At 00:48:13, there was cutting from scene to scene, about the doctor, newspaper, television, and so on. When they got back to the shore, people started to know about the bomb. The date, as well, was to inform the viewer of how long the fishermen had been in the ocean, and how long it would take for the radiation sickness to spread in their bodies. This allowed us (and the fishermen) to know how far they have traveled, because when they were at the sea, all that can be seen is just an endless ocean of water. There were some special effects in this film, such as the image of the map of the fishing route. The song is a very sad song, probably not unlike those heard at the funerals of national heroes. After that there were sounds of birds, and everybody started crying.Here the film tries to set a sombre mood in response to the death of Kuhoyama's. Boats in the ocean were there with sad BGM, and at 01:33:05 he died in silence, with no music whatsoever. It can be interpreted that this flashback was a hint to the causal link of Kuhoyama's coma. When he was in a coma, there was a flashback of the image of the fallout.
Nevertheless, when everybody else were getting better, Kuhoyama's condition worsened. When one of them is happy, everybody else is happy.
Besides that, when one of the girlfriends came to visit one of them, there was a happy BGM as well. At this time, they were happy and got their spirit back. When the fishermen were at the hospital, happy BGM can be heard on some occasions, such as the scene when the old lady was asking about makisushi (Japanese roll). When we see images of the hospital, a serene BGM can be heard, possibly to stress the atmosphere inside this place of healing. At 01:00:03, they were admitted to Tokyo hospital, and the sad BGM, seems to emphasize their separation from their family, friends, and relatives. When the Americans were inspecting the boat, the clock ticking BGM seems to represent the alert and hurry that they were forced to act with, as the possibility of radiation sickness would be increasing day by day. The fallout came along with a mysterious sprinkle background music which makes a clear image, that those fishermen did not really know what the 'mystery white dust' was.Īt 00:53:48, the mysterious music, combined with the cutting scene of newspapers, shows more uncertainty about what was actually going on. It was all silence, and suddenly there was a very loud pikadon sound, causing everybody to become panicked. When they saw the pika, there was no BGM at all. But when they decided to go to the south, the happy BGM came again, representing the new spirit of fishermen. After that, they had some problems because they couldn't get any fish before they had to go to the south (minami), the music changed turn sad. Here we can feel that the fishermen were really happy being together even though they were fighting, the background music is still cheerful.
We can hear the background music, the same rhythm even though it changes to an acoustic version and whistling, it continues as the background. In regards to music, this film has a very cheerful background song from the beginning until the pika. Even though the boat was 160 kilometers away from the bomb, the fallout reached to their boat and the ashes rained onto them and the fish. It was then they realized that on that day, America was testing its hydrogen bomb in Bikini Atoll. Some of them thought it was the sun, but Kuboyama, the boat’s chief radioman realized that it was a bomb. On March 1 st, in the same year, they were going to catch some more fish when they saw a huge flash light and big mushroom cloud. They did catch lots of fish there, without knowing what would come out the next day. One day, the fish net got broken so they decided to go south from where they were, towards Bikini Atoll, near Marshall Island, so they can catch fish using smaller nets and spears. So they headed east and started to catch big fish. The chief said that they would catch bigger fish in the east. It was when one of the crew realized that the boat was heading east rather than south, where they usually go to, because they were not informed by the chief. They sang, played guitar, and do other fun things. With twenty three crews aboard, they started the journey happily. On January 22 nd, 1954, a Japanese fishing boat called the ‘Daigo Fukuryu Maru’ started its sailing to go fishing for two months.