[Sesssion#10 Speaker: Masaru Ogasawara, Hisashi Kubo]
Date: Aug 24, 2023
On August 24th, our 10th session featured special guests, Mr. Masaru Ogasawara and Mr. Hisashi Kubo. Alongside journalist Yasuhito Sasajima and Ikuo Hamada from the Pacific Nuclear Disaster Assistance Centre, we were privileged to hear invaluable stories about the lives of fishermen at that time and their experiences with radiation exposure. Here's a report of the event.
Watch the full archived video [here]. (Only in Japanese)
Lecture by Mr. Sasajima
Hello, everyone. I'm Yasuhito Sasajima, a freelance journalist from Kochi. We are now at Nabae Community Center in Muroto city in Kochi prefecture. Today, I would like to talk with Mr. Ogasawara and Mr. Kubo, both former fishermen from Kochi who experienced radiation exposure, and Mr. Hamada, who has been deeply involved in the issue.
I came across the issue during my time as a reporter for the Kochi Shimbun, a local newspaper.
Let me give you a brief background. The United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean from 1954, affecting Japanese fishing boats. Records show 992 boats, including the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon 5), were exposed to radiation from March to December 1954 and contaminated tuna were landed in Japan. Although tests occurred from 1946 to 1958, the Japanese government discontinued the investigations in December 1954, so no one knows the exact number of fishing boats that were exposed to radiation.
Many of you may have heard of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru. The Daigo Fukuryu Maru was exposed to radioactive fallout called the "Ashes of Death" because it was very nearby when the nuclear test "Bravo" was conducted in March 1954. The chief radio operator, Mr. Aikichi Kuboyama, later passed away, leading to a major social problem. However, I would like you to know that not only the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, but also many more Japanese boats and the people living on islands around have suffered tremendous damage.
The United States paid $2 million to Japan as a solatium. Since it was mainly utilized for the disposal of contaminated fish, the affected crew members received minimal to no compensation, except for a few shipowners. Despite these circumstances, I believe that the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident was historically significant in that it was the catalyst for the nuclear abolition movement that followed. Although there was of course a movement against nuclear tests and the damage they caused in the 1950s, the public outcry died down after a while. In the 1980s, however, Mr. Masatoshi Yamashita, a high school teacher in Kochi, began to interview people in the community who had seen nuclear tests and had been exposed to radiation, together with his students. They conducted interviews in Muroto in the east, where we are now, and in the Tosashimizu and Hatta areas in the west, and this led to the issue being raised once again.
For an extended period afterward, no definitive evidence of radiation exposure emerged. But in 2014, a disclosure request to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare was granted, revealing records of radiation tests conducted on a total of 556 boats, along with blood and urine tests for the crew members. In 2016, we initiated legal proceedings against the government, but unfortunately, the case concluded in defeat at the Takamatsu High Court. However, it became clear that although they were indeed exposed to radiation, there was not enough health investigation immediately after exposure. We should redirect our focus to the need for relief for those crew members, who have been neglected for so many years. There are still two ongoing court cases. One involves a lawsuit against the government, aiming to obtain compensation for the loss of the right to seek damages from the United States. This stems from the political settlement reached at the time, and it's currently in progress at the Kouchi District Court. The other case is filed against the Japan Health Insurance Association in the Tokyo District Court. This lawsuit seeks to have the incident officially recognized as work-related injuries and pursues insurance coverage from the association.
So that's all for the background information. Check our brochure and Facebook page for updates on the trial and more. Thank you very much.
(*Both in Japanese only)
Left: Mr. Masaru Ogasawara, Right: Mr. Hisashi Kubo
Kubo: I was on board the Daini Kosei Maru. I was born on December 2, 1936. It was just after the war, and we were poor, so I boarded the Daini Kosei Maru as soon as I graduated from junior high school.
Ogasawara: I was born on April 10, 1934, in Nuno, Tosashimizu City, a community of about 300 people. I was on board the Daigo Kaifuku Maru.
Q: What led you to work on the tuna boats?
Ogasawara: I got on the boat around 1952. At that time, in the countryside, there were two communities in a village: the peasant community and the fisheries community. For those in the fisheries community, getting on a boat was the quickest way to get to work.
Q: Did you choose a tuna boat yourself?
Ogasawara: Yes, well, working on tuna boats was a good way to earn money. But at the same time, the work was hard.
Kubo: In my case, there was no way out. My parents had already decided that I would join the Kosei Maru as a cook after graduating from junior high school. Most of the students who did not go on to high school were on tuna boats. The town of Muroto itself was all about tuna boats.
Q: Was the work hard?
Ogasawara: Yes, it was hard work. We would get up around 4:00 a.m., set the ropes, rest for two or three hours, and then lift the ropes. If there was a lot of fishing, it was not uncommon to work all night. 20 or so people would share the work, and everyone worked on the boat except for cooks and radio operators.
Q: What were the roles of the crew?
Ogasawara: Well, there were four main sections: the engine section, the deck section, radio operators, and the "kashiki," or cooking staff. These are the four main categories. On tuna boats, we would eat four times a day. Otherwise, their bodies would not function properly.
Kubo: We got late-night meals.
Ogasawara: Yes, yes, there were late-night meals. We had breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night meals. That's a total of four times. That keeps kashiki pretty busy. The rest of the crew would come out on deck, lift the ropes, take out the guts of the tuna that had been caught, put ice in them, and store them in the refrigerator. In those days, we didn't have much cooling equipment.
Q: What were your roles?
Ogasawara: I was in the engine section.
Kubo: I started out as a cook, and then I learned to do the outside chores and fish dissection. In my case, we always had sashimi for lunch. The food manager would decide what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and we would follow his orders.
Q: So you use seawater to wash rice?
Kubo: Yes, with seawater. Then I finish with a little bit of water.
Q: Sounds salty.
Kubo: Yeah, when I think about it now. (laughs) Also, many of the crew members were returning from the army. It had been only a short time since the end of the war. So the hierarchical relationship there was really tight.
Ogasawara: We really hadn't heard anything about the hydrogen bomb tests until we were back at the port of Tokyo. Not sure about the head of the boat or radio operators, but I don't think most of the crew members knew anything about it. When we entered the port of Tokyo, an official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, wearing a white uniform, brought a Geiger counter and started taking measurements. So I asked him, "What are you trying to do here?" And he told us that they had to test us because we had been exposed to radiation. As far as we knew, the highest count (radiation level) was detected on the gloves we used to lift the ropes for tuna during operations. The counter made such a loud noise that it almost swung out. The reason the radiation was so high was that I guess the gloves were made of vinyl and durable, which means they could be used for a week to 10 nights. In that sense, a great deal of radiation was accumulated on gloves. We touched the ropes all the time and we processed the tuna with gloves too. I think that's how it came to those states.
Q: Did they not examine your own bodies?
Ogasawara: It was never directed at my body.
Kubo: I don't remember anything done to my body, either.
Q: Did the people around you not worry?
Kubo: It's a fishing town, right? The whole town was going through something like that, you know, at that time. Nobody wanted to talk about it.
Q: How much do you think the illnesses of your colleagues were related to the nuclear tests?
Kubo: Of course, I think it had something to do with it.
Ogasawara: I’m not sure if they were related to the tests or not. But I also suffered from a heart problem and had a very difficult time for several years.
Q: What are your motivations for participating in the trial?
Kubo: Well, it would be best if nuclear testing were completely banned and eliminated. I definitely want that, but I don't know how to put it into action. I do want to do something about it.
Ogasawara: The U.S. paid some money, and I don't know if the politicians of the time gave it all to the fisheries cooperative or not, but most of it never made it to the hands of the crew members. Let's put it this way, if they did get it, it was only a little bit of money for cigarettes. I would like to ask what happened to the rest. There have been no investigations into that by the government. Not ever. We didn't know much at that time.
Questions from Participants
Q: How did you start your testimony and did your feelings change as you started speaking? Also, is there anything you would like the younger generation to do or think in a certain way?
Kubo: One of the triggers was being interviewed by NHK (a Japanese public broadcaster). It wasn't so much a change of feelings but rather a change of interest in the issue of radiation exposure and the situation at Bikini. It is a big issue. I think that it will not be solved unless we demand that the atomic bombs be eliminated. We must eliminate them.
Ogasawara: It all started when Mr. Yamashita came to the place where I worked with four or five high school students and interviewed me. When I returned to Tokyo Port at the time, I knew that there had been an investigation using a Geiger counter, but since then, I haven't had any serious illnesses. I did get sick, but I didn't think about it at all. So when Mr. Yamashita came to see me, I was just like, "Oh, I guess I was exposed to radiation after all.” Even after that, I kept on living an ordinary life for a while, not thinking about anything. But then I became a plaintiff in a lawsuit, and I began to think about it a little more.
Come to think of it, I've also had heart disease. Other than that, I don't know if the radiation from the nuclear tests has anything to do with my health or not. One day, I was brushing my teeth and I saw something red on the washbasin. I thought, “What the hell,” and looked at my toothbrush, and found that it had also turned red. At that time, I thought it was probably due to radiation and kept thinking about it. Many people have damage to their teeth, don't they?
Sasajima: When tooth enamel is exposed to radiation, it leaves scars. Some people use a method in their research to measure non-medical radiation exposure by looking at that. That's why we tried to examine their teeth, but some of the people who are still alive don't have any more teeth. There were only a few people who could be examined. It became news afterwards because two of them were able to have their teeth checked and both had quite high levels of radiation, around 100 millisieverts.
Incidentally, these two here are in good health now, but the people they were working with are getting sick or some have already passed away. We call these two survivors. I hope you understand that this is really the situation.
And since they were both very young at the time, obviously they didn't know what route the boats would take, or what sort of things were exchanged between the owners and the government. Most of the current plaintiffs were in their teens or around 20 years old at the time, so they don't know much about the situation in detail. When they were interviewed or became plaintiffs and talked about their illnesses, they started to think that their health conditions might have had something to do with the nuclear tests. Rather than being aware of it at the time, I think they feel something about it later, in a state of uncertainty and ambiguity.
As for the long-term effects of radiation exposure, thinking of 1954, only nine years had passed since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the case of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, the damages on the crew were visible and immediate, like photos of the skin being badly affected, leading people to see it as a problem even afterwards, but little was known about the long-term effects of radiation exposure. In the first place, much information about the atomic bombings remained undisclosed at that time, and victims faced challenges in speaking out immediately. Therefore, the understanding of radiation damage back then significantly differs from today.
Ogasawara: We have so many young people here. I wonder if nuclear weapons really have a place for humanity. Let's work hard to eliminate them.
Q: I would like to ask you both how you feel about the situation where you still haven't received any compensation or even recognition from the government and the US.
Kubo: After we returned to Tokyo from fishing, they did an examination with a Geiger counter, but nothing happened after that. Even though the people on the boat with us got sick, it was very difficult for them to go to the hospital. It can't be helped. We don't get any assistance at all.
Ogasawara: I have some things I would like to say to the government and the US. I would like them to examine the people who were exposed to radiation properly with current medical science.
Sasajima: I am not saying that there were no examinations at all except for the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, but the number was really small. One of the main concerns I have is that the contents of the examinations differed greatly from ship to ship. There were ships that got blood tests, but not for the two of them. For the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, they even got urine tests. By taking urine samples, the residual radioactive material can be determined, so it can be calculated approximately how much internal radiation exposure they got. Although the other ships also had the possibility of exposure, we can't prove it because those tests haven't been carried out for them.
Another further problem of exposure, which has a similar structure to the nuclear damage problem in other parts of the world, is that the victims themselves, who may have been exposed to radiation, are being asked to prove a causal link between their illness and the radiation. Of course, those crew members don't have such information, so they shouldn't be able to prove it. On the other hand, if you look at the world, the US does not require its own citizens to prove those kinds of cause-and-effect relationships of exposure. For example, if you lived on the island of Guam for about a year at the time and contracted a disease with a strong causal link to exposure, you would be presumed to have been exposed to radiation and you would be compensated, under a law. In Japan, there is also a standard saying that if a worker at a nuclear power plant suffers from leukemia, cancer or other illnesses with a high probability of being caused by radiation, it is recognised as a work-related accident and compensation will be provided. So it shouldn't be impossible at all for fishing boats. But that’s one of the challenges that the crew members, especially in Kochi, are now being faced right now.
Hamada: In those days, crew members couldn't work on the ship when they got sick, so they wanted to go to hospital, but... they had to protect their livelihoods unless they were properly compensated. I've heard that there were many cases of those who were unwell but had to cheat their bodies to stay on their ships.
Q: How did you feel when you were interviewed by people around you or the media? Also, there may have been times when people questioned you, like if you were really there or if you were really exposed to radiation, how did you feel when that happened?
Kubo: I don't think I was ever questioned. There were suspicions about us at first, of course, but I don't think anything can be done unless Japan itself recognises us. If not, the world must abolish nuclear weapons as soon as possible. I think that's the quickest way. I was exposed to radiation and experienced many other things, but the government doesn't do anything to explain what happened to us. I wonder why.
Hamada: When you were interviewed by NHK, did people around you say anything?
Kubo: No, they didn't.
Hamada: In Muroto, it has always been the case that people don't say anything about radiation exposure. Now there is a reputational damage problem in Fukushima, but in the same way, if they said anything, their tuna wouldn't be sold anymore. If they said something that would cause problems, they wouldn't be able to get on the boats, so they kept quiet about it. Or if they told people they had been exposed to radiation, they might be discriminated against, and there are many other reasons. Anyway, it is a fact that many people did not speak out for decades, and it was very meaningful that Mr. Kubo and Mr. Ogasawara started to give their testimonies in this way. I think there was a bit of pressure on them, but I feel that things are gradually coming out in Muroto.
Hamada: Mr. Ogasawara, did you feel any pressure to talk about all sorts of things?
Ogasawara: No, I didn't. There might have been people who said something, but I was like, who cares. (laughs)
Sasajima: They don't care what people say. (laughs)
They only said the truth actually. But were there people around you who couldn't testify because they were concerned about such things?
Ogasawara: Not many people I know were like that. If they don't tell you, you don't know whether or not they are exposed to radiation. That's the way it is.
Sasajima: There are two things I would like to add regarding the difficulty of giving testimony. As Mr. Hamada said earlier, Muroto itself is an area built on the fishing industry, so the more you speak, the lower the prices go. As you can see in the video, one of the biggest things is that if the industry in such a place ceases to exist, they would strangle themselves.
Another thing is that many people are concerned about heredity. I have met people who say that they are reluctant to tell their children or grandchildren because they fear that if they prove that they were exposed to radiation, they will make their children or grandchildren feel insecure. I think that Japanese society is still not an environment where anyone can openly testify that they were exposed to radiation.
Comments from our speakers
Ogasawara: You all come up with a lot of questions. If we have more opportunities to talk like this in the future, we may still be able to communicate with each other in many ways.
Hamada: Yes, that's right. I really got the feeling that it's very important to have this kind of platform.
Kubo: I've said it many times, but we won't be able to solve this problem without eliminating nuclear weapons. It's not just Japan.
Hamada: I've been involved in a lot of interviews, but while listening to the stories today, I reaffirmed that there is still a lot that hasn't been clarified and that this is a really important issue. Both Mr. Kubo and Mr. Ogasawara had been working in dangerous waters for about a month without being informed. I think that the Fukushima issue is also progressing without us knowing what is going on, and there is also the fear in our daily lives that nuclear issues and many other things are ongoing while we are unaware of them. We can bring these issues to the spotlight through conversations in various opportunities like this. Today I was reminded that this is a very important thing. Thank you very much.
Sasajima: Thank you very much. I know both of them might be nervous about being online, which is something they're not used to, but I'm glad we were able to share their stories with you all. If you have any questions, please feel free to throw them to me or Mr. Hamada so that we can ask them again and get back to you.
Also, the trial is still ongoing, so I'd like to gradually send out information, including details from the past.
This problem is not just about Kochi. The court case is happening in Kochi because Kochi fishing boats happen to have a lot of information, but only 270 out of the 992 boats are from Kochi, and there were many tuna fishing crews all over the country. I think there is such damage around you all, and I hope that you will pay attention to it from that perspective. Thank you very much again.
Seto (Y4G): Thank you very much. Today, we explored not just what radiation exposure is, but also how it currently affects us at this moment and how it will concretely manifest as future health issues. It's about facing the uncertainty of these impacts. Rather than merely listening to their stories as individuals affected, it was a time that made us realize we are all involved, and think how we confront that. At the same time, listening to you all in this 1.5-hour online session was quite challenging to be honest. I feel like today serves as an entry point for encounters. I hope each of us can use today as a starting point to delve deeper, to individually explore more about Kochi and other regions. Personally, I really look forward to meeting both of you in person. I'll be reaching out to Mr. Sasajima and Mr. Hamada to explore the possibility in the future.
Thank you very much again, everyone. Hope to see you all soon!
