Along with Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945 — the dates of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings — March 1, 1954, is an important date. Fifty-five years ago, residents of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the 23 crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), a 140-ton tuna fishing boat from Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, were exposed to fallout from the test explosion of a U.S. hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll.
The Daigo Fukuryu Maru tragedy touched off a movement against nuclear weapons among housewives in Tokyo's Suginami Ward — a harbinger of later organized antinuclear weapons movements in Japan. The boat now sits in the Tokyo Metropolitan Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall as a monument.
On the early morning of March 1, 1954, the fishing boat was operating about 160 km east of Bikini Atoll when a white substance rained on it for several hours. It was fallout from the explosion of the Bravo bomb, 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.