~ we * . 222 DASA 2019-2 DONALDSON: May we come back to the subject at hand for the moment? Before leaving this environmental area that we've been talking about in the mid- Pacific, I think it's germane that we include a word or two about the change in our relationship with Japan since 1954 and how these environmental problems were handled ona differ- ent basis. , OS ae In the 1958 series, we obtained permission from the Division of Biology and Medicine, Dr. Wolfe and Dr. Dunham, to doa sort of undercover operation. This operation involved one of our good friends in Japan, one of the leaders in the Shunkotsu Maru expedition, which caused so much of a problem in 1954, This chap agreed to collect _ and evaluate samples cf tuna fish that were caught by the Japanese fleet. He collected some 2,000 samples, sent us half of the samples, and kept half. We made our evaluations, they made theirs and we compared them. However, he couldn't get his data published in Japan, but that didn't necessarily matter; they were available for the scien- tific record. Since they were not the sort of exciting things that would make a good news story, they are not a part of tue popular record. . In 1962, during the high-altitude testa at Christmas Island, this program was again repeated and Dr. Toshiharu Kawabata* again collected the samplcs and sent half of them to us. Under some very real pressures on the part of the hysteria-minded group in Japan, an expedition, made up of a group of reliable Japanese scientists, wae sent to evaluate the radiation hazard. The ship was equipped and sent out and we were asked to meet it in Honolulu in June of 1962. We had Icng conversations with these scientists as to what we had found in the Pacific and, most important I think, for this record at least, we more or less “held their hand" during this operation, because, frankly, they did not expect to return home. They were perfectly willing to give their lives to the cause, many of them. FREMONT-SMITH: They expected to be killed by the blast? DONALDSON: They expected to be, at the very minimum, greatly affected by radioactive fallout. It seers fantastic again or incredible, “but they had the most elaborate air-conditioning system I've ever seen. Every porthole was plugged. They had long filters installed. i if Kawabata, Toshiharu. tute of Health, Tokyo. Department of Food Research, National Insti-