On the 1^st of March, 1954 the United States exploded the world's first hydrogen bomb on the island of Bikini in the Pacific Ocean. It was a 15-megaton weapon. The United States sealed off an area of 110 kilometres around the island before the detonation.

144 kilometres away, far outside the 'danger zone' was a Japanese fishing trawler, The Lucky Dragon No. 5 with a crew of 23.

Early in the morning of 1^st of March, the crew was startled by a brilliant flash on the horizon and a sound like thunder. A short time later, the sky grew dark and a black ashy rain began to fall, covering the decks. The crew decided to make for home. Two weeks later the Lucky Dragon limped into the port of Osaka with all her crew desperately ill. One crewmember died; the others were hospitalised for years.

It was only nine years after the two atom bombs on Japan, and the Japanese people were thoroughly alarmed, as they alone had experienced what radiation sickness was.

The Lucky Dragon was so radioactive it took three months before it was even down to a tolerance level. The fish in the trawler's hold were destroyed and the Japanese Government inspected all fishing boats coming into the five major southern ports.

Official surveys showed that fish caught between Japan and New Guinea, Taiwan and Hawaii, were contaminated. For eight months hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish were destroyed as unfit for human consumption. Areas of the Pacific approximately 160 kilometres from the Bikini test site were found to be many times above the maximum permissible radiation level three years after the nuclear explosion.