Footprints to a Legacy

By Robert L. Campbell

In this sometimes disturbing and frightening memoir of experiences, interviews, and government documents, Robert Campbell seeks to level the playing field for many atomic veterans after he discovered how great a difference could exist between contemporaneous records and later-reconstructed versions of the same nuclear operations. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Robert tried to match real-time data with the footprints (experiences) of veterans who lived it and compare this information, when possible, to later versions postulated by officials who were not present at these operations. Very interesting reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462820344

Robert L. Campbell

As an army participant at four nuclear tests, Robert L. Campbell’s legal secretarial background helped him work within the legal system to guide atomic veterans processing their claims. Many veterans worried that their health conditions were related to their radiation exposure, but they struggled against governmental delays to access needed documentation. The author—an insistent, persistent advocate for veterans’ rights—often testified before congressional committees and appeared before the National Academy of Sciences subdivision, the Institute of Medicine, while an active member of veterans’ groups within the United States and New Zealand, the Royal Canadian Legion, and the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association.

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Copyright © 2009 by Robert L. Campbell.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

When I Was Young . . .

Chapter 2

"We’re All in This Together . . .

by Ourselves"

Chapter 3

Yesterday Is Still Today

Chapter 4

Shot DOG Plagued by Microns

Chapter 5

The Message from Idaho

Chapter 6

"Health Is the First

of All Liberties."

Chapter 7

Plumbing PLUMBBOB

Chapter 8

Crossroads 101

Chapter 9

A is for ABLE

Chapter 10

ABLE I Was ere I Saw Elba

Chapter 11

B Is for BAKER

Chapter 12

Swayback Maru’s Last Voyage

Chapter 13

Gems from the Mother Lode

Chapter 14

The Ensign and the Airman

Chapter 15

Glimpses of a CROSSROADS Diary

Chapter 16

Mal de mer

Chapter 17

Who Hears a Fish When It Cries?

Chapter 18

"Reason, Observation,

and Experience . . ."

Chapter 19

Summing Up

Annexes

Annex A

The Stafford Warren Lecture

Annex B

Evaluation of the

Inhalation Pathway

Annex C

The $2.00 Book

Annex D

The Legacy of Crossroads

Annex E

Military Radiation Risk Activities

Annex F

Military Medical Problems Associated with Military Participation in Atomic Energy Commission Tests

Annex G

Command Problems of Atomic Defensive Warfare

Annex H

Appendix I:

The Nuremberg Code

Nuremberg Military Tribunal

Annex I

Dr. Angelina K. Guskova Radiation Sickness:

Nuclear War and the Problems

of Medical Deontology

Annex J

British Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association 1992

Children of the Bomb

Annex K

Allied Forces Radiation

Mortality Study (1995)

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Dedication

The Legacy

There are those rare men in life who stand for truth above all else, the clay from which nations endure, prosper, and are forged. This book is the footprints of one such legacy. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge . . . the legacy’s heart.

Nehmand ist allein

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount . . . . The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do peace, more about killing than we know about living.

—General Omar Bradley

He explained that although no specific cause of death was found, the phenomenon seemed related to a general acceleration of the ageing process. He noted that humankind had yet to experience the difference between a non-fatal condition and one that shortened life.

 . . . On the other hand, Dr. [John C.] Burgher [Director AEC Division of Biology and Medicine] revealed some months ago in an address before the Seventh Annual Industrial Health Conference, held in Houston, Texas, that laboratory experiments conducted on animals have demonstrated that one of the possible effects of overexposure to radiation is a shortening of life expectancy. ‘This phenomenon does not result in any specific cause of death but apparently from a general acceleration of the aging process,’ he said, adding wryly that human beings have yet to experience the distinction between a condition that does not cause death but shortens life.

Hiroshima to the Moon by Daniel Lang

Simòn & Shuster, N.Y. 1959

In Appreciation

Ordinarily, a dedication to a book will name one or several persons who influenced the author and his work for varying reasons. For certain, the Legacy is deserving of its own space. In sum, this book was twenty-eight years in the making. Thus it also owes its existence to many more than several. In a very real sense, my dedication in and of itself is an unstructured chapter.

My beloved wife, Karen. A treasure that words fail to describe. Whatever success I have come to know in life was molded by her love that asked for nothing and gave everything. When the doctors believed I would not make it through the night, you were there; when, at times, the pain was unbearable, you were there; and where I despaired, you were my hope. In all, the sum of the word love. For more than twenty-three years, I have been fortunate to begin every day loving you more than I did yesterday, but less than I shall tomorrow. This marvelous lady was also my editor who reviewed every page, guarding against dangling participles and split infinitives, edited my many letters to the Defense Nuclear Agency (now the Defense Threat Reduction Agency) and members of the Maine Congressional Delegation. Were it not for her insistence of my being reasonable, I have no doubt that I would have received few, if any, letters in reply. However, I must admit some of my early letters were a work of art. My best friend/stepdaughter, Kathy. How like your mother you are. Your husband, Mark, and your son, Anthony (Gampa’s buddy), like you, have been jewels to my life. No man could be richer. Thank you. Dear family friend, Gabriel John Patrick Chasse, was always there, offering to help.

Dear Mary Elisabeth Shesong, MSW (1938-2000). You believed in me and gave me new life. You also rescued me from drowning. May all the Angels in Heaven be as one with you as you are with me. The Rev. Roberta Blanchard (1940-2006). You walked with me through the loss of our friend, Mary Elisabeth, and my many trips to the hospital. I look for your rays of peace from the lighthouse. You walk with angels, with me, and you are my path.

Dr. David Johnson is a man with a healing touch highly regarded by his colleagues and patients alike. However, until now, no one knew that you built an extra step on our front porch to help facilitate its use, weather-proofed our laundry room, and built my home office. And when I was hospitalized, away from my computer, you bought me a laptop. Then, there was the conference I had planned to attend in Washington, D.C., but my health said no. Dr. Johnson said yes, closed his practice, loaded his SUV with oxygen tanks, and off we drove to and from D.C.

A very special thank you to Larry and Pam Tondreau for making this effort a cohesive unit given hours of their expertise.

Robert Campbell

January 2007

Preface

This is not a book about the author, albeit there are a few stops along the way that do pertain to me. In the main, however, this is a book about veterans exposed to radiation while in service to their country. The heart of the matter being the lengths that our government uses to deny atomic veterans medical care and benefits! The reality is that our lack of care can be attributed to what men guessed our radioactive exposure levels to be and whether or not our exposure was sufficient to cause our medical conditions, contrasted to what could be legally proven by a scientific law, there being no scientific law to support their thesis. In essence, these would-be radiation gurus played bingo with our lives!

Aside from the documents herein presented that are of interest to all concerned and seem to prove that bingo was played, there remains an equally important issue at the heart of radiation exposure: how much is safe?

In Fallout, author Philip L. Fradkin called it the threshold . . . linear theory,1 noting that at one time there was a presumed safe level below which exposure would not be harmful to the human body. Fradkin explained:

But through the 1950s and early 1960s the scientific community was moving toward the linear theory, which held that there is no safe level of exposure because no dose of radiation is so low as to eliminate any chance of inducing cancer. The less exposure, the less risk. But there is no zero risk unless there is zero exposure. In other words, there is relative danger to everyone. The risk of catching cancer from radiation is one of chance, since radiation that passes through the body can do one of four things. First, it can do nothing. Second, it can kill a cell, which is the goal of radiation treatments. Third, radiation can damage a cell, but that cell may subsequently repair itself. Finally, the radiation can damage the nucleus of the cell, which may then multiply in its aberrant state and eventually become a malignancy.2

Thus, it is not automatic that radiation exposure will cause everyone to die from cancer, leukemia, or even early-age heart attacks. Rather it is the reaction of each individual body to radiation exposure that determines the outcome. As a result, saying because everyone received less than the minimum allowable radiation exposure, their respective illnesses could not have been caused by radiation exposure, which is a blatant miscarriage of scientific law.

The exposure standard for all Americans is not a matter of law. Rather, the standard is set by a group of scientists known as the National Committee for Radiation Protection (NCRP), now the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP).

The Charter of the Council (Public Law 88-376) states its objectives as follows:

1.   collect, analyze, develop and disseminate in the public interest information and recommendations about (a) protection against radiation (referred to herein as radiation protection) and (b) radiation measurements, quantities and units, particularly those concerned with radiation protection;

2.   provide a means by which organizations concerned with the scientific and related aspects of radiation protection and of radiation quantities, units and measurements may cooperate for effective utilization of their combined resources, and to stimulate the work of such organizations;

3.   develop basic concepts about radiation quantities, units and measurements, about the application of these concepts, and about radiation protection;

4.   cooperate with the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the Federal Radiation Council, the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements, and other national and international organizations, governmental and private, concerned with radiation quantities, units and measurements and with radiation protection.

It should be noted that while the Charter recognizes the importance and the national character of the NCRP, it does not make the Council a governmental body; it is a private corporation. Also, the Charter does not entitle the Council to congressional appropriations. NCRP is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit, public service organization and has status as an educational and scientific body which is tax exempt [under provision 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code].3

The chairman and member of the NCRP’s board of directors is a Thomas N. Tenforde, a man who wields considerable control over radiation exposure standards for America. His influence now extends to atomic veterans as a result of the creation of the Veterans’ Advisory Board on Dose Reconstruction (VBDR). The board was created to give legitimacy to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency scheme used to create radiation doses where none previously existed.

When I arrived at Eniwetok in October 1950 (Operation GREENHOUSE), we were never informed about radiation exposure or what constituted a safe or unsafe dose. In the late 1970s, I would learn that the official line was no more than 5.0-roentgen exposure in a year or no more than 3.9-roentgen exposure in any three-month period of time. At Bikini Atoll in 1946 (Operation CROSSROADS), the exposure standard was no more than 0.1 roentgens per day.

It is the author’s thesis that documents created by events related to the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons (1946-1963), written at the time of the various events, were purposely withheld to the detriment of test participants—that medical treatment for test participants would have been advanced and enhanced by the withheld knowledge being made public; that the decision to withhold information concerning radiation exposure was driven by the government’s desire to avoid litigation; and by extension, that legal standards for radiation exposure be avoided at all costs. Moreover, the failure to properly and thoroughly investigate the content of these documents was the result of a conscious decision not to do so.

What it all boils down to is the question of radiation exposure versus radiation damage. Caught in the middle of this debate is the exposed individual, and if that individual did not receive what is believed to be sufficient radiation exposure, then his illness cannot be presumed to have been caused by exposure to radioactivity. Research tells us, however, that exposure to relatively low levels of radiation could cause harmful effects had been known since the early years of the century.4 Congress has never seen fit to pass legislation protecting its citizens by setting radiation exposure standards. Perhaps it now will. That was not the case, however, during the existence of the Joint (Congressional) Committee on Atomic Energy when the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) ruled supreme.

When Drs. [John] Gofman and [Arthur) Tamplin testified before the Joint Committee, they were rebuked by an angry Committee Chairman, Chet Holifield (D-California).

What the hell do you guys think you are doing to the AEC’s program? I don’t give a damn who [you] are. You’re going to have every little old lady in tennis shoes in this country up in arms against the AEC program. Listen, there have been lots of guys before you who tried to interfere with the AEC program. We got them and we’ll get you.5

The congressman’s reach and influence was considerable. He was a member of President Truman’s Special Evaluation Commission on Atomic Bomb Tests at Bikini Atoll, 1946, and a congressional adviser to international conferences on uses of atomic energy, nuclear weapons testing, and disarmament. Not bad for a man who made and sold men’s clothing. During the early testing that involved the downwinders of Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, residents of those states who were exposed to radioactive fallout were told, in so many words, Your cancer and leukemia deaths are the price you pay for being an American during the Cold War. AEC Commissioner Willard F. Libby, testifying at the 1957 Joint Committee hearings, put the situation in starker terms, contrasting the ‘very small and rigidly controlled radiation risk’ of radiation fallout with ‘the risk of annihilation’6 by the Russians! I have never understood why the government did not take care of these people instead of throwing them on the trash pile of nuclear waste. How would taking responsibility for providing medical treatment for the downwinders impact national security? I find no answer for this question. As for us atomic veterans, any medical care we received from the Veterans Administration (VA) was a result of congressional action, not from any caring by the VA, by and of its own volition. Going the congressional route was something like booking passage on a slow boat to China.

I was a mere twelve-year-old when the atomic age was born in July 16, 1945. By the time I was thirteen, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would forever impact my life; when I was eighteen, I would be at a Pacific atoll participating in the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. I freely admit that I am neither a historian, a scientist, nor a physician. I have labored all these years writing copious unconnected paragraphs and papers, even when I did not know what or why I was writing. I felt compelled to gain an understanding of myself and the world in which I lived, especially life in the atomic age. It has been a long journey.

To those reading this book who were born in 1946, you were seventeen years old when the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT) was signed in 1963. WWII and the Korean War were over, but the Vietnam War had yet to conclude its carnage. It is now 2006, so you are now fifty, a member of the class of baby boomers. Depending upon where you live, you may know something about nuclear power and the question of where to store spent nuclear power rods. You should know something about Love Canal, Two Mile Island, Chernobyl, and political assassinations. The Berlin Wall, once a daily symbol of oppression, was torn down by freedom. A lot has happened in the fifty years. You surely know 9/11. But for more than one million U.S. servicemen and women, there remain unanswered questions about their radiation exposure. Of the more than one million of us, nearly 250,000 of us were participants in the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the occupation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The remaining sum were/are members of the Strategic Air Command, the nuclear navy, and army personnel exposed to depleted uranium. But the one million number goes much higher when you consider downwinders, residents of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Idaho who were exposed to radioactive fallout emanating from the Nevada Test Site. Yet there are even more, and their professions can be found in Annex A, which includes the Broken Arrow incidents—nuclear accidents.

Centerpiece of the American atomic age are the two competing arguments as to what constitutes safe exposure to ionizing radiation. Former three-term congressman and secretary of the interior Stewart L. Udall (D-Ariz.), a waist gunner in a B-24 Liberator bomber in WWII, summed up the issue and the protagonists in his excellent book The Myths of August. In the beginning, the matter of safe exposure was zealously guarded by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Their word was law albeit an unwritten law. Udall explained the history of the issue in four outstanding paragraphs of reportage which is necessary for the readers’ understanding generally and important to comprehend how it relates to atomic veterans.

Subsequent to Harold Knapp’s aborting effort during the Kennedy years to lift the veil on what he called the AEC’s monstrous miscalculations about the health effects of bomb testing in Nevada, there were only two instances prior to 1979 when there was a chance the Big Lie might be exposed. The first occurred in the 1960s when Utah medical officers sounded an alarm, and U.S. Public Health doctors were sent to several southern Utah communities to study the region’s leukemia clusters and incidences of thyroid disease. When the publication of their findings threatened to arouse a medical furor, the ever-vigilant Gordon Dunning7 was called on to stem the crisis. After warning his superiors that publication of the PHS [Public Health Service] studies would open a Pandora’s box, Dunning raised so many questions about flaws in the techniques used by the researchers that timorous officials in the surgeon general’s office shelved the reports and withheld them from the press.

The second, more serious, crisis originated within the AEC’s family circle in 1969, when John Gofman, a distinguished physician who was in charge of radiation safety programs at the Livermore bomb factory, completed a pioneering study that demonstrated that the AEC’s widely publicized safe doses of low-level ionizing radiation were, in truth, unsafe and were causing thousands of excess cancers. When AEC officials tried to intimidate him and suppress the results of his research, Gofman resisted and subsequently resigned in order to appeal his case to the public and to his peers in the American medical community.

John Gofman’s study was not intended as a front attack on bomb testing: he always believed the United States needed a nuclear arsenal and besides, all Nevada tests had been conducted underground since President Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963. What alarmed his superiors was his sweeping conclusion that the AEC had grossly underestimated the health hazards associated with all prior releases of radiation. His research generated evidence, for example, that the AEC had erred in assuming there was a radiation exposure threshold, and that low-level doses of fallout could not cause cancers. Gofman and his colleague Arthur Tamplin8 also assembled evidence that radiation released into the environment could trigger so many forms of cancer that the risk of excess deaths was over ten times worse than the official estimates of the AEC’s experts. Those findings sent tremors through the corridors of the AEC and informed its leaders that Gofman and Tamplin were challenging the core concepts of the Big Lie.

Yet Dr. Gofman had a constructive goal when he unveiled his conclusions. With nuclear power and other peaceful uses of nuclear energy in mind, he reasoned that it would be wise for the AEC to move forthwith to tighten its safety standards in order to minimize the doses of radiation that would be inflicted on atomic workers and the general public. Like Harold Knapp,9 John Gofman hewed to a conviction that the AEC should, in the spirit of good science, follow the facts wherever they led. He used these words to explain to a friend the creed that guided his medical research: There is a cardinal and fundamental principle that nothing is accomplished by deviating one iota from the truth about radiation effects and the doses.10

The reader should be aware that Dr. Gofman, a physician, also has a PhD in nuclear physical chemistry. He is the codiscoverer of U232, Pa232, U233, and Pa233. In all of my years of involvement with the public issue of radiation exposure, commencing in 1978, I cannot recall that Dr. Gofman has ever been called upon to present his research. Proceedings of the Medical Follow-Up Agency (MFUA) and division of the National Academy of Sciences, in which I was personally involved and appeared as an invited presenter, never once invited Dr. Gofman to present his views. In fact, there were a number of noted men and women of science whose views and research may have been originally solicited but whose subsequent results were suppressed or perhaps never sought at all. No surprise that the reader may be confused as to what constitutes a safe exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. However, I would suggest that the Gofman stricture to seek the truth about radiation exposure is not harmful to intellectual exercise. Yet those who were of the safe threshold school seemingly banned together to discredit anyone who held an opposite view. To my way of thinking, they gave rise to a new form of political science where, in this case, science was made to serve political ends. I was brought up short by a Quaker teacher who, in responding to an assertion I had made about a historical event, made the following comment: The trouble with thee, Robert, is if thee has a fixed opinion, thee can never have a new idea. Yes, ma’am.

Researching my exposure at Eniwetok Atoll in 1951 became a journey that took me beyond Eniwetok to Bikini, Morocco, Nevada, Tinian Island, the North Atlantic, and beyond. In many instances, my work lay hidden in thousands of documents generally not available for public inspection. Added to my reading and research were meetings with thousands of atomic veterans, downwinders, as well as with those who clearly fit into the anti-Gofman clique. Being a rank amateur, my quest was first guided, in part, by two laws:

Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

O’Toole’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.

The hard sum of these two laws is that history is a stern judge. The rule of thumb for amateurs like myself is to pray Murphy is on a holiday when you set out to make sense out of your research. Hopefully he is with O’Toole. This gives the reader a fighting chance to understand what has been written.

There has also been a deep feeling that has grown within me these past twenty-eight years, a deep inner feeling that is hard to describe. Dr. David Bradley, a RadSafe monitor at Operation CROSSROADS, noted at the end of his 1946 remembrances of Bikini, No Place to Hide, that upon his return to the United States, people could not have cared less what had just transpired in the Pacific (Operation CROSSROADS, Bikini Atoll). I find that there has been little or no change in this attitude by the public in the ensuing fifty years. But what makes it difficult for me is the fact that atomic veterans continue to die from a multitude of cancers and other illnesses at a very early age and nobody seems to give a damn. I ask myself why.

There is still one more aspect of the bomb that has to be addressed, and that is the question of whether we should have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s the old Yer either fur it or agin’ it. I’ve always maintained that what’s done is done and you cannot undo it. Seems reasonable to me. This is not to say, however, that no price comes with the usage of an atomic weapon. There is a cost, and it fell to Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett, who defied General MacArthur’s ban on travel to Hiroshima, to tell us what the cost was. He wrote:

Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they may act as a warning to the world.11

Firsthand Nagasaki reportage fell to American war correspondent George Weller, who, like Burchett, also ignored MacArthur’s ban. However, Weller made a mistake in submitting his material to MacArthur’s censors. As a result, his stories ended up in the famous military file 13—the trash bin. All of Weller’s Nagasaki and U.S./Allied POW camp stories in Japan were resurrected and now can be read in his excellent work, First Into Nagasaki.

Finally, my doctors have told me my time on this planet is limited, well under a year. Stage 4 COPD will do that. I had been seriously ill since May 31, 2005. Three bouts of pneumonia with major surgery for an abdominal aorta aneurysm did a number on me. It is now 2006, and I have work to do and finish. However, three more hospital visits in May, June, and July, for pneumonia and influenza, have made my breathing harder.

Well, I have outlasted the time line prediction, but every day now becomes a greater struggle than the day before. My breathing is more labored, I tire easily and feel so much like a burden on those whom I love. Still there are footprints to follow before I can say good night.

In my nuclear travels, travails, and treading, where many thought I had no business, the following spoke loudly to me:

It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment. (Albert Einstein)

Robert L. Campbell

Portland, Maine

Acknowledgements

Over the years, I came in contact with many people who influenced my research in any number of ways whose presence in my life aided in the writing of this book. My friends I list in no particular order, and I am thankful that none of them have ego problems. I also read a number of books that helped to fashion my thinking and added to my knowledge of the atom’s wayward paths.

The first 2006 addition to my library was titled The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground, written by Michael Harris with a foreword by Dr. Henry Kissinger.

If you’re a veteran of Operation REDWING (Eniwetok Atoll, northern Marshall Islands, 1958) in particular or were exposed to radiation elsewhere, you’ll find a lot in this book with which you can identify.

I didn’t know it then, but one-third of the crew of the USS Navasota at Eniwetok, during Redwing, would die of cancer before the age fifty-five. And similar numbers of the USS Belle Grove. And perhaps all the ships, although statistics are not readily available today. Some men were attacked by slow bullets that did not reach their targets for years. Others, like Geezer, had a shorter wait. (p. 241)

I do not know where Mr. Harris obtained this data, but certainly, his findings should be investigated by an independent panel whose only goal is the truth. This book should be required reading for every member of the VA, the Pentagon, and the Congress. But their reading this book will mean nothing if the public does not read and enjoy the honesty of this gigantic tour de force.

The second addition was Pulitzer Prize winner George Weller’s First Into Nagasaki, which was actually prepared by his son Anthony, an author in his own right. Veteran journalist and former war correspondent Walter Cronkhite wrote the foreword. George Weller was the first American reporter to enter Nagasaki without being authorized, and so incurred the wrath of General Douglas MacArthur’s high command that none of the dispatches he sent from that city were ever cleared by censors. Both books are a helluva must read.

To the following, I say thank you and forget not.

Dr. David M. Bradley once called me a hero for my dedication and research. And I say again as I did that day, "You, Doctor, you are the hero. You are a physician in the truest sense of the word. As an army doctor selected to be a radiation monitor at Operation CROSSROADS, you completed an epic work No Place to Hide, the first and most lasting book about the atomic age. How sad that your work went unnoticed by the world that needed it—then and now!

Captain Andrew Nelson, USN (retired), and Sgt. Maj. Cliff Chapman, U.S. Regular Army (retired) are a credit to their country and the uniforms they wore. An Annapolis grad, Captain Nelson headed the civilian branch (Jaycor) of the Nuclear Test Personnel Review (NTPR) program for the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), now the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). He opened the door to the truth for atomic veterans as did Sgt. Maj. Chapman, my friend Cliff, who was the DNA’s liaison officer to Jaycor. Both men are combat veterans. I had the good fortune to enjoy their companionship, fidelity, and search for the truth. Once, as a house guest of Captain Nelson, I became seriously ill with a sudden attack of the flu. With the help of my wife/RN via telephone, he and Cliff took care of me until I was back on my feet, well enough to meet with the then commanding general of the DNA. How you two enriched my life, I cannot begin to express in words.

Pat Tiger Lady Broudy. Pat is the widow of a Marine mustang major who flew airplanes for the Corps. A mustang in the Corps is one who rose through the enlisted ranks to become an officer. Pat watched her husband go from being a robust and healthy man to a victim of cancer. Like her husband, Pat, too, was a mustang in the real sense of the word. She was not about to wear widows’ black. Her quest for the truth about her husband’s radiation exposure, and as a consequence acting on behalf of thousands of widows like herself, is a monument of courage. Physically, our Tiger Lady is maybe five feet tall and weighs a hundred pounds sopping wet, but by god, a tiger she is!

Oscar Rosen, PhD—a CROSSROADS veteran, historian—was one of the few real leaders the atomic veterans’ movement ever had. He could, at times, be so intimidating, irritating, and downright obstinate; yet he knew the meaning of the word leadership. Much of my success as a researcher was driven by his zealous pursuit of the truth, which, to his way of thinking, was what they knew and when they knew it. Oscar, at times you bugged the hell out of me, but I am proud to have known you. Dr. Rosen, who died of leukemia, was a crewman on the death ship USS Orca.

Dick Conant. A true Mainer who settled in New Mexico, where it fell to him to resurrect a moribund National Association of Atomic Veterans. A dedicated researcher, he began the truly important work of tracking genetic defects in the children of atomic veterans. He and Glen Dale Howard. More importantly, they also provided the beginning CROSSROADS mortality work announced in these pages. Without their unselfish support, the work that went into this book would have been far more difficult. These two gentlemen are living examples of the words unselfish and dedicated. All this while Dick continues to work helping others albeit now slowly going blind.

Maury Silverman, if it was written, he can find it, even when he’s not looking for it.

Terry Adams eschewed a career as a journalist to work in Alaskan forests. He was another builder who came on the NAAV scene later. A good man we lost to our inability to get along with one another. I had the good fortune to coauthor with him an article in the Stars and Stripes, which led Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to introduce S. RES 336, proclaiming July 16 (1945) as a National Day of Remembrance to Honor Veterans Exposed to Radiation. Cosponsors were the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and former senator (now governor) Frank Murkowski of Alaska.

John Smitherman is NAAV. He fought the good fight and died. But he never gave up. More than any atomic veteran I ever met, he was a living example of courage. I first met him, an Operation CROSSROADS (1946) veteran, in Washington, D.C., in 1980 at a radiation survivors conference. He was a fireman aboard the support ship USS Allen M. Sumner (DD-692). He was a multiple amputee as his body was slowly eaten alive by cancer, and I had the honor to push him about in his wheelchair. One night during the conference, we dined at a waterfront restaurant. Seated at our table, as best I can recall, were John and Mr. and Mrs. Bernie Durkin of Redwood, California. Bernie was a navy vet and, like myself, a participant in Operation GREENHOUSE. There were two other navy vets; I close my mind and see them, though their names escape me. Also seated at our table were E. Cooper Brown, Esq., with his wife and Robert Alvarez with his wife, Kitty. Coop would become involved in several facets of our quest for justice. Bob and Kitty—DC knows them and knows them well. What I remember of that dinner, very clearly now at age seventy-four, is that I am the only surviving veteran who sat at that table. A New York Times Sunday magazine has a picture of me pushing John in his wheelchair. Before John died, he would, in addition to losing his legs, lose both arms. He finally prevailed and won benefits. When he passed away, his wife received her widow’s mite from the VA, only to have it taken away because the VA concluded that her husband did not die of a cancer for which benefits were allowed. When I learned of this, I contacted Senator George Mitchell who read the information I was able to provide and wrote the secretary of the VA. Eventually her benefits were restored.

Walter Hooke, an ex-Marine, was in the Nagasaki occupation force. Out of his own pocket, he sent Mrs. Smitherman a monthly check in the amount of her VA benefits until they were restored. Walter Hooke may have long ago taken his uniform off, yet he’s still an example of our best. There is only one way to describe this ex-Marine who won his spurs in combat. He’s a man who practices what he preaches and gives without being asked. I’m proud to know you, Walter.

Vic Tolley is another example of the once a Marine, always a Marine Corps. Vic’s introduction to nuclear war came up close and personal at Nagasaki, after doing the beach invasion thing several times over. He and his occupation buddies formed the Committee for Hiroshima/Nagasaki Veterans. Like Walter Hooke, Vic is a Marine’s Marine. They don’t make ’em any finer. Over the years, we became good friends and were present when his committee merged with NAAV. There was a time when I called him a crusty old jarhead. That registered a twenty on the Richter scale! When we later talked and straightened out our differences, we became the best of friends and still are.

The Rev. Laurence Deverall—of Diamond City, Canada, sponsor of the First International Nuclear Test Veterans and Atomic Bomb Survivors Conference—held at the University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Cancer may have robbed him of a leg, but not his resolve.

The Queen’s Own Rifles. To my comrades in arms in the Queen’s Own Rifles of the Canadian army and the Canadian Royal Legion, Gentlemen: Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her. The Queen’s Own were participants in Operation PLUMBBOB, Nevada Test Site, 1957.

British Nuclear Test Veterans Association. We met at Lethbridge and forged a bond never forgotten. Our English cousins are a class act.

Jay Brady was the principle health physicist (recently deceased) of the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Jay was unique. Severely injured in a helicopter crash into an atomic crater at the NTS, he was instrumental in the writing and publishing of two important works in the atomic age library: Barton Hacker’s Elements of Controversy and The Dragon’s Tale. Mr. Brady has authored an important report on Operation PLUMBBOB, which he presented at the University of Lethbridge conference. He, too, was a man whom I shared some good Scotch as a guest in his Nevada home. Jay, like so many other atomic vets I’ve come to know and respect, has crossed over. He deserved a better obituary than the one that appeared in a Nevada newspaper.

E. Cooper Brown, Esq. We met on that lovely 1980 summer at the first National Citizens Hearing for Radiation Victims held in Washington, D.C. His lovely family was most generous in support of Coop’s efforts on our behalf and, on several occasions, opened their home to me on my visits to Washington, D.C. Like the good friend that he is, he is always there when you call, and sometimes he calls you!

Early on, a husband and wife team, Orville and Wanda Kelly, founded the National Association of Atomic Veterans (NAAV) and gave us a voice. It is to my sorrow that we never reached our potential. You deserved better children.

They Who Also Cared . . .

Over the years, I had a voluminous correspondence with not only Senator Olympia J. Snowe, but also Senators George Mitchell and William S. Cohen. What could be done for us on Capitol Hill they quietly did behind the scenes. Whether in Washington, D.C., or here in Maine, they would always make time to meet with me. The Maine Congressional Delegation also included former Reps. David Emery; John R. McKernan, Jr.; Tom Andrews; John Elias Baldacci. Both Mr. McKernan and Mr. Baldacci went on to become governors of Maine, and hence my bosses, since I was a state employee.

Lastly I have some dear friends who have always encouraged my research and been stalwart supporters: Bonnie Titcomb, Ernie and Eva Kozun, Hank and Cecilia Wernau, and Bob Dunning. Thanks friends. Together we taught the Department of Energy that Maine was no place to build a nuclear waste storage facility, especially when they wanted to build it beneath our water supply!

Robert Campbell

September 2006

Chapter 1

When I Was Young . . .

When I was young, I could lean against a Douglas fir and look at the mountains beyond; the Pacific Ocean was beyond the rolling coast range, and I wanted to see what was beyond the ocean. In my life, there would always be mountains and what lay beyond them. I was, as my dearest friend called me, an in-between child—born between the middle of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII. At that time of my life, my home was the backseat of a beat-up four-door sedan that I shared with my half sister. I never knew what indoor plumbing was until WWII. Life then taught me that life was all about survival. My parents’ main worry was a roof over our heads and food—if no roof, at least food. If we had that much, survival was a possibility, at least for that day. Tomorrow would come soon enough. Eventually the war had come and gone; and while it had provided us with a real house in which to live, with an indoor toilet, it was not my house. I would not learn until I was twenty-one that the man I believed to be my father was not my father; I had a brother I would never know or see, a half sister who came and went as she pleased, and so on. I was not who I believed myself to be all those years. I was indeed somebody I did not know. There is something about such a discovery that leaves one unsettled for a long time. It was about not belonging. Relatives with whom I was close disappeared from my life’s radar screen. In modern parlance, I was a member of a dysfunctional family. Any way out was a good way, I reckoned.

I had learned to type sixty-five words a minute without an error—on a manual typewriter in high school! In 1948, this provided me an opportunity to attend an air force technical training program at Fort Francis E. Warren, Wyoming. An early Calvary post on the western frontier had signs posted in most barracks which read: Troopers will not shoot buffalo from inside the barracks. A year later, I was in the Regular Army. What I had learned in high school was refined by the air force and made me a rare commodity in the army.

So it was that I came to be a company clerk in an infantry training company at Fort Ord, California. Army basic infantry training taught me quickly that a first sergeant was the next thing to God. He ran the company; and first sergeants, collectively, ran the army. That simple. The officers above them merely thought they were in charge! Many a shavetail second lieutenant who rose to become a general got there because he had a good first sergeant. WWII may have been over, but Korea proved that it was not over. If anything, the period from 1945 to 1950 was nothing more than an abbreviated armistice.

For a cadreman (one who is permanently assigned to a training unit and thus considered a permanent party), even being in the area of division HQ is like being summoned to Olympus! One did not go there unless officially summoned. And having been summoned, I entered the huge office building and reported to the receiving clerk. He checked my name off and told me to sit over there. An hour later, I was still sitting over there. Two hours, I was still sitting. In a little while, I was joined by two others. We started to talk and were promptly told, No talking!

Finally, I was called back to the desk and handed a six-page form and told to fill it out. The form had been on that desk when I reported! And just where was I supposed to sit and fill out such a long form? The clerk pointed to a door and looked at me as if I should have known without asking! For more than two hours, I struggled with a document that asked me everything about who I was: where I was born, my parents, all my relatives, what they did, where they came from, my education, friends, references, work history, political affiliations—you name it, I answered it! There were no questions about the Depression. I looked the form over, took it to the clerk, and rushed the hell out of there! Lighting a cigarette, I stopped to enjoy the fresh air before retreating to my company headquarters. My first sergeant asked what it was all about. I answered, he shrugged his shoulders and turned away. I was subsequently called back to two interviews, pretty much conducted in the way my first visit was. The interviews were a collection of questions I was supposed to answer any way I could. The previous waiting, I learned, was to test one’s patience. My first sergeant had very little patience with his clerk being bothered by division headquarters. He had an infantry training company to run, and the division should know better than to disrupt his routine.

That was the summer of 1950. I was stationed at Fort Ord, California—just across the road from Monterey Bay and a short distance from Carmel-by-the-Sea, a picturesque tourist town, home of Pebble Beach. We had a million-dollar service club that was located on the seaward side of Route 1, facing the bay. A lot of evenings, I would walk over to the club, drink some beer, and gaze at the ocean. There was a war on, and this looked to be as close as I would ever get. Like a lot of American families in WWII, we had our losses. Some were men who had passed through our company. I wanted to show that I was made of the same stuff.

In early October 1950, I received orders directing me to report to the army replacement center, in military terms, a repo depot, Camp Stoneman, located near San Francisco, north of Fort Ord. However, my first sergeant grabbed my orders from my hands and said, Hell and hell no! The MPs who had delivered the orders were more than a little insistent I was leaving with them. The yelling eventually involved my company commander. Phone calls made. The MPs became all the more insistent I was leaving. When all was cut and dried, my company commander and first sergeant said their goodbyes, but not before stuffing a $20 bill in my pocket. The following day was payday, and I wouldn’t be there, and they did not know when I would be next paid. So it was I packed my duffel bag. Thinking it was fair to ask where I was going, I was told in no uncertain terms that when I needed to know, I would be told. Until then, don’t ask. Over those summer months, I had seen men come and go, but I was the only one who ever left under a military escort! I rode in a bus like those used to haul shipyard workers who were building Liberty ships. It was painted gray, and the windows were also painted gray. We made a couple of stops along the way and picked up some others. Talking was not allowed on the bus, but at least we could smoke.

Since this was my first experience with a repo depot, I had no idea what to expect. The bus pulled to a stop at the main gate patrolled heavily by MPs. We were admitted and then moved ahead to stop at another gate. When your name is called, answer, get your duffel bag, get off the bus and fall in, intoned an MP. Moving away from the bus, I noted our area was surrounded by an extremely high wire fence that was almost two stories high. A corporal, a noncommissioned officer (NCO), greeted us, told us to put our duffel bags in the barracks to which he pointed, and collected our papers. So there I stood, all of eighteen years old. For a few days, we just sat around. New people came in, some old people left, some in the middle of the night. Then one morning, there were only eight or so of us left out of some thirty or so that arrived there the past few days. Then reappeared the gray bus. We were on our way, but to where? The answer was Fairfield-Suisun (now Travis) Air Force Base. Again, no talking, get on, get out, wait here, go there. When I finished training at Fort Warren, I had an opportunity to stay with the air force, but somehow decided on the Regular Army. My first trip in joining the military was on a passenger train complete with dining cars, club car, smoking car, and Pullman cars. I still didn’t know where I was really going, but it was a good bet I would be flying there. We were fed, but kept isolated from others. I was beginning to wonder if we had leprosy or beriberi. Finally we were led out to a three-quarter-ton truck and told to get on. Baggage and all—it was rather crowded, but we couldn’t be going too far, just to the flight line; and besides, California weather in October can be pleasant. Emphasis on can. Many times a cold wind blows in off the ocean fed by the Japanese current. It is those times in October that an overcoat is a necessity. It was nice riding in the open. For some unexplained reason, we were instructed to change into summer uniforms at Camp Stoneman. Normally, this time of the year, one wore winter uniforms. Finally our truck pulled to a stop at a four-engine C-54 passenger plane that became our home for the next eight or so hours. It was late afternoon when we took off. The crew chief told us coffee was available, as were sandwiches, and that the smoking lamp was lit. I dared ask where we were going. No answer was forthcoming. But I happened to look out my window, and we had just crossed the coastline. Two and two made Hawaii our destination, at least for this leg of the trip.

It was around three in the morning when we arrived at wherever it was we had flown to. The crew chief said to us, Welcome to Hickam Field, Hawaii. Walking down the steps to the tarmac, I was hit by a tropical breeze that was at once refreshing and calming. But the name Hickam Field made me feel as if I was standing in a cathedral . . . Hickam, the site of the infamous sneak attack on December 7, 1941. Before that day ended, 2,403 defenders would lose their lives and another 1,178 wounded—in all 3,581 casualties. Here I was, not quite ten years later, standing on hallowed ground. I did not know then that which ended WWII would forever impact my life and today’s step was the first step in that direction, a long journey directly linked to this book.

We were taken to a transient barracks where the six of us collapsed on our bunks and slept. Sleep in a military air transport ship is not the same as flying coach in today’s passenger jets. Again we were kept apart from other transient personnel. I was beginning to wonder just where in the hell we were we going. This isolation was beginning to wear thin. In all, there were about three dozen or so of us who boarded the plane in California. After breakfast the next day, several more of our number had disappeared. Long afterward, I suspected they developed a blip on their security clearance screen and were weeded out. None of them arrived at our ultimate destination. I subsequently learned that to be where we were going, you had to have a Q clearance—a designation having to do specifically with nuclear issues. Higher than a top secret clearance. I had it, and in the future, the army would never let me forget it. Whatever, it was related to that first day in division headquarters. I was young, and this was an adventure. I still did not know where I was going, but at least I would have the fact that I served overseas on my record.

Two days later, we were in another C-54, and again we’re not told where we’re going. But I was beginning to think that Korea was out. If we were headed in that direction, we surely lacked the correct uniform. In Korea, it would be cold this time of the year, calling for winter uniforms, not summer, which we were all wearing. A few hours later, we were told to prepare for landing on Johnston Island. I looked out my window, and there was no land beneath us! As the crew chief explained it, the island was like a tabletop, and the pilot prayed to set his wheels down on the runway and bring the plane to a halt before going off the other end. Here we took a break to refuel and eat. The weather was pleasant, and as I looked around, the island was indeed like a tabletop. Flat! No hills, no valleys. Flat!

As the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons continued, Johnston Atoll would write its own chapter in the book about the atomic age. Then it would add a sequel having to do with the destruction of chemical and biological weapons, needing the construction of a gigantic incinerator whose flames consumed thousands of lethal weapons and chemicals like Agent Orange.

Our stopover didn’t last long, and when we flew off the tabletop, I was glad to be going. A tour of duty on that rock would not have pleased me. Next stop—again we’re not told until we prepared to land—is Kwajalein Atoll. You don’t have to worry about the landing here, the crew chief explains, unless we crash into the lagoon which is filled with sharks. Happened to a plane load of nurses once.

Kwaj, as I came to call this location, was a navy base and run pretty much like the British ran colonial India. They still do today. Just ask the natives of Kwaj, who have a high teenage suicide rate and not much of a future to look forward to.

A few hours later, we were once again in the air and headed toward our final destination: Eniwetok Atoll, in the northern Marshall Islands. The atoll is about halfway between New Guinea and Hawaii, a ring of some forty-plus islands and/or sandbars, twenty-three nautical miles by seventeen nautical miles in all. By the end of testing at Eniwetok, one island would disappear from the face of the earth. Shot Mike, in actuality a refrigerator built to test the principles of a hydrogen bomb, obliterated an island named Elugelab. The 10.4 megaton icebox left