Senior U.S. officials accused Japan of denying it valuable security data by refusing to let them examine 23 Japanese fishermen irradiated by a U.S. hydrogen bomb test near Bikini Atoll in 1954, according to a declassified report found recently by Kyodo News.
The 19-page report reveals not only a serious bilateral spat over the irradiation of the Fukuryu Maru No. 5, known as the Lucky Dragon in English, but also sheds light on the attitude of U.S. scientists, who appeared to see the victims as experiment subjects and were in no doubt about the superiority of U.S. medical practices.
"The field of atomic medicine is in its infancy. . . . Accidentally an experiment was performed on 23 unfortunate men," the report said. "The loss of an expert evaluation in this experiment may well outweigh all other reasons for seeing these patients.