SESSION tl EISENBUD: 73 That's 100 curies extrapolated to March Ist. DONALDSON: That's right. measured on March 26th, EISENBUD: Extrapolated back to March Istas That's right. DONALDSON: The situation in Japan. I was sent there on two assignments. One, my direct responsibility was to help in any way possible to aid the Japanese fishing industry and the people who were responsible for the management of that industry. Two, I was to aid in any way in providing information on actual radiobiological problems. However, as it turned out, about 99 percent of my efforts were devoted to the field of public relations, as Merril has indicated. This was the real problem and one was faced with it day by day. The port of Toyko was in tremendous turmoil because there were mass demonstrations against the Americans, This was true at Nagasaki; it was true at Yaizu. There were banners, and this is a direct quote, "It doesn't take a bullet to kill a fish seller. A bit of Bikini ash will do the job.'' Well, this seemed a bit out of context at the moment, but in the area we're talking about I think it does make sense. If we take tuna fish alone, during the spring of the year the Japanese eat about a million pounds of sishimi, or raw tuna fish, a day. It's a delicacy to them, and it's part of the ceremonial tradition of Japan to have sishimi in preparation for the Emperor's birthday on April 29th. On March 17th, when the news of the Fukuryu Maru incident was publicly announced in Japan, the tuna sales dropped to practically zero throughout Japan. If we take a concrete illustration, there are over 1,000 fish markets in Tokyo alone, retail fish markets, Many of the merchants come on their bicycles, buy a tuna fish in the market and carry it to their shops, A tuna fish then cost about $35 American money. The sale of these fish represented the sole source of livelihood for the small shopkeeper. They didn't sell the tuna fish, so it decayed and they had to bury it. That was a month's pay or their livelihood, This went on for some days and thus their source of income was stopped. This situation for those people was economic disaster. Or maybe you had a boat that went out to sea and had been gone for six weeks or up to three months; you returned with a load of tuna fish that would be sold to pay off the expenses and the fishermen, But the tuna fish wouldn't sell, not because it wasn't fit to eat