A Japanese survivor of a 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific said Thursday he hopes U.S. President Barack Obama will reflect on the consequences of the test among other issues when he visits Hiroshima later this month.
“If I’m asked whether I want the president to touch on the Bikini incident, my answer is, of course,” 82-year-old Matashichi Oishi said, referring to the devastating nuclear test at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954, which exposed not only the local population but also Japanese fishermen sailing nearby, to radiation.
Oishi, who has been conveying his experience to schools and elsewhere in the hope of abolishing nuclear weapons, said he cannot easily put into words his feelings on the United States, but added, “I think there is a need to think about atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs from a viewpoint that there is a moral responsibility that they should not be used.”