This is the story of a Japanese fishing boat that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was close enough to one of the US's nuclear blasts in the Pacific atolls near Bikini.  Considering it happened shortly after WWII, it was extremely frightening to the Japanese people when they found out about it. However, the problem was much larger than just what happened to those fishermen - much of the fish that was brought in to Japan afterwards was radioactive. For a country whose diet includes a lot of fish, it was a disaster. It caused a rift between the US and Japan just when relations were getting better. When the US "settled, but accepted no blame", the small amount of money that was tendered to Japan by the US ( to cover all the loses to the fishing industry, and the hospitalization for over a year of the fishermen (except the one that died), and to provide settlement money to the fishermen since their health no longer really permitted them to perform the rigorous jobs they had done previously) was absolutely shameful ! The book is very enlightening