Part 8 (1/2)
Thus the comments made at Fort Monroe show that even before the first large-scale troop maneuvers were held, the armed forces planned to ignore inhalation hazards and considered collecting the data with instruments that would result in lower reported exposures for troops. These remarks, when combined with the cavalier att.i.tude exhibited by c.o.o.ney and other high-ranking officers toward radiation hazards, strongly suggest that some troops received greater doses than what has officially been reported.
Before the maneuvers began, the Pentagonas Joint Panel on the Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare met to thrash out a shopping list of questions that needed to be answered at the upcoming bomb tests. aIt is, of course, obvious,a the panel acknowledged, athat a test of a new and untried atomic bomb is not a place to have an unlimited number of people milling about.a11 The top-secret panel was formed in 1949, the year the Soviets exploded their first bomb, but itas not clear when it was dissolved. Little was known about the Joint Panel until 1994, when a stack of its records was obtained by the Clinton Committee. Those records show that James c.o.o.ney, Louis Hempelmann, Robley Evans, and Hymer Friedell served as members or consultants.
Among other things, the ashopping lista prepared by the Joint Panel called for an investigation into the psychological effects of nuclear explosions on troops, research into the efficiency of protective clothing and devices, the measurement of radioisotopes in the body fluids of weapons test personnel, orientation flights in the vicinity of nuclear explosions, and studies on the effects of the atomic flash on the human eye. It so happened that the psychological tests, the orientation flights, and the flashblindness studies would all begin in the fall of 1951 and continue for the next decade.
26.
aHOT PARTICLESa
In late May of 1951, when the dust from Operation Ranger had settled, s.h.i.+elds Warren went to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to discuss the fallout hazards from several underground detonations planned for that fall. A lifelong New Englander, he must have marveled at the raw ugliness of a western spring: the stinging wind, the leafless willows and cottonwoods, a gauzy brown veil draped over the Sangre de Cristos. In Albuquerque, local officials were trying to tell residents what to do if an atomic bomb were dropped on the state. aA person in the vicinity of an A-bomb can protect himself by turning and falling away from the explosion,a the Albuquerque Journal quoted a local official as saying on May 23, athus cutting down on the danger from flying debris, burns and radiation.a1 Like so many before him, Warren followed the switchbacks that led up from the Rio Grande Valley to the tangled jumble of buildings on top of the mesa. In the arroyos that gouged their way down to the river, wild asters and prairie zinnias clung to the chalky soil. As Warren looked across the arid expanse toward the blue granite mountains, he may well have pondered the memo he had written three months earlier in which he had warned that the desert was no place to explode an underground atomic bomb.
At the time of the Los Alamos meeting, the outcome of the Korean War was still uncertain. General Douglas MacArthur had just been recalled after threatening Communist China with a naval and air attack. Many people, including Warren, believed another war was imminent. Los Alamos had once again become a beehive of activity. Dejected and uncertain about its future in the years following World War II (some even talked of making the lab a monument or museum), the lab staff had been bucked up by the atomic blasts in Nevada and at the Pacific Proving Ground. aIn Los Alamos, a sort of status symbol evolved from the Pacific tests,a the Los Alamos Historical Society wrote.2 aIf you had a giant clam in use as a bird bath or garden ornament, you were a bona fide Bikini veteran.a With the continental test site in its backyard, the laboratoryas future was secure at last.
Many of the security precautions enacted during the war were still in place when Warren arrived. The entire community of Los Alamos was off limits to outsiders. Miles of fences, set in concrete and topped by barbed wire, enclosed both the town and the laboratory. The main gate to Los Alamos, with its four lanes, resembled a turnpike toll barrier. Residents and visitors, both coming and going, were required to show their pa.s.ses to guards. The town itself would not be declared an open city until February 18, 1957. Accustomed to their isolation by then, Los Alamos residents were chagrined at the prospect of unannounced visits from ameddlers, peddlers, [and] mothers-in-law.a3 The five atomic bombs that had been exploded in Nevada in January and February of 1951 had all been dropped from airplanes. The so-called air drops did not create the immense amount of contaminated dust that underground explosions were expected to generate. The planned underground explosions were the brainchild of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. Ever since Crossroads, military planners had wondered if a bomb buried deep within the earth would create the same spectacular contamination as Shot Baker. In November of 1950, a month before the Nevada Test Site was officially approved, AFSWP had received authorization from President Truman to conduct two twenty-kiloton detonations on the island of Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands. One bomb would be detonated on the surface and the other buried dozens of feet underground.4 But once the Nevada site opened, AFSWP officials decided they wanted to conduct the tests there. It was a much more convenient location, but even more important, it would allow AFSWP to develop a comprehensive map of fallout, something that couldnat be done properly on an island.
But s.h.i.+elds Warren objected to the underground test precisely because of the fallout hazards. aIt is not possible for us to disregard a potential long-term inhalation hazard,a he told General James McCormack, director of the AECas Division of Military Application.5 aThere would be a continually recurring problem of dust contaminated with material of long half-life being blown around by the winds. The arid character of the region increases this hazard.a The dispute was one of the first of many arguments between civilian and military planners at the Nevada Test Site. Since both had legitimate interests in the nuclear weapons program, they generally came up with compromises or tried to carve out mutually exclusive areas of responsibility. In this case, the two sides reached a compromise: The two twenty-kiloton tests were canceled; instead, three bombs with yields of approximately one kiloton each were to be detonated. The first bomb, at the insistence of the AEC, was to be buried deep underground and would be used to a.s.sess the radiological hazards of the subsequent tests. The second bomb was to be exploded at the surface and the third a few feet below the ground. Although they were small, all three bombs were expected to generate significant fallout because of the tons of dirt that would be sucked up into the fireb.a.l.l.s. The radioactive dirt, being heavier than usual fallout dust sucked up in the fireball, was expected to fall to earth more rapidly instead of being carried up and away with the wind, thus posing more danger to area residents.
The meeting was so important that many of the labas top officials were there. They included Norris Bradbury, the Navy officer who succeeded J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of Los Alamos, and Thomas s.h.i.+pman, the physician who had taken over the labas health division. Louis Hempelmann, who by then had gone to the University of Rochester, returned for the discussion. Even more impressive was the presence of Gioacchino Failla, a scientist who helped set the United Statesa first radiation standards. Edward Teller, who was hard at work on the hydrogen bomb, made a cameo appearance on the second day.
Fifty-five pages of notes taken at the May 21a”22 meeting were decla.s.sified (with deletions) by Los Alamos in 1995 and show how shockingly little scientists really knew about fallout at the dawn of the atmospheric testing program.6 They also reveal that even though scientists were aware that fallout from the tests could pose serious hazards to nearby communities, they chose not to evacuate residents because they apparently feared such a move would harm public relations and jeopardize the test site.
Despite his initial reservations, Warren appeared to be solidly behind the shots by the time he arrived in Los Alamos. As chairman, he was tactful and accommodating, artfully nudging the group toward the conclusion the detonations could be carried out without aundue hazard.a But a transcript of the discussion shows that several scientists, including Louis Hempelmann, had grave concerns about the ahot particlesa the bomb would throw into the atmosphere.
Scientists at the time were most concerned about particles measuring about one to two microns in diameter.7 A micron is a millionth of a meter. Radioactive particles of one to two microns can lodge in the alveoli, the tiny air sacs in the lungs where the blood receives fresh oxygen and eliminates carbon dioxide. Once lodged in the air sacs, the particles can continue to irradiate the lung for a long time or they can gravitate to the lymph nodes on either side of the sternum. There the particles can irradiate the white blood cells that pa.s.s through the nodes and the red blood cells in the bone marrow of the sternum. Larger particles will not enter the body; smaller ones will be brought up by the mucus system of the airways coughed out. Some of the smaller particles are swallowed and eliminated through the digestive system. The digestive system, in turn, is exposed to some radiation as the particles pa.s.s through the GI tract.
Joseph Hamilton, in a secret report delivered to s.h.i.+elds Warren on October 4, 1949, had warned that radioactive particles in the one-micron range awould appear most ominous particularly with respect to the possibility of carcinogenesis.a8 Hamilton had glossed over the dangers, though, by suggesting that it would take many hot particles in the lung to start a cancer. Warren and other scientists subscribed to the same theory.
Throughout the testing program, scientists focused on the external exposures to radiation and not on internal exposures from radioactive particles inhaled or absorbed through open wounds. The prevailing philosophy was that if the external dose was within a apermissiblea range, the internal dose would be negligible. But the notes of the May 21a”22 meeting suggest that even during the early period of the testing program, scientists knew internal doses posed a serious hazard.
aThe particle size problem is a great worry, primarily because we donat know much about the effect of small hot particles in the lungs,a began Walter Claus, one of Warrenas chief aides from AEC headquarters.9 aHowever, one can always say that there have been so many of these particles spread about the country (from past tests), that so many people have already breathed pretty hot particles (why be concerned with it now). [The parentheses in this quote and others cited below are in the transcript of the notes taken at the meeting and apparently represent the completion of a thought or statement.]
From his examinations of the Raitliff family, Louis Hempelmann knew fallout was unpredictable and was disturbed by the fact that the group had no hard data on which to base its recommendations. aOne point makes me unhappy,a he said.10 aAll the discussion of particle size indicated that we had absolutely no idea whether breathing these things in was serious or not. I think we should at least have some philosophy or basis for saying that we think people twenty miles downwind would be safe.a Hempelmann would not let the issue go. When the debate resumed the following morning, he again brought up the fact the committee had no hard data upon which to base its recommendations: aOur safe region is based upon how many particles this committee is willing to let another person breathe.a11 s.h.i.+elds Warren, apparently fed up with Hempelmannas hand-wringing, retorted, aLet persons breathe one particle, because chances of that happening anywhere in the northern hemisphere is a good possibility.a Warrenas group considered evacuating residents within a forty-four-mile radius from Ground Zero, but Thomas s.h.i.+pman advised against any postshot evacuation, because it would cause abad public relationsa and might expose the residents to even greater amounts of fallout. He said, aFrom our experience with the fallout after the first shot on Enewetak, we found most of the people had fallout in their hair.12 I think we could gain more by urging the people to take baths. (Again, bad public relations).a Along the same lines, another partic.i.p.ant suggested that gas masks be issued if the fallout risks were high, but Warren immediately quashed the idea. aI donat think soa”it is psychologically bad and also almost impossible to enforce.a Although Warren acknowledged the apossibility of external beta burns is quite real,a he nevertheless argued that the underground shot should proceed because scientists needed the data to prepare for nuclear war.
He added, aWe are faced with a war in which atomic weapons will undoubtedly be used, and we have to have some information about these things.13 With a lot of monitoring, the end instrumentation will give us the information we want; if we look for perfect safety, we will never make these tests.a In the end, the partic.i.p.ants agreed and decided to move ahead with the tests. But after Warren returned to Was.h.i.+ngton, several scientists at Los Alamos performed some additional calculations and concluded that the deep underground testa”the initial shot that was supposed to be used to a.s.sess radiological dangersa”might prove to be the most hazardous of all. Subsequently that shot was sc.r.a.pped, but preparations for the surface test and the shallow underground test continued.
One of the partic.i.p.ants, identified as L. Thompson, wanted to insert a disclaimer in the final report stating that the committeeas conclusions were abased on conjecture and incomplete data.a But Warren felt such a disclaimer might be misunderstood. aOne thing Iam afraid of is that in stating our scientific caution here, we overdo it from the standpoint of lay and political feeling.14 Although in our final wording we have to give due regard to our gaps in knowledge, we must not make these overly prominent so as to mislead those who are not used to scientific caution.a The final report was amazingly blunt nevertheless: The hazard in the lung is that of carcinogenesis.15 It was pointed out that isolated particles retained in the lung would probably not be carcinogenic, owing to the small number of cells affected by each, even though an effective total dose of radiation might be provided in the immediate vicinity of a given particle. It was further pointed out that there already exists an opportunity for appreciable portions of the population of the Northern Hemisphere to inhale and retain particles as a result of previous tests, but the significance of this event and its statistical probability are so slight as to render the actual hazard negligible. The actual risk involved is currently under study.
In the ensuing years, as he had already begun to do in this meeting, s.h.i.+elds Warren took the side of the scientists and politicians who contended that fallout was a small price to pay to keep America safe. In 1956, on the eve of a presidential election in which fallout was one of the most hotly debated issues, Warren said that if the atmospheric tests were to continue for another thirty years, the genetic dose to the human race would still be insignificant. aDistant or worldwide radioactive fallout is not a controlling factor in bomb testing,a he said in a telegram to Lewis Strauss.16 aTo permit us to fall behind Russians is disastrous; to wait for them to catch up to us is stupid.a
27.
SCORCHED EARTH MANEUVERS.
While s.h.i.+elds Warren and scientists at Los Alamos were discussing fallout hazards, General James c.o.o.ney and other military leaders were mapping out their strategy for the first large-scale maneuvers that would be held at the Nevada Test Site. Unlike Operation Ranger, which involved only a few hundred men, the military exercises that began in the fall of 1951 would involve thousands of troops and specific activities designed to acclimate soldiersa”both psychologically and physicallya”to atomic weapons.
During September and October of that year, thousands of troops from military installations throughout the country were trucked to the test site. Among them were cooks, mechanics, radar operators, machinists, and paratroopers. The operation was so secret that most of the soldiers barely had time to pack a duffel bag. Few knew where they were headed or why. Most were too young to care.
The GIs lived in a hastily erected camp dubbed Camp Desert Rock, which was located some thirty miles from where the atomic bombs were detonated.1 The soldiers slept in rows of tents that had been staked out in the middle of the desert. With dirt floors and one pot-belly stove for heat, the tents were freezing in winter. In an effort to keep warm, GIs lined their cots with newspapers and wrapped bath towels around their necks. In the days leading up to the shot, they dug foxholes and beautified the campsite with cactus transplanted from the surrounding desert.
Fresh fish and jumbo shrimp were flown in for the military bra.s.s and dignitaries. The troops had 16-mm movies and trucks to ferry them into Las Vegas during the waiting period. For many, the visions that greeted them in the casinos were as dazzling as the dawn explosions. The GIs got free drinks, free admittance to the shows, but no free betting, recalled Venlo Wolfsohn, then a public information officer for the 11th Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.2 The first military exercise began on November 1, 1951. In the frigid, predawn hours, some 3,000 troops were ordered out of their bunks and trucked to Frenchman Flat. As they sat on the cold desert floor, a man on a P.A. system began talking about the atomic explosion they would soon witness: Shot Dog, the fourth bomb detonated during Operation Buster-Jangle. The briefing officer emphasized the safety of their position. Within ninety seconds of the blast, any danger from the radiation would be over, he said. With simple protective clothing, they could have been positioned much closer to Ground Zero. Most important, they were told the detonation would not make them sterile. Ribbing each other good-naturedly and pa.s.sing binoculars back and forth, the helmeted GIs had no reason to doubt their officers. As the soldiers jostled each other impatiently, the darkness receded, revealing the contours of a wide valley enclosed by ragged mountains. Five minutes before detonation, the men were ordered to turn away from Ground Zero. Some had film badges and goggles; most did not. Seven miles from where the men knelt in the sand, the twenty-one-kiloton bomb exploded 1,417 feet in the air.
Even with their backs to the explosion, their eyes shut and arms flung over their faces, they could feel the presence of the white light obliterating the long shadows of the morning sun. From the direction of the rising cloud of dust came a tremendous blast of heat. Thirty seconds later the first shock wave rolled over the troops. Some of the men were knocked over like bowling pins. aThe ground was running at you like a roller coaster,a recalled William Brecount, an equipment operator from Was.h.i.+ngton state.3 Robert Saunders, a Marine, said it felt like an oven door suddenly had opened behind him.4 Ubaldo Arizmendi, a small plane mechanic from California, remembers rocks falling on him.5 A few moments later, the soldiers were instructed to turn around and look at the fireball. It was beautiful and terrifying, capped by a thin layer of ice. High winds sliced off the mushroom cap and carried it adangerously closea to a mountain range on which reporters stood. aThough they drove frantically away, the newsmen were slightly contaminated,a Life magazine reported.6 A young corporal later told Life he was surprised troops could enter the blast area so soon after detonationa”unwittingly lending support to the no-residual-radiation argument put forth by the generals.
A short while after the detonation, some 2,796 men who had watched the explosion were transported to Ground Zero, where they were instructed to walk through a display area where make-believe fortifications and equipment had been subjected to the blast. Meanwhile, a combat battalion composed of nearly 900 troops who had also observed the test then aattackeda in the direction of Ground Zero where imaginary enemy soldiers were waiting.
Afterward, the troops went to a decontamination station where they were swept off with brooms and monitored for radiation. aIf the radiation intensity could not be lowered to 0.01 r/hr the individual was to shower and change his clothing, and vehicles were to be washed,a an official summary of the test noted.7 Some of the soldiers underwent psychological testing to determine the effectiveness of indoctrination programs. Researchers from HumRRO, the Human Resources Research Organization, an Army contractor based at George Was.h.i.+ngton University, found the troopsa confidence in the use of atomic weapons had aincreased materially.a8 But psychologists from the John Hopkins University Operations Research Office, known as ORO, claimed their studies showed deep worry and anxiety among the troops despite the indoctrination lectures.
Many of the troops returned to their home bases following Shot Dog. But several hundred remained behind to observe the last two explosions of the Buster-Jangle seriesa”the small surface detonation and the shallow underground detonation that s.h.i.+elds Warren had gone to Los Alamos to discuss the previous spring. As expected, both of these shots produced huge amounts of radioactivity. One hour after firing, the lips of the two craters measured 7,500 roentgens per hour. The troops waited until the radioactivity had decayed, but as a precautionary measure, they toured Ground Zero by bus instead of on foot. That arrangement, wrote DOE historian Barton Hacker, prevented the soldiers from getting much exposure, but he acknowledged, aThe absence of film badges for most of these troops a leaves much uncertainty.a9 The armed forces, not satisfied that the atomic maneuvers were realistic enough, pressured the AEC at the conclusion of each test series for permission to move the troops closer to Ground Zero. During the 1951 Operation Buster-Jangle, the soldiers were seven miles from the blast. The following spring, during the 1952 test series, they were four miles. They were moved up to two miles from Ground Zero during the 1953 series. And for a select group of aofficer volunteers,a eventually the gap was narrowed to one mile or less.
Military leaders also chafed under the dose limits that had been set by s.h.i.+elds Warren, arguing that soldiers should be allowed to receive higher doses than AEC employees because they would be receiving only ainfrequenta exposures. With the Cold War in full swing and the three branches of the military jockeying for their share of the atomic a.r.s.enal, Warren and the other members of the AEC were no match for the pressure. In the end, they gave the generals what they wanted, then they washed their hands of the problem.
The push to put the soldiers 7,000 yards, the equivalent of about four miles from Ground Zero, started almost immediately at the conclusion of Buster-Jangle. aSo strong is the feeling about the importance of being at a tactically realistic distance from Ground Zero that the Marines have stated they would not partic.i.p.ate if the seven mile limitation fixed during Desert Rock were again imposed,a said Brigadier General Kenneth Fields, the AECas director of Military Application.10 s.h.i.+elds Warren would not relent on the distance. He was worried not so much about fallout hazards as the potentially harmful effects of the blast on the troopsa”not to mention the potentially negative publicity attendant on any such disaster. aAccidents occurring at the time and place of an atomic explosion are magnified by the press out of all proportion to their importance, and any injury or death during the operation might well have serious adverse effects,a he wrote.11 aThe explosion is experimental in type and its yield cannot be predicted with accuracy.a But the military representatives were adamant, and after a lengthy debate, AEC commissioners overruled Warren. AEC Chairman Gordon Dean, in a letter to Brigadier General Herbert B. Loper, chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, formally approved the 7,000-yard stipulation as well as the militaryas request to maneuver on foot in the vicinity of Ground Zero as soon as practical after detonation. He cautioned, though, that the 7,000-yard line meant the soldiers would be afrom two and one-half to three miles to a bomb run.a12 The following year nearly 11,000 Defense Department personnel partic.i.p.ated in Operation Tumbler-Snapper, the 1952 test series in Nevada governed by the four-mile limit. Afterward the military decided that four miles was still too far from Ground Zero for soldiers to get a realistic sense of the nuclear battlefield. aHere again,a explained Lieutenant General L. L. Lemnitzer in a letter to U.S. Representative Carl Durham, awe found that we had not yet reached the point where the atomic explosion itself had any significant effect, psychological or otherwise, on the ability of the troops to maneuver after the explosion.a13 The military began lobbying to put soldiers even closer to Ground Zero for Operation Upshot-Knothole, the 1953 test series. In conjunction with this plan, they also launched a campaign to force the AEC to waive its 3.9 roentgens limit.14 The Department of Defense felt the AEC was anot realistica in setting exposure limits. The AEC had authorized up to 20 roentgens of exposure for crews of sampling aircraft, but ground crews had been limited to 3.9 roentgens. The AEC eventually capitulated to the militaryas demand, provided the armed forces issue a public statement announcing that it had a.s.sumed responsibility for troop safety. aOur position,a said one AEC official, ais that we probably cannot dictate exposure limits to the military, but we do have the responsibility of informing them of the hazards in order that they may be fully aware of the responsibility which they a.s.sume.a15 Before the 1953 Upshot-Knothole series began, the Pentagon conducted a study to determine the aminimum distancea from Ground Zero that troops could be placed. The armed forces knew how soldiers would respond if a nuclear weapon were detonated miles away, but what about soldiers who were called upon to provide aclose atomic weapon support?a16 mused Colonel John Oakes, secretary of the Army General Staff. aUnder conditions of a tower explosion, such as currently being conducted in the Nevada tests, it may be possible to place troops in deep foxholes as close as 800 yards from Ground Zero without these troops suffering serious injury.a General Kenneth Nichols, the officer who had run the Manhattan Projectas daily operations, recommended that selected soldiersa”who subsequently became known as aofficer volunteersaa”be allowed to receive up to ten roentgens per test and no more than twenty-five roentgens for the entire series while maneuvering within 1,500 yards of Ground Zero.17 aThe Surgeon General has agreed that it is highly improbable that such exposure will result in any injury to these selected individuals,a he wrote.
The officer-volunteer experiments, which began during Upshot-Knothole, were carried out in a democratic fas.h.i.+on: The volunteers themselves calculated the distance from Ground Zero from which they felt it would be safe to watch the detonations. The proposed distances then were approved by their commanding officers. The officer-volunteers, a memo later stated, amust have sufficient indoctrination in weapons effects to be fully aware of all the risks involved in exposure of this nature including possible latent effects, and must volunteer for such duty.a18 In 1955 Army Major R. C. Morris suggested that humans be used to validate tests conducted on dummies and animals at Ground Zero: aVolunteers in foxholes and p.r.o.ne on the surface of the ground can be exposed to low levels of blast and thermal effects until thresholds of intolerability are ascertained.a19 The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project was vehemently opposed to the idea. aIt is evident that the injury threshold cannot be determined without eventually exceeding it,a an official succinctly observed.20 Although atomic maneuvers would continue for another seven years, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project felt by 1955 that no more auseful dataa could be obtained at the Nevada site, according to a memo decla.s.sified in 1995. Like the scientists in the Atomic Energy Commission, AFSWP was also obsessed with the possibility of future lawsuits, that memo reveals: In particular it is significant that the long range effect on the human system of sub-lethal doses of nuclear radiation is an unknown field.21 Exposure of volunteers to doses higher than those now thought safe may not produce immediate deleterious effects; but may result in numerous complaints from relatives, claims against the government, and unfavorable public opinion, in the event that deaths and incapacitations occur with the pa.s.sage of time.
The statement was a harbinger of events to come. Following their tours of duty in Nevada or at the Pacific Proving Ground, the military partic.i.p.ants returned home with mysterious rashes, blisters, and allergies that still plague them today. Some have said in sworn testimony that their hair and teeth fell out and they suffered from nausea and vomiting. Many believe they carried away damaged cells that over the decades have developed into cancer and other diseases. These veterans also believe that the radiation they were exposed to at the bomb tests resulted in genetic mutations that have caused a vast a.s.sortment of diseases among their children and grandchildren.
Ubaldo Arizmendi, the airplane mechanic who witnessed the detonation of Shot Dog, said his face turned bright red and he came down with an extremely high fever twenty-four hours later. He was sent to the camp hospital, where he said he saw other men with similar symptoms. He has had skin and joint problems ever since. William Brecount, the young equipment operator, developed blisters on his feet. Forty-five years later the blisters still plague him, and sometimes his feet burn so much at night he canat keep a blanket over them. He said, aAt that age, I didnat think there was anything big enough to whip me.a Robert Saunders, the Marine who said it felt as if an oven door had opened behind him, had a melanoma on his back removed seventeen years ago and now has skin cancer.
The Defense Nuclear Agency, a successor to the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, contends that only 1,200 of the approximately 205,000 military personnel who partic.i.p.ated in at least one test in Nevada or in the Pacific got more than five rem of radiation. Based on that data, President Clintonas Advisory Committee calculated that only a handful of excess cancer deaths would have been caused by doses received during the troop exercises.22 But the veterans claim the data are inaccurate. Doc.u.ments show unequivocally that many veterans were not issued film badges, and the records for some film badges are missing altogether. Los Alamos scientist Harry Jordan in 1981 said one person in a platoon or company was often given a badge, and that dose was a.s.sumed to be the same for all other members of the group. aThere were also innumerable instances,a he recalled in an interview, ain which arbitrarily the executive decision was madea”that those people had no exposuresa”and therefore they werenat given film badges.a23 Newly decla.s.sified records, such as memos describing General c.o.o.neyas comments at the Fort Monroe conference in which he recommended using agamma detectors of low sensitivity (and very few of them)a show that some exposures were surely underestimated. Film badges in general could not measure the radiation from the alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons. Whatas more, many reports, including the militaryas own official accounts, show that unexpected fallout blew over the trenches or was found in the areas where the troops maneuvered. Despite the s.h.i.+fting winds, unpredictable fallout, hot spots, inaccurate recording instruments, and insensitive or missing film badges, the official doses a.s.signed to the soldiers were always and invariably low.
Even more unconscionable, internal doses received by military partic.i.p.ants as they marched toward Ground Zero on maneuvers or through equipment display areas have been ignored. This practice continues today even though the government knows partic.i.p.ants were not wearing respirators and that extremely high blast winds blew radioactive material from past tests into the soldiersa faces. William Jay Brady, a scientist at the test site for many years, said internal doses would be much higher than external doses but appear to have been ignored to prevent paying the veteran or his survivors the benefits mandated by Congress. Brady began working at the Nevada Test Site in 1952 and actually observed many of the military exercises. During his nearly forty-year career, he served as a radiation monitor, a security officer, an expert witness, and a health physicist. When he retired from the nuclear weapons program in 1991, he began helping atomic veterans and their widows with their claims. With his scientific background and firsthand knowledge of what went on, he has proved to be a powerful ally for the veterans. When asked why he switched sides, Brady responded, aI thought it was time to even the score.a24 No comprehensive epidemiological study has ever been done of the atomic veterans. The National Academy of Sciences in 1985 concluded a mortality study of 46,186 veterans who partic.i.p.ated in five test seriesa”Operations Upshot-Knothole, Plumbbob, Greenhouse, Castle, and Redwinga”but the study had serious flaws. It erroneously included 4,500 veterans who had never partic.i.p.ated in an atomic test and excluded 15,000 individuals who partic.i.p.ated in one or more of the test series.25 Another serious flaw was using the general public as the control cohort. Soldiers are healthier than civilians and generally have less cancer. Even so, excess leukemia cases were detected in the 1957 Plumbbob series.
In 1996, the federal government released the results of a mortality study of Crossroads partic.i.p.ants, which produced equally confusing results.26 The study concluded that Crossroads veterans had a higher death rate but lower cancer rate than nonexposed veterans. Although the authors were unable to fully explain the higher mortality rate, they said the findings do not support the notion that radiation exposure caused the increased deaths among Crossroads partic.i.p.ants.
Congress has pa.s.sed several major laws aimed at compensating veterans suffering from cancer possibly related to the radiation exposure they received while partic.i.p.ating in the atmospheric testing program or the American occupation of Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. The Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Exposure Compensation Standards Act of 1984 requires that veterans prove that they received at least five rem of radiation exposure, an expensive and all-but-impossible task for vets. The Radiation-Exposed Veterans Compensation Act of 1988 provides compensation if a veteran can show that he or she partic.i.p.ated in the occupation or testing program and suffers from certain specified cancers. Although the 1988 law does not require a dose reconstruction, many atomic veterans feel the list of cancers is too restrictive.