Swimming in the Atomic Lagoon

Quigley, Eileen

Swimming in the Atomic Lagoon by Eileen Quigley Morale was high among the sailors who set off for the South Pacific at the end of World War II to participate in "Operation Crossroads,"...

...Relying heavily on the reconstructions, the VA has refused all but 14 of 1,748 claims for compensation for injury alleged to result from radiation exposure...
...I suppose they were so curious to look at what had happened ." "The public relations angle" In published accounts leading up to and following the tests, there is scant mention of concern for the safety of the participants...
...Some, like T.W...
...We'd always depended on the government to take care of us . " disease that overcame my father's body: "It sounds very much as though his demise was due to exposure," Morgan said in January 1983...
...As an officer, my father enjoyed the luxury of volunteering for such potentially dangerous duty...
...His job at Bikini was to put out fires on the U.S.S...
...They never told us anything...
...Besides, the badges at best told the government only the amount of radiation to which a man had been exposed...
...Maynard Blossom was sent back on the U.S.S...
...Thinking it strange that such extremely high radiation levels could have dissipated overnight, my father opened his Geiger counter and discovered that the wires were not connected correctly...
...Guarisco, who spent 67 consecutive days on Bikini immediately after the tests, organizing the entertainment of the men, claims that the government has no record of his immediate return to the island...
...They did nothing to help a man avoid that radiation...
...It appears from the papers that it was difficult to impress upon the military commanders the danger of radiation...
...Radiation particles clung to the zinc plates in these desalinization units...
...Congressional hearings, and the attendant public outcry, moved the Department of Defense to set in motion a review of the case histories of the participants in all the nuclear tests...
...The young officers used to joke about this and walk around with their pants unzipped in the hopes that they would be sterile longer," he said...
...When Ken Marshall's ship, the U.S.S...
...His teeth are deteriorating and he has trouble with his eyes and legs...
...Men who dove underwater to rescue submerged vessels, or retrieve information lost when the ships sank, also wore no special garments...
...Highly contaminated, the volunteers returned to the fleet and were told to discard their clothing and shower thoroughlythe standard procedure in those days for dealing with overexposure...
...My father described "playing hideandseek with the radioactive water...
...Jerome Martek worked in the engine room of the U.S.S...
...At the time, I did not know what radiation was nor what it could do to you," Richard Roehl, a test participant, wrote in 1980...
...Jerome Martek became sterile after Bikini...
...Testing the air and surrounding area for radiation, he and his fellow crew members determined the ship was "perfectly clear in every way" and completely restored power in ten hours...
...In May of this year, Federal District Judge Bruce Jenkins ruled the United States negligent in the death from cancer of nine people who lived downwind of the Nevada test sites in the 1950s at which numerous atomic tests were conducted...
...We did not know enough to be scared...
...Rockingham, arrived in Oakland, it was directed several times to move to different locations in the harbor, apparently because no one knew what to do with the contaminated ship and its crew...
...Not having confronted before the problem of decontaminating irradiated vessels, the military set out to rid them of their poisonous materials in true Navy fashion: by scrubbing down the decks...
...Richard Roehl, for example, spent almost nine hours in the water after the second blast, repairing the stern of a damaged ship...
...Proud and almost defiantly selfsufficient, my father lay helpless in a hospital bed, his once-curly red hair limp and grey, his face gaunt and lined with pain, his brilliant mind dimmed by heavy sedation...
...If the sand is sold to an outside concern, he said, the persons receiving it should not be advised of the source "because of their likely failure to understand that no hazard from their radioactive materials existed ." Not having confronted before the problem of decontaminating irradiated vessels, the military set out to rid them of their poisonous materials in true Navy fashion: by scrubbing down the decks...
...It was not until she filed a Freedom of Information request in November 1982 that she received a response—a fact sheet stating that more than 49,000 of the estimated 220,000 veterans involved in the 17-year testing program had, to that date, called the toll-free number and sent in their one-page biographies...
...Colonel Warren expressed concern that the sand might contaminate water supplies...
...Finally the coordinators asked for volunteers to enter the lagoon and retrieve the animals and equipment that had been placed, for experimental purposes, on board the target vessels...
...Eric Furman has a similar problem and has been unable to work for 15 years...
...The available measuring devices also did not detect plutonium, the material from which the bombs were made...
...The monitors had another, more significant problem: their instruments—called "dosimeters"— gave readings for gamma rays, but not for alpha or beta particles...
...Admiral Blandy, the project coordinator, said he doubted anyone would suffer from the radiation...
...He was also a member of the Radiological Safety Section at Operation Crossroads...
...At the time of detonation, the men were "directed to face in a certain direction, to look at the deck, close the eyes, and place the hands over the eyes...
...Casual as these "precautions" now seem, even they were not enforced with rigor...
...He died in October 1983, his entire immune system destroyed...
...The lack of training prevented the monitors from safeguarding the participants' health...
...All they wanted was an assurance of continuing manhood, and they would be willing to tackle an atomic bomb every morning before breakfast, if not before coffee...
...You cannot move your head up, down, or sideways ." Guarisco was classified as permanently disabled in 1979...
...After Crossroads, Seabron discovered he was sterile...
...he was hospitalized throughout most of the year, and doctors were baffled by his rapid deterioration...
...anchoring and then reanchoring, moving ahead of the dangerously hot water...
...Despite the scientists' warnings that high levels of radiation remained, they approached the ships...
...I have been denied the chance of fatherhood and, because of my poor health, I can't adopt children," Martek said in 1980...
...He recalls having a rash all over his body at Bikini...
...Clamp, went back into the target area just under three hours after Able...
...Some of the oversights were basic...
...There was also the problem of disposing of the "hot" sand produced by the blasting...
...these, moreover, did not measure the radioactive particles an individual had ingested...
...This plan, however, posed a danger to the workers, who might inhale the radioactive material...
...Many ships remained intact in Able, but in Baker nearly every ship was damaged or sunk...
...However, as Dr...
...His landing craft beat a hasty retreat, narrowly avoiding the hull of a sunken ship just beneath the lagoon's surface...
...Nevada, the intended bulls-eye for Able...
...left them [the onlookers] shaken and horror-struck," Newsweek reported...
...In 1981, Richard Roehl found out he had a degenerative spine...
...The Defense Nuclear Agency study released in October acknowledges that the instruments used to measure radiation at Crossroads were not equal to the task...
...Since the men lived and worked on the radioactive ships, drank water drawn from the radioactive lagoon, slept naked on decks covered with radioactive particles, and ate food on board the target ships, they could constantly absorb these particles through inhalation and ingestion...
...If the host survives, he may die years later from bone tumors...
...The membranes around his heart and stomach have deteriorated as well...
...A sense of betrayal Meanwhile, the men who participated in Operation Crossroads continue to suffer from afflictions for which the government will not accept responsibility...
...He was forced to quit work in 1979 due to problems with his bones and nervous system...
...Anthony Guarisco has a disease called akylosing spondylitis...
...Otis Leon Walker also recalls having a rash as well as nausea and headaches during the tests...
...Recently declassified documents reveal that the ships remained "hot" for several months or even years after the test...
...We steamed right in there," Karasti said in 1981...
...Loeffler...
...During the years after the tests, my father developed an unusual series of health problems: underactive thyroid, diabetes, and a rare metabolic disease called hemochromatosis, caused by poorly regulated absorption of iron...
...All they wanted was an assurance of continuing manhood...
...Nevada, Able's target ship, immediately after the blast to keep the boat from sinking...
...One of Dr...
...Swimming in the Atomic Lagoon by Eileen Quigley Morale was high among the sailors who set off for the South Pacific at the end of World War II to participate in "Operation Crossroads," the first of 235 atmospheric tests of the atomic bomb that our government conducted between 1946 and 1962...
...The Baker blast, on the other hand, rose only 6,000 feet, displacing in the process two million tons of radioactive water that rained down upon the target fleet...
...During the 17 years that the United States tested atomic weapons in the atmosphere, more than 200,000 military personnel and 150,000 civilians were exposed to nuclear explosions...
...Nevada...
...Colonel Warren's papers document the Radiological Safety Section's concern for the safety of the participants...
...The reconstructions also assume that all the badge readings were accurate...
...Dangerously high levels of radiation forced the volunteers to turn back several times...
...Less than 1 percent of the nuclear test participants exceeded the current federal guidelines of 5 rem [the standard unit of radiation exposure] annual exposure," wrote Captain W.H...
...Able's mushroom cloud climbed rapidly to a height of 30,000 to 40,000 feet and air currents carried much of its radiation away...
...Thinking it strange that such dangerously high radiation levels could have disappeared overnight, my father reconnected his Geiger counter...
...To prepare the recruits for such hazards, the presiding authorities distributed lists of safety precautions, which I found among my father's papers...
...Frank Karasti developed a lesion on his lung about a month after Baker and experienced breathing problems until his death early this year...
...The tumor in the liver suggests he probably got a lot of internal exposure, probably inhaled and deposited in the liver?' Morgan directed the Health Physics Division for 29 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where research on the bomb began in 1943...
...Warren explained that most of the instruments were "experimental in nature" because there had been no need for such instrumentation before Crossroads_ But today, Morgan says, "the dosimetry was not what I would consider adequate even then and certainly not with what we know today...
...Some participants were warned they might be temporarily sterile during the tests, Maynard Blossom recalled later...
...Still, the report concludes, the test was conducted "without irradiation injury to any persons ." "The irony of it all is that the majority of the veterans who were at Crossroads were World War II vets," Anthony Guarisco said...
...Marshall has been operated on eight times for various benign tumors throughout his body...
...He had a brain abscess, problems with internal bleeding, and one-third of his lung removed...
...Finally, no more than a couple of days after Baker, they approached the lagoon...
...These detailed the need for protective clothing, such as long-sleeved shirts, pants, gloves, and shoes, on board the ships...
...NAS was supposed to release preliminary results of the study last year, but it has yet to do so...
...New recruits were added to serve as safety monitors, but as RadSafe Director Colonel Stafford L. Warren's personal papers reveal, their training was hasty and inadequate...
...before Crossroads there had been no opportunity to study the effects of radioactive fallout in a controlled experiment...
...Karl Morgan, a pioneer in the field of atomic energy and a health physicist, believes there is a connection between the bomb tests and the disease that overcame my father's body: "It sounds very much as though his demise was due to exposure," Morgan said in January 1983...
...Naval Academy at Annapolis, which Truman did in 1942...
...Because of the elaborate safety plans," he wrote, "injury is highly improbable...
...The men were supposed to have been issued film badges, which, once developed, would indicate how much gamma radiation had passed through the individual's body...
...But when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, my grandfather asked his childhood friend, Harry Truman, to appoint his son to the U.S...
...In rust, tar, and paint, he found beta doses up to 600 times greater than the amount of gamma radiation...
...They played ping-pong, basketball, and volleyball and often swam in the lagoon to cool off from the tropical heat...
...The meter shot off the scale...
...You can't see it, feel it, taste it, or smell it...
...Bradley offered another, unpublicized reason: "The Navy was surprised by Test Baker," he said...
...Grubbs died of bone cancer in early 1983...
...Our whole crew thought we had died and went to heaven," recalls Anthony Guarisco, who served on the ship that carried liquor, soda, cigarettes, candy, and athletic equipment to the recruits...
...Theodore J. Walas underwent a thyroid operation in 1969...
...We even swam up close to the blast area to do some 'sight-seeing " The hot lagoon My father's job at Bikini was to monitor the electrical equipment on board the U.S.S...
...Radiation lingered after the second test much longer than anticipated and many of the ships remained radioactive and inoperable until 1951, when they were sunk off the coast of California...
...David Bradley, a safety monitor at the tests, in his book, No Place to Hide...
...Atoms in the sea Operation Crossroads took place in the onceidyllic Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands, acquired by the United States from the Japanese after World War II...
...The original idea was to show that the Navy was a match for the bomb and then sail back to the West Coast...
...He died at Christmastime in 1970, just three months short of his 46th birthday, of cancer originating in the liver...
...His letters home indicated that he reboarded the ship 24 hours after the first test, which sank five ships and severely damaged nine others...
...We'd always depended on the government to take care of us!' One of these men was Joseph Bernard Quigley, then age 25...
...Morgan said he found beta doses three times greater than the amount of gamma radiation on the island and the target ships...
...A mere two weeks after the Hiroshima detonation, the United States began planning tests to determine the bomb's effect on battleships and other military equipment, which defense planners at the time believed could be redesigned to meet the demands of atomic warfare...
...Bradley...
...Saratoga...
...The tumor in the liver suggests he probably got a lot of internal exposure, probably inhaled and deposited in the liver?' Morgan directed the Health Physics Division for 29 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where research on the bomb began in 1943...
...Monitors were not sophisticated enough to understand that when the radiation levels were so high, they paralyzed the meters," Morgan said...
...But none of the 583 crew members assigned to the Saratoga before she sank was issued a film badge...
...Test planners also had trouble arranging for technically trained personnel to go to Bikini...
...Bradley noted in his book that the monitors substituted less sensitive measuring devices when Geiger counters failed and that the saltwater and humidity caused many instruments to malfunction...
...He reconnected them and the meter shot off the scale...
...It was a somewhat cheerful game, although more than a little macabre, because we were all young, and we had an implicit trust in our superiors and the scientists attached," recalled J. Bankston, one of a handful of enlisted men selected to assist the scientist who assembled the bomb at Operation Crossroads...
...Plutonium, which requires 24,000 years before half of its alpha radiation decays, destroys "bone marrow, and may kill its host by wrecking his red and white blood cells," wrote Dr...
...Many were sunk when it became apparent that they would never be rid of their radioactivity...
...Bladen replacing zinc plates in condensers, which converted seawater drawn from the radioactive lagoon into drinking water...
...Raised on a dairy farm in Missouri, he was taught the value of hard work at an early age and was instilled with a strong sense of duty—to his country, his religion, his family, and, above all, to himself...
...they remain in the body where they can cause damage over time...
...As the high-level radiation dissipated from the ships, the low levels remained...
...While showering may have removed radioactive particles clinging to their skin, it would of course have no effect on the rays that had penetrated their bodies or the particles they had absorbed internally...
...My diving equipment was a face mask, swimsuit, and sneakers," he wrote...
...I dove in the water right after the test...
...Pictures of the event show numerous barefoot and shirtless men on board the exposed ships...
...When I requested my records, the government pointed out emphatically that for six days after the shot, I was on an LST [a landing craft] and then at Rondelap...
...Bradley wrote at the time, "Fission products, having fallen like a coat of paint over these ships, cannot be washed off by saltwater and suds...
...We did not know enough to be scared...
...Baker, the underwater blast, was more impressive...
...They tested the animals, but they never tested us," George Seabron said...
...Reconstructed rems The government took great pains to document the damage to the target ships and equipment at Bikini...
...wrote a doctor who participated in Operation Crossroads as a safety monitor, "and they would be willing to tackle an atomic bomb every morning before breakfast, if not before coffee...
...The directors offered another cost-saving measure: dumping the acid solutions used to decontaminate the saltwater systems in the harbor instead of in the deep sea...
...That year, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta conducted a study of two atomic tests in the Nevada desert and found a high incidence of leukemia among the participants...
...In layman's language, your spine becomes like a broom handle," Guarisco explains...
...My mother called the number in October 1978 and received a form, which she promptly filled out with information about my father's participation and returned...
...During the months after the ships were exposed, their crews lived and worked on them...
...John C. Hamilton, one of the 20 scientists from the National Academy of Sciences chosen to participate in the tests, noted readings of 180- and 240-times the accepted level of exposure in the lagoon and on board ships just after the detonation of Baker...
...The dock crew refused to unload the guns they had brought back from the target ship Nevada because the equipment was highly radioactive...
...Instead of huddling tonight against the charred side of the crumpled stack with my cold K-rations," he wrote, "I sit listening to Tommy Dorsey on Radio Frisco waiting for the boys to bring up some ice cream and cake to go with the new coffee we have brewing" Some had predicted that the explosion would cause huge tidal waves and massive destruction, and many observers seemed disappointed when the first test did not meet those expectations...
...Soldiers, eager to head home after months of battle, did not want to volunteer for extra duty...
...Today, almost 40 years later, it is hard to recapture the innocence and trust with which the 42,000 men who participated in this test regarded their government...
...The official reason was that it would cost too much and deploy too much in the way of personnel and equipment in the South Pacific...
...Grubbs, were ordered to fly their planes toward the radioactive cloud just minutes after the blasts...
...Their mission: to meet pilotless planes, carrying testing instruments, which had flown through the cloud collecting particles for scientific study...
...He told me to get out of my clothing and shower immediately...
...Yet it was not until 1977, more than 30 years after these tests, that the federal government even began to acknowledge that participants like my father may have been harmed by radiation exposure...
...Hamilton assured him that no water-soluble materials would remain on the ships' hulls by the time of the sandblasting, and the sand so used would therefore pose no problem...
...One of Warren's monitors commented that many of the officers "insisted on the blind, 'hairy-chested' approach to the matter [of radiological safety] with a disdain for the unseen hazard ." "You don't worry about the things you can't see or hear or taste," notes Dr...
...But there is a reason the government overlooks these flaws, and it is connected to the government's reluctance to study the effects of its bomb tests in the first place...
...In the first test, held on July 1, 1946, and code-named Able, a bomb was released from a plane and detonated over the U.S.S...
...It was gross negligence...
...Understandably, they feel betrayed today by the same government that denies responsibility for their afflictions and refuses to answer their claims...
...We had survived the Japanese only to fall victims to the same government we were willing to lay our lives on the line for," Eileen Quigley is a writer living in New York City...
...In the second, conducted on July 25, 1946, and code-named Baker, the bomb was suspended beneath a ship and detonated electronically...
...They reasoned that the Navy could save money by repairing four submarines used in the tests, the Parche, Searaven, Dentuda, and 7itna for use as reserve training vessels...
...The men who participated in Crossroads and the other tests served their country in good faith, and well...
...Finally they docked and a huge sign was posted on the ship warning that it was radioactive and forbidding anyone to board her...
...The Tuna and Searaven, however, were sunk off the coast of California in 1951 because they remained highly radioactive...
...Another veteran, Gerald Crozier, received a mock certificate of merit, honoring him as a "loyal guinea pig" who, "through an exaggerated sense of patriotism sacrificed his body to the rigors attendant to atom bombs!' The trust these men had in their government was matched only by their lack of awareness of the dangers of the radiation to which they were about to be exposed...
...The "reconstructions" serve to document the government's claim that overall exposure was not high enough to warrant concern about the participants' health, let alone further studies or compensation...
...Today, the iron in his blood is too low and his muscles and bones exhaust easily, causing extreme fatigue and constant pain...
...My father was an extremely patriotic man, and, were he alive today, he would probably say he was proud to have participated in the tests...
...The word was that we wouldn't be allowed liberty until those guns were unloaded, so we did it," Marshall said...
...I felt okay so I forgot about it ." And George Seabron, also a participant, said that he "dove in the water right after the test...
...The VA denied Martek's compensation claims...
...Enlisted men were not so fortunate...
...At the same time, Congress authorized the National Academy of Sciences to examine the "health experiences" of 60,000 individuals who took part in five tests between 1951 and 1957...
...The Geiger counter was silent...
...Martek showered twice, after which the scientist declared him "clean ." Ken Marshall entered the lagoon immediately after the blast to transport men to the target ships, where they then worked to salvage the wrecked vessels...
...Sailors were sent back on board radioactive ships within hours after bombs had exploded...
...Until the release of the Defense Nuclear Agency's study in October—the study completed in response to congressional pressure—the many declassified documents pertaining to Crossroads dealt exclusively with the fate of this material...
...Saratoga, and sent to the Pacific, just as World War II was ending...
...Once the ships were docked the Navy tried sandblasting to remove the radioactive particles that clung to the hulls...
...None discussed what happened to the men who served there...
...For his part, Dr...
...When asked how exposure levels are determined without such data, the agency responds that subjects are "assigned" a "calculated dose" based on a "scientific reconstruction of his unit's activity or analysis of badge readings from his unit ." These "reconstructions" are rife with welldocumented shortcomings...
...The plan was to detonate two bombs, identical to the ones used at Nagasaki, in the center of 84 ships positioned in concentric circles at varying distances from the target ship...
...A scientist walked by with a Geiger counter and asked me how I got so 'hot,' " Martek wrote afterwards...
...The government sent 100,000 men into Hiroshima and Nagasaki to clean up the destruction after the bombs were detonated...
...Frank Karasti's ship, the U.S.S...
...But it became an unmanageable operation" Faulty readings Operation Crossroads had problems from the outset...
...But in 1982 Dr...
...The project directors considered removing entire sections of the contaminated piping system and reinstalling them in active ships for experimental purposes...
...Based on film badge entries made at the time, the fact sheet said, "most exposures to DoD personnel during the tests were quite low...
...Gerald I. Crozier had a heart attack when he was 29 years old and has had abdominal problems since the tests...
...The thunderous column...
...A third blast, Charlie, which was to be detonated deep underwater, was canceled...
...It's all phony," Guarisco says...
...and for the most part they do not take into account the effects of ingested radioactive particles...
...An autopsy revealed that his body was riddled with the disease...
...Bradley's colleagues found evidence that the scrubbing could ingrain the radioactive particles more deeply into wooden surfaces...
...Of course, many received no exposure at all and some received more...
...Others were ordered to fly planes through mushroom clouds to collect radioactive particles just after explosions...
...I saw no protective clothing, no gloves, no respirators, nothing," recalls Ken Marshall...
...Like many first-born sons of Irish Catholic families, he considered becoming a priest...
...The project coordinators had to delay the men from going back into the "hot" lagoon immediately after Baker because the radiation levels were too high...
...The Bikini test, insofar as our section was concerned, was conducted as an emergency, and a lot of compromises were made," Warren wrote to one of the physicians assigned to his safety unit...
...This marks the first time that the government has been held accountable in court for conducting tests without safeguarding the health of participants...
...Unlike gamma rays, which penetrate the flesh like X-rays (and can either damage cells or pass through the body without biological effect), alpha and beta particles are swallowed or inhaled...
...But the project directors proposed no special precautions for disposing of this material, according to the minutes of one of their meetings...
...He was also a member of the Radiological Safety Section at Operation Crossroads...
...Bradley in 1946...
...The implications of this decision for the participants at Crossroads are not yet clear...
...Equally important, however, was the military's desire to test the effects of radioactivity itself on both animals and equipment...
...My father was one of those volunteers...
...But they also include daily lists of men who were overexposed...
...Men were placed in trenches two miles from ground zero in the Nevada tests...
...In 1970 his ribs began to crack without explanation...
...They were "good American types, clean-cut, vigorous, grimy, gum-chewing characters dressed in shorts and sandals cut from GI boots," wrote Dr...
...The sailors frequented a bar called the Studs Saloon, which bore the sign, "No Wine, No Women, No Nothing," and played Atomic Pari-Mutuel, betting on the exact time that the bomb would explode and the number of ships it would sink...
...Hamilton was worried about the way the public might react to the presence of these hazardous wastes...
...So Marshall and his fellow crewmen performed the distasteful task themselves...
...There was another difference...
...Distinguishing himself in both languages and mathematics, he graduated a year early, in 1945, with a B.S...
...Ken Marshall underwent a similar operation in 1954 and recalls losing clumps of hair during the tests...
...The government admitted in 1977, however, that there were badge readings for only a quarter of the men in Crossroads...
...When the tests were postponed from May 15 to July 1, several hundred specially trained recruits resigned...
...The consensus of the medical and scientific community is that the risk of any adverse health effect from exposure such as experienced by nearly all the test participants is very, very slight ." According to the agency's records, my father's calculated exposure was .033 rem...
...Although the agency said it would write her again with the results of the study, it never did...
...They wound their way around the graveyard of sunk and half-sunk vessels...
...Accordingly, he advised that "consideration be given to the public relations angle in not permitting the information to leak out regarding the local disposal of acid and sand containing some fission products...
...in electrical engineering, was assigned to the U.S.S...
...When Congress called for the studies of the bomb test participants in 1978, the Defense Nuclear Agency publicized a toll-free phone number in major newspapers throughout the country, requesting atomic veterans to call in information about their tests and their current health...
...Others were brought back to San Francisco for decontamination...
...They assume, for example, that participants followed their prefact, many of the troops probably moved within highly radioactive areas...

Vol. 16 • December 1984 • No. 11


 
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