islanders and end a “legacy of distrust”. Special rapporteur Calin Georgescu, in a report to the UN human rights council, said “near-irreversible environmental contamination” had led to the loss of livelihoods and many people continued to experience “indefinite displacement”. But a United Nations report in 2012 said the effects were long-lasting. US nuclear experiments in the Marshall Islands ended in 1958 after 67 tests. One of the more than 60 islands in Rongelap has been cleaned up as part of a US-funded $45m programme. People returned to live on Rongelap in 1957 but fled again in 1985 amid fears, later proved correct, about residual radiation. Photograph: Isaac Marty/AFP/Getty Photograph: Isaac Marty/AFP/Getty Islanders and descendants from Rongelap Atoll march in Majuro on the 60th anniversary of the nuclear explosion that led to their exile. “I do not believe it’s safe and I don’t want to put my children at risk.” ![]() “I won’t move there,” said Evelyn Ralpho-Jeadrik of her home atoll, Rongelap, which was engulfed in fallout from Bravo and evacuated two days after the test. The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded more than $2bn in personal injury and land damage claims arising form the nuclear tests but stopped paying after a compensation fund was exhausted.Īs those who remembered the day gathered in the Marshall Islands’ capital of Majuro, along with younger generations, to commemorate the anniversary, many exiles refused to go back to the zones that were contaminated despite US safety assurances. But they were removed again in 1978 after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating foods grown on the former nuclear test site. When US government scientists declared Bikini safe for resettlement some residents were allowed to return in the early 1970s. Bikini islanders and their descendants have lived in exile since they were moved for the first weapons tests in 1946.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |