As Japan inches toward recovery from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear calamity, critics say the government should heed lessons from an incident in the Pacific 62 years ago that also affected Japanese fishermen operating in the area.
The incident has taken its name from the tuna boat Fukuryu Maru No. 5, which was hit by radioactive fallout after a U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 1, 1954, resulting in one of its 23 crew members dying from acute radiation poisoning.
But the full impact of the incident on Japanese fishermen is still unclear because the government did not conduct follow-up health studies on ship crews other than that of the Fukuryu Maru.