Most, if not all, of the crew members of a Japanese fishing boat inundated by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test in the 1950s are now deceased, so others have taken up the baton to inform the world about what happened.

It is a sad tale in the history of nuclear testing that is often overshadowed by other events.

The 23 crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), a tuna fishing boat based in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, were operating in Pacific waters near Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, when the United States tested a thermonuclear hydrogen device that was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Aikichi Kuboyama, the chief radio operator, died six months later at age 40. It is said his dying wish was to be the last person to die from a hydrogen bomb.

A memorial service was held March 1 at a cemetery in Yaizu where Kuboyama is buried. This year, organizers said 900 people turned up.

One participant was Keiko Kawamura, 76, the sister-in-law of Matashichi Oishi, another crew member who spent many years talking about his experience and the ill effects it had on his health until he died in 2021 at 87.

“I have resolved to pass on what I know within the limits of what I can do,” Kawamura said.

Another person who has also spoken to college students is Ikuo Sugimura, 82, the chairman of a company in Yaizu who was in junior high school when the fishing boat was exposed to radiation.

His family lived near the fishing port, so Sugimura frequently visited Kuboyama’s wife, Suzu, to help her respond to letters that poured in from around the nation. He and friends from another junior high school began a petition drive to gather signatures calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Since 2016, Sugimura has joined other company executives as outside lecturers in a program organized by Shizuoka University. Sugimura has spoken about the Bikini Atoll incident.

As a junior high school student, Sugimura saw the good and bad of what those closely involved went through. Some in the community expressed jealousy at the sympathy money the fishing boat crew members received because of their experience. Sugimura remembers Suzu going to work at a factory to support her children.

Sugimura has passed on those experiences to the college students he speaks to.

“I have a mission as someone who lived through that time in Yaizu,” Sugimura said. “I want to pass on what only I can.”

Others are trying to deal with the declining number of visitors to the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall in Tokyo’s Koto Ward.

By 1967, the wooden fishing boat ended up being abandoned as junk. A letter to the editor of The Asahi Shimbun the following year made note of the fate of the fishing boat, which led to a campaign to house the vessel in an appropriate facility.

The number of visitors to the exhibition hall peaked at about 300,000 in fiscal 1992. In fiscal 2022, visitor numbers dropped to about 65,000.

This year, the museum began streaming on Instagram a virtual journey of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru that retraces its path day by day 70 years ago. Another item explains the background to what happened at Bikini Atoll.

Yuzuki Yanagawa, 22, a fourth-year student at Tokyo Gakugei University, took part in the project.

“We thought about how to pass on to the next generation information as those directly involved gradually leave this world,” Yanagawa said. “Even if young people may not be interested in the atomic bomb or nuclear weapons, we felt there might be a chance they would show interest in Instagram.”

‘NO MORE!’ SAY MARSHALL ISLANDERS

In the Marshall Islands, which has jurisdiction over Bikini Atoll, March 1 is a national holiday to remember its own victims of the hydrogen bomb.

At a ceremony in Majuro, the capital, Jess Gasper Jr., a senator representing an area covering Bikini Atoll, stated nine times in his speech, “We have not forgotten.”

Hilda Heine, the Marshall Islands president, touched upon the victims both in her republic and abroad and said, “We join collective solidarity to forcibly state, “No More!”

Unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Marshall Islands has no museum to convey what happened 70 years ago.

But the College of the Marshall Islands held a mini nuclear museum day on Feb. 29 where students displayed panels about the history of the hydrogen bomb tests for 67 times and the damage it caused.

Gina Langinbelik Anuntak, whose grandmother was exposed to the radiation, is president of the Nuclear Club at the college.

She said about the mini nuclear museum day “I felt really moved, knowing that we’re not alone in fighting on nuclear justice.”

But educators on the islands worry that many young Marshall Islanders remain ignorant about what took place in 1954. Many do not know how many hydrogen bomb tests were conducted or what damage resulted, according to Mary Silk, director of the Nuclear Institute in College of Marshall Islands.

To remedy the problem, from 2019 a new curriculum was introduced for those between fifth grade and the third year in senior high school regarding the testing.

Evelyn Ralpho, education and public awareness director at the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission, said, “Teachers don’t know that basic knowledge. They only know about the bomb, but not other information. Schools are piloting the curriculum with our help.”

Ralpho herself never realized what her mother went through until she went to university in the United States to study. That is where she read a book given to her by someone who interviewed her mother about her memories of being exposed to radiation on her eighth birthday and her subsequent health problems, including seven miscarriages.

Ralpho’s mother died in 2012, so she now visits schools in the Marshall Islands to explain what her mother went through.

She tells students “This is your story, this is what happened to your land.

“That can help students learn deeper,” she said.

(This article was written by Yusuke Ogawa, Miho Tanaka, Kunihiro Hayashi and Asako Hanafusa in Majuro.)