38
DASA 2019-2
‘On March 1,
£954.
at three-forty acm., twenty-three
Japanese fishermen on bo ed the tishing boat No.
5, Fukuryu
Mara, were encaged in fishing in the Middle Pacific about
minecty moles northeast of Hikini Atall when a reddish- white
flash was seenoon the horizon in «a west- southwesterly direction, and seven ar enht muinutes later a loud cxplosion was
heard.
Afterwards it was learned that the flash and explo-
sion had been caused by the hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll,
“Avout three hours after the explosion,
falbonthe boat,
fine dust began ta
fhe falling of dust lasted for several hours
and ceased tumards soon.
Phe boat as well as the fishermen
and the fishes caught by them were covered with a white sheet
of fine dust,
After a tvo weeks!’ voyage, on March 14 the No.
5 Fukuryu Mara,
contéenunated by radioactive dust,
to Yaivu Harbor,
Japan, ¢
returned
It waa at this point that the world really began to learn what had
happened, although the U.S, had announced that there had been a test
on the first of March, and that 236 residencs of the Marshall Islands
had been exposed to radiation and evacuated to Kwajalein,
tust to give you a visual picture...
FREMONT-SMITH
and so forth’
Had there been a sort of a warning to ships
RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT ANDO RADIATION EXPOSURE
DUNHAM:
There had heen an exclusion zone within which ships
were warned not ta come,
and there has been argument back and forth
as to whether the PururyuMaru was within that zone, As you recall,
the U.S. ofticials insrsted that it must have been within it, [t's obvious that i: didn’t have to be,
because in Rongelap,
which 43 way out-
side the exc!usion zone, the doses on the northern part of the atoll
were even higher than anything on the ship, and they would have been
fatal,
Bikini is about erphty or ninety mites away from Rongelap; the
Fukuryu Mara was up to .he north,
the ather side of the lethal sone,
At Kongers, there were filty aizv-weather personnel, and 20) ntles
from Bikini is Utinik. The doses here were roughly |Or- plus.