The city of Sukumo, Kochi Prefecture, will conduct health studies next month on crews from Kochi fishing boats hit by fallout from the 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Central Pacific.
The Kochi boats constituted about 30 percent of the estimated 1,000 Japanese boats in the Pacific at the time of the fallout.
The U.S. bomb test exposed the Japanese fishing boat Fukuryu Maru No. 5, known in English as the Lucky Dragon, and residents of Rongelap Island to radiation.