Sunday, July 24, 2011KyodoThe United States used atomic power cooperation with Japan in the 1950s to ease the Japanese public’s aversion to nuclear weapons and remedy their “ignorance” about such energy, declassified U.S. papers showed Saturday.
The U.S. move, which eventually led the world’s only country to have suffered atomic bombing to embrace nuclear power, was initially devised to counter the antinuclear sentiment among the Japanese public after a tuna boat, the Fukuryu Maru No. 5, was exposed to radioactivity from a 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test while operating at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.
The documents, collected by Kyodo News at the U.S. National Archives, show that President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, concerned about Japan’s possible exit from the Western camp, accelerated cooperation with Japan in atomic energy technology to contain antinuclear and anti-U.S. sentiment among the Japanese.
Continue reading at Declassified papers show U.S. promoted atomic power in Japan
◇ Article in Japanese:
・ビキニ被ばく受け原子力協力 米公文書、日本人は核に「無知」 via 47 NEWS
