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papermen.

Bomb victim’s death

stirs anti -

First fatality of the hydrogen. age is Aikichi Kuboyama, 40-year-
old radio operator of the atom-dusted tuna boat Fortunate Dragon,
who died at 6.56 p.m. on September 23 in the First National Hospital
here, not quite seven months after the U.S. exploded an H-bomb in

the Pacific.

Before he died, Kuboyama re-
peated over and over, “I am tired”
and “It’s agonizing.”

Some 500 people were gathered
in front of the hospital when the
death announcement was made.
The news spread like wildfire and
raised a storm of anti-U.S. and
bomb sentiment.

Radio commentators, scientists,
Politicians and people on the
street were united in their con-
demnation of the U.S.

“Kuboyama’‘s death is not the
‘death of one man alone but af-
fects all mankind,” said cabinet
minister Nazazumi Ando. “The
United States must show more
sincerity in this tragedy.”

Angry crowds moved through
the streets shouting anti-U.S. slog-
ans, and several radio stations can-
celled scheduled programs and
held memorial services over the
air.

The Fortunate Dragon and its 23
crewmen were showered with
radioactive ash last -March 1,
although the shiv was at least
80 miles from the blast. The men’s
skins turned black, the hair of
some fell out, and many are still
hospital cases.

Kuboyama leaves a wife and three
daughters. His wife and eldest
daughter were at his bedside when
he died.

The H-bomb test which killed
Kuboyama was much bigger than
the U.S. scientists had intended,
and one congressman, Rep. Chet
Nolifield (Dem., Calif.), member
of the U.S. Atomic Energy Com-
mittee, admitted later that “you
might say it was out of control.”

The tremendous force of the
blast hurled radioactive debris and
steam so high that it was above
the prevailing trade winds which
normally would carry the material
toward the open sea northward
from Bikini. From that high alti-
tude it could have been caught by
a@ veering wind and sent drifting,
unpredicted, to the east, toward
the fishermen and people on other
atolls.

Each atomic test causes an in-
crease in background radiation, on
a global scale. Scientists hold dif-
ferent views on what this will do
to human beings.

“Repeated atomic explosions,”
British” scientist Dr. Edgar B.
Adrian said recently, “will lead
to a degree of radioactivity
which no one can tolerate or
escape.”

Dr. A. H. Sturtevant, a leading
geneticist from the California In-
stitute of Technology, states that

e misnamed Fortunate Dragon, victims
of the U.S. H-bomb test in the Pacific, are questioned by news-

U.S. storm

TOKYO

there are “two types of damage.to
be considered — damage to the
exposed individual, and damage to
the genes in his germ cells.” He
believes that nuclear explosions
will increase the incidence of
cancer, and that damage to the
genes can result in the production
of “defective individuals” or muta-
tions.

United Church calls

for banning of bomb

SACKVILLE, N.B.

“The church as a peacemaker calls on man to choose life and therefore 0
ban the ‘use for destructive purposes of the terrible new bombs,’ ‘declares the report
on external affairs issued here by the 16th General Council of the United Church of

Canada.

Speaking of the hydrogen and cobalt bombs, the report by chairman Henry

Langford and secretary Rev. James R. Mutchmor, both of Toronto, stated: ‘“‘Man n°

longer may devise a destructive
tool so powerful as to wipe out
God’s world.”

The United Church “ban the
bomb” call came on the eve of a
Washington despatch boasting that
“if everything went according to
plan” the U.S. air force could drop
1,000 A-bombs and destroy every
Soviet city.

The press report cautioned, how-
ever, that. ‘within a few years or
even less, the Red air force ...
must be conceded the same cap-
ability against the U.S.”

|

For the first time it was disclos-
ed that a super-bomb test with
2,300 times the force of the Hiro-|
shima blast, was put off last spring
until ‘a greater expanse of the
Pacific” could be used.

The United Church report de-
clared that the armaments race
must be halted, saying, “Man
must not be crucified on a cross
of iron.” :

It urged “freer trade, freer com-

munications, freer movement of
peoples »and of representative
groups such as the Attlee

Soviet dust debunked
as ‘threat to Canada’

Lurid newspaper headlines depicting Soviet H-bomb dust as “a

threat to Canada” were debunked

Shrum, director of the B.C. Research Council and head of the University

of B.C. Department of Physics.

Shrum — no friend of the Soviet
Union — felt compelled to tell
local newspapers which were
screaming about Soviet H-bomb
‘particles coming down on Vancou-
ver that tests showed a radioactive
count “lower than in other atomic
explosions.” In other words, less
than when the U.S. conducted H-
bomb tests in the Pacific.

“We collected water and_ it
showed a (radioactive) count of
300 per minute,” said Dr. Shrum.

“This indicates that an atom
device has been exploded perhaps
within the last two weeks. But we
have had much higher counts in
other atomic explosions.”

He said that the “300 per minute
count” is not in the radioacive
danger zone. If the count ran to
10,000 per minute it would be con-
sidered dangerous. The normal
count is 42 per minute.

Dr. Shrum discounted a_ sug-
gestion from Japanese sources that
the Russian test had taken place
on Wrangel Island :

The official announcement of the
tests was published in Izvestia,
Soviet government paper, which
said: :

“In accordance with a plan of
scientific research work; lately
tests of one of the types of atomic
weapons were carried out in the
Soviet Union. The aim was to
study the effect of atomic explos-
ions.

“Visible results were obtained
which will help the Soviet scientists
solve successfully the task of de-
fense against atomic attack.”

While discounting scare stories
in the press of “Soviet H-
bomb dust” Dr. Shrum gave local

here last week by Dr. Gordon M.

target of an intercontinental guid-
ed missile in the event of a third
world war. The fall-out of radio-
active dust would render Vancou-
ver uninhabitable for at least two
years.

Dr. Shrum, nowever, failed to
draw the logical conclusion from
his own remarks. He made no
mention of the need for interna-
tional agreements to ban the use
of atomic weapons — something
the Soviet Union has been advocat-
ing for many years.

In Moscow last week a_ vivid
Picture: of the benefits that could
result from the peaceful use of
atomic energy and the thermo-
nuclear reactions of the ‘hydrogen
bomb was drawn by Professor J. D.
Bernal, FRS, before a distinguish-
ed gathering in the Kremlin.

Bernal, who spoke after receiv-
ing the International Stalin Peace
Prize, referred to the successes of
the world peace movement in lay-
ing the foundations of a lasting

settlement and holding off war.

a 9. 1952
Labor group now returning from;years ago, September 19, 1952,
Moscow and Peking.”

calling for the recognition of

(The General Council of the Un-}China “as soon as an armistice

ited Church went on record two|was concluded in Korea.)

New apprehension seized people of this province following the

announcement that the U.S. was contemplating a new series of

bomb ‘ests in the Pacific.

U.S. contemplating new series
of H-bomb tests in Pacific

WASHINGTON

In the same week that the first

victim of the March H-bomb test

died in Japan, the United States

announced that it plans to hold
further tests in mid-Pacific.

“In. all likelihood there will be
continuing tests of new weapons,
as they are developed,” said Atomic
Energy Commission chairman

papers another scare story by
predicting that Seattle could
well be the- number one

Lewis L. Strauss. The Marshall

Islands will be the scene of the
new tests.

This week The Hydrogen Bomb,
a new book by authors James R.
Shepley and Clay Blair, Jr., of

Time magazine, was scheduled to
come off the press. It declares
that the U.S. has developed a
“supergiant” H-bomb with the ex-
plosive punch of nearly 45 million

tons of TNT and the “probable”

capacity to knock out a nation.

The authors claim the “age
giant” has been scaled upward f
“near the practicable limit ao
thermonuclear weapons, 45 mes@™
ons, 2400 times the force of Hire
shima.”

“Tt seems doubtful that any pee
ple actually could survive
shock of say 1000 ‘obsolete’ 5 c
kiloton (500,000-ton) bombs,” Shee
ley and Blair wrote.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 1, 1954 — PAGE 2

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