Chiba (Japan), Feb 23: A US research institute instructed an Army doctor in 1954 to obtain tissue samples from a Japanese fisherman who died after radiation from a US hydrogen bomb test in the South Pacific the same year hit his boat, US documents showed on Monday.
The request apparently reflected the US stance that Aikichi Kuboyama, a 40-year-old radio operator on the 140-ton trawler Fukuryu Maru No. 5, died of serum hepatitis caused by transfusion treatment, rather than of radiation injuries that Japanese doctors had observed.
The documents on exchanges between Elbert Decoursey, chief of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and James Hansen, an Army doctor stationed in Japan, were uncovered by Hiroko Takahashi, a lecturer at Hiroshima City University, at the AFIP's archives in Washington.
According to the documents, Decoursey asked Hansen to send pathological tissue from Kuboyama to the Washington-based institution.
Takahashi said the US apparently intended to deny, for political reasons that the H-bomb test led to Kuboyama's death, "so the United States could continue the nuclear bomb tests."
Hansen attended the autopsy of Kuboyama, who died on Sept 23, 1954, after his boat, also called the Lucky Dragon, was irradiated by the bomb test at Bikini Atoll on March 31 of the year. Kuboyama is regarded as the first person ever to be killed by a hydrogen bomb.
Bureau Report
First Published: Monday, February 23, 2009, 00:00