TV director Hideaki Ito could not stay silent when he learned that the Fukuryu Maru No. 5 was not the only victim of the 1954 hydrogen bomb test conducted by the United States in the Pacific, and that more Japanese fishing boats were exposed to the fallout all those decades ago.

"This isn't just about the Fukuryu Maru, and we should not trivialize the problem," the 52-year-old director said at Nankai Broadcasting Co., based in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture.

The 23 crew members of the Fukuryu Maru, a tuna boat from Shizuoka Prefecture, were all exposed to radioactive fallout from the H-bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954.