Eniwetok Clean-up
U.S. Atomic Veterans
Girard Frank Bolton, III.
Girard Frank Bolton, III. sent email about his duty.
From: G F Bolton enewetakatoll@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Enewetak Atoll Cleanup Mission
To: Keith pdxavets@aracnet.com
Date: April 17, 2007
HQ C Company 84th Engineer Battalion (FWD) 1977
Draftsman/Company Clerk/Mail Carrier for Lojwa (FWD FWD)
HHQ S-3 84th Engineer Battalion (FWD) 1977 and 1979
Draftsman/Operations/Mail Carrier for Lojwa (FWD FWD)
(also Music Radio Station Operator and “The Green Phantom” creator and author of “The Green Weenie Award” – surprise!)
I was transferred to the 84th Engineer Battalion as soon as I finished AIT. Shortly after I got to Hawaii, the Enewetak Atoll Cleanup Mission started. I worked as a clerk in C Company Headquarters. I was trained as a draftsman. When the Captain asked me if I wanted to volunteer to go on the Cleanup Mission, I asked him if I would be able to work as a draftsman, he assured me I would, so I agreed to go.
I was on the third plane carrying the troops to the Cleanup Mission. Although I still did clerical work, I got to do drafting work too. There were plans to be drawn so the carpenters could build the prefabricated buildings for the Lojwa Base Camp to house and support the 1,500 men cleaning up the radioactive debris on the Northern Islands. When C Company moved to Lojwa, I stayed behind and added Mail Clerk to my duties. You may remember me delivering your mail to you from the helipad on Lojwa and Runit.
When I stepped off the plane, I remember the heat and glare of the sun. Then I noticed the ocean and lagoon. The island was barely wide enough for the airstrip our C-141 landed on. The air was salty and fresh.
We were bussed to an A-Frame building that turned out to be the Chapel where we were briefed about our stay on the atoll. After that we got our baggage from in front of the “Greasy Spoon” and were bussed to the barracks.
The barracks building was a long wood framed corrugated tin wrapped building. Nothing covered the interior side of the wood studs along the outside walls. Plywood was attached to one side of the stud walls along the hallway and between the rooms. The screen doors opened into the center hallway that split the barracks rooms along the outside walls. Each room had tin covered windows that were hinged at the top and were propped open with a stick to circulate the warm air into the rooms. Each room slept 16 people and each of us had a footlocker and wall locker to keep our stuff. I remember demolitions experts had to evacuate the barracks because several people had collected live ammo from the beaches and had put them in their lockers. The demolitions team took the ammo a couple hundred yards into the lagoon and blew them up. I remember seeing the water shooting up into the air when they were detonated.
In the barracks, there were common showers, sinks and toilets in the middle of the building on the airstrip side. The sinks had freshwater thanks to the desalination plant operators. But I remember the showers were saltwater. This was implanted in my mind after I got third degree sunburn during an R&R trip to either Medren or Japtan one Sunday. Our only off day. We worked either ten or twelve-hour days six days a week. I put lots of sunblock on before I went snorkeling for the first time. And saw the most colorful fish and schools of fish I had ever seen before. But time passed quickly and before I knew it two hours had passed and the sunblock washed off. By the time the U-Boat got us back to Enewetak I was in pain. When I stood in the shower with only cold saltwater spraying on me, I noticed it turned to steam and evaporated off my skin. The Doctor refused to give me quarters because it would be the basis for me to be court-martialed for destruction of government property. Instead I made a deal with my sergeant to make up my days to recuperate by working extra hours. I did not get court-martialed and I repaid my agreement with the sergeant.
During off hours, we had quite a bit we could do to occupy our time. There were several clubs, a small gym, and an outdoor movie theater. According to the event, the chapel served as an indoor movie theater, auditorium and a church. Several people jogged the mile plus long island after sundown.
I remember playing cards in the barracks and going for takeout food at the “Greasy Spoon.” The cooks served pizza and other fast foods. It had tables and benches in a large open area with a view to the lagoon and was covered with a tin roof. Across the street was the outdoor movie theater where we watched whatever movie we were fortunate to get from the states.
The ocean and lagoon beaches were great to walk along and many people enjoyed fishing for sport. Sharks were a favorite catch for some. I remember several sharks being caught at the dock where the mess-hall leftovers and scraps were dumped.
When most of C Company moved to Lojwa, the barracks were almost emptied. I shared one room with the materials tester from S-3 and we divided the room into three sections with the leftover wall lockers. He had a bedroom. I had a bedroom. And we had a bar.We went on a reconnaissance mission and acquired furniture and equipment to furnish our bar. We found a crate, which we turned on its side and covered it with a sheet for the bar. We “borrowed” a refrigerator to make ice and for our mixers. A couple of empty wood spools were our end tables. And we found a couple of couches, chairs and a coffee table for our guests and us. We stocked the bar with snacks and the types of liquor our guests liked. I usually bartended and kept a large glass on the bar so everyone could help pay for the scotch, rum, whiskey, and the mixers. We would talk; some would play their guitars and sing while everyone enjoyed themselves. I made sure everyone’s glass stayed full.
I was good friends with the MARS operators, and when they were being replaced, we had a big going away party for them. I even invited the Colonel, who actually showed up. Well, neither one of the MARS operators showed up. Later that night the Colonel told them that their going away party was fun, but it was too bad they did not show up. The next day they apologized for missing the party and we all had a good laugh when they told me what the Colonel had told them. They said the Colonel stumbled off the bus and acted drunk. I told them he didn’t drink any liquor and he must have been putting them on because he drank only soft drinks that night.
Sorry that I don’t remember the names of many of the people I met and was friends with in Enewetak. I doubt that is the result of radiation poisoning, but simply the result of many years of not keeping in touch with them. However, I do sometimes joke about not needing a flashlight to read in bed. But, I am sure if you jog my memory with your name and stories I should recall more.
Seriously though, I have had no abnormal medical conditions since either of my visits to Enewetak. Doctors ask me if I exercise, I tell them no and they tell me to keep doing whatever I’m doing. However, I now wear glasses and have thinning hair. Not too bad for a forty-nine year old.
My first tour of Enewetak was five and a half months long. And during that trip, I transferred to the Drafting Department in HHQ S-3 Operations from C Company Headquarters. Evidently the Major in charge of S-3 was interested in my drafting skills and arranged my transfer after he and the Colonel asked me if I wanted to change over to Operations.
My second TDY tour in Enewetak was eight and one half months long. They refused my third and last request to extend my tour. I forget their reason. (They say when you get old you lose three things. Memory is the first and I don’t remember the other two.)
Right after I got off the plane and stepped on Enewetak for my second tour, it felt as though I was home again. On the way to the chapel for the briefing, one of the guys started telling me about the crabs that would pull you into the lagoon if you didn’t watch out. He said they were huge. I was letting him go on and on about the huge crabs and other abnormal creatures that were the result of the radioactive past that created mutant sea life. Just as he thought he had me convinced, one of the guys welcomed me back to the islands. Boy did that guy get embarrassed. Especially when he told the guy that I was on the third plane that flew the 84th Engineering Battalion to the atoll.
During my second trip to the atoll, I got a room in the air-conditioned barracks. This time there were three to a room instead of sixteen. Air-conditioning was a nice surprise. This room made me feel like royalty compared with the tin and plywood room during my first visit. And this time I had my scuba diving license. I intended to do some diving in my off time. It was great!
I vowed that when I got rich I would visit the atoll again. I’m still waiting on that to happen. Maybe some day it will. Regardless, I’ll always have my memories and photo album. I remember Enewetak to be the most romantic place I‘ve ever visited.
Too bad there were only five women to the fifteen hundred men on the atoll when I was there. Not romantic at all. That is why I want to return, to share the experience with someone with whom I can be romantic.
The moonless nights were actually brighter than the full moon nights. The sky was full of stars that I ordinarily would not see in the U.S. The ocean was lit with phosphorus-capped waves breaking along the coral reef. I would sit on the beach and watch the waves for hours on some nights. My mind would often dwell on my girl friends back home while I took in the spectacular views alone and lonely.
I did enjoy the company of two visiting females during their visits. One was a dental technician who enjoyed playing pool and the other was a Department of Energy visitor who liked scuba diving.
A few of us were sitting in the mess hall eating lunch and a new face was sitting at a table by herself. The other guys were talking about the woman and I told them they could keep talking while I got up and asked her if she minded some company. She told me that she would enjoy it and told me that everyone was treating her as if she had the plague. I told her that they had been on the atoll so long that they had lost their confidence around women. She and I went scuba diving a couple of times during her visit. And before anyone gets to thinking too much, I respected both women. Both were happily married. Unfortunately. But I did enjoy their attention and company during their visits.
I was fortunate to briefly meet Jacqueline Biset though. She visited the atoll right after (I think) she was filmed in The Deep. I was walking along the main road near the store with a couple of others when she came up to us and asked us where the swimming pool was. We showed her. After she left, someone asked us if we recognized her. I didn’t so he told me who she was.
I understand that the other five women on the atoll dated people who could get them a helicopter or U-boat ride or dated one of the security staff members. I remember being in the store and the woman in front of me at the cash register was buying condoms. The clerk mentioned that she did not have the proper equipment to use the supplies. She replied that she would that evening. Several chuckled when they heard her reply.
I heard there was a class action suit against the military for not allowing women to be assigned to the cleanup mission. The military believed there might be a problem with sexual harassment, the women did not agree. The military lost the case and allowed 24 women to be assigned to Enewetak. The building next to where I worked was converted into a barracks for the women. Just a couple of days before the women were scheduled to arrive on the island a higher power destroyed the building and overruled the court decision. The building was destroyed by a typhoon.
We watched the typhoon from the second floor’s stair landing of the three-story concrete block building. I took pictures during the typhoon and after. I’ll need to convert them to digital format. Then they will be available for me to share.
I’ve got photos of the damaged buildings, the fallen water tower, the damaged chapel, the mirror slick lagoon the day after, the coconut trees being wind blown during the storm, the waves breaking on the reef, then later breaking on the monkey pod trees growing along the edge of the reef and higher ground next to the three story barracks building. Actually I have photos from both of my visits to the atoll. However, I did lose some of them after my second visit. A photo lab at Fort Carson lost about 15 rolls of my film. Over half of those were from Enewetak. Some of the pictures I have are of the plumes of water being shot into the air from the holes in the coral reef. The water would travel along gaps in the reef and spray up from a hole at the end of the gap. Unfortunately, I have no underwater photos.
The diving was great! I dove to see the marine life and the underwater boats, ship remains and equipment left over from the atomic testing. The colorful fish and other sea life was numerous and all new to me. The coral grew in various shapes and sizes. Some grew in bush shapes others in fan shapes and some in clusters. I saw brain coral, fan coral, fire coral, fluted clams, lion or scorpion fish, puff fish, rock fish, parrot fish, starfish, razor coral, several types of eels, stingrays, manta rays, nurse sharks, black tip sharks, one whale shark (took a photo of it from a helicopter), cucumber slugs, butterfly fish, lobsters, live sand dollars, and too many others to mention.
The beaches were covered in coral and sand. There was concrete debris and driftwood found along the beach too. Every once in a while some metal debris from the atomic testing was found along with the shells washed up on the beach. Then when you were lucky you would find a glass float from a long forgotten fishing net washed up on the beach.
I saw holes in some of the reef along the lagoon beaches. I imagined some were produced from the atomic testing. Many of the holes looked man made, or as a result from extreme heat from the atomic tests, but not natural.
I enjoyed eating coconut from the shell and drinking its milk too. I collected shells and coral along the beach. I saw hermit crabs, rock crabs, sand crabs, newts, geckos, etc…
I had a friend who worked for one of the civilian contractors whose immune system had decreased. According to his doctor, Enewetak was low in disease after the atomic bombs. So his body did not produce the defenses needed to fight disease. I think he told me he had been there for about three or five years. I noticed both times I returned, I would catch a cold for the first week or so. Then my resistance returned to normal.
The second time I was in Enewetak, I was asked to run a music radio station during the day and evening. Someone had found and rebuilt a transmitter from the debris left over from past military. The owner was too busy to record his records and tapes and change out the three-hour reel-to-reel tapes being broadcast to the radios on the atoll. I refused to be paid money for recording the music onto the tapes, so he kept his cabinet stocked with food, snacks, and drink for me to enjoy. I just wanted to keep myself occupied in my spare time. After my daily military job was over, I would eat at the mess hall before recording music for the radio. Sometimes someone would give me one of their records or tapes to record and play over the air. It was nice getting complements about the music and being recognized. There was no talking or commercials on the radio, just music. They couldn’t have recognized my voice, so I guess word got around about who is who on such a small island. He would put on a tape when he woke up and I would replace them during the day and night. He would replace the last one before he went to sleep. He would usually start the day with easy listening. I would follow that with easy listening, change to rock near lunch time, continue with either rock or easy listening, then change to country for the off hours when the bars were open. The last tapes of the night were usually classical music.
Even though most of what I describe sounds like a dream vacation, the morale of most of the troops would not agree. Some grumbled that the government could not send prisoners to do the work because that would be inhumane. The heat, the sun, the long work hours, the lack of air-conditioning, the lack of female companionship, the divorces, I could go on but you get the idea.
It was during my second trip when I created “The Green Weenie Award” and became “The Green Phantom” as a morale booster. Only a couple of people in S-3 knew who I was. They would keep their ears and eyes open for people who would qualify to get the award. Basically it was to award people who had performed a good job but were not thanked for their efforts. It was also to pick on people who made the occasional blunder but usually did good work. I would hand-draft each certificate, put it in a shotgun envelope and place it in the appropriate distribution box in the administration office. The award name and emblem was created and designed from an emblem worn by “Wicked Wanda” in the comic strip of a popular men’s magazine. The Green Phantom name came from my interest in several comic book and television characters from my childhood. I awarded one to a lieutenant who reported transporting several loads of debris to Runit via a u-boat that had sank to the lagoon floor several weeks before. I congratulated him for his ingenuity in using all resources to his best advantage (or something like that).
No one was immune; I awarded one to the Battalion Commander too. I think it was for his excellent acting skills when he picked on the MARS operators for missing their own going away party. (I’m probably wrong because that happened during my first tour, and I did not start the award until my second trip.) I think I awarded one each week, but I’m not sure. Let me know if you got one and what it was for. Unfortunately I did not save any copies. If any one still has theirs, I would appreciate getting a copy.
I understand rumor had it that HHQ Administration was giving the awards. The few who knew the truth kept quiet. Thanks to all who knew and kept the secret. Hopefully all statutes of limitations (if any) have expired since then. I heard that morales were lifted when someone got their award, both by the recipients and those around them.
By the way, since I am discussing certificates, I lost my copy of the certificate the military gave to all the participants in the Cleanup Mission. If anyone knows how I can get a duplicate, I would appreciate the info.
I was in Enewetak when Mutual of Omaha’s Marlin Perkins visited and filmed “The Sharks of Enewetak”. I was good friends with the medical staff and heard their complaints about not being equipped to treat a stroke or heart attack patient. They were concerned with Mr. Perkins’ age and medical risk.
Mr. Perkins spoke to us in the auditorium/chapel and made a good impression to all who attended. I got to see the one-person sub they used during the filming and was sailing in a twelve-foot Sunfish sailboat when they were filming the show near another island along the atoll. I did not watch the episode until I was back in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks.
I knew there were sharks in Enewetak and swam with some during my visit, but I did not realize how plentiful they were nor how aggressive they were until I watched the show they filmed at Enewetak. One of the sharks attacked and broke a propeller on the sub during the filming. And I’ll never forget the shot of hundreds of sharks swimming in a circle below the camera. A dive partner and me decided to dive a couple hundred yards away from one of our favorite dive spots. We came to an area that had no fish swimming in it. I thought that was odd and noticed the silt from the lagoon floor was hovering like fog in a field. My dive partner indicated he needed to clear his mask. While he was clearing his mask, I noticed the shapes of the coral looked like bushes along a fence. Then I saw two sharks swimming along the other side of the “hedge”. At first, I was impressed when I saw the beauty and grace of their power while they swam through the water. Then it dawned on me the possible danger of the situation. We were forty-five feet below the surface in their territory. I remember praying that I wanted to go to heaven but not that day.
I signaled to my dive partner that there were sharks nearby. He turned to look while they turned towards us and swam between two coral heads that looked like a gate opening in a wall. When he turned back towards me he grabbed my leg and jerked it towards him. I did not realize that I was moving too fast to leave the area until he grabbed my leg. The sharks came towards us and split to opposite sides of my dive partner and me. We turned back-to-back and faced the shark that paired off for each of us. I could see my shark and my dive partner but not my dive partner’s shark. We slowly swam towards the beach and to the surface. The sharks followed us until we were about fifteen feet below the surface and we did not see them again during our swim to the beach. They reminded me of two air-force pilots escorting an enemy jet out of their airspace. I remember feeling that they were highly intelligent creatures. We visited the marine laboratory and told the marine biologists about our encounter. They told us that the black tipped sharks we saw were usually very aggressive. They thought we may have disturbed their mating area and decided to escort us out of their area instead of attacking us. We joked that they just wanted to make love not war.
That Christmas in 1979 was spent in tropical shorts, shirts, boots and hats. (Mine was shaped like Peter Pan’s hat.) We had a Christmas Decoration Contest and the decoration that I made for S-3 won the contest. I still have the engraved award. I made a papier-mâché Santa and Elf. The elf was making a doll next to the fireplace (painted on cardboard) and Santa was sitting in a (cardboard) rocking chair reading a letter that said, “Dear Santa - All I want for Christmas is for my Daddy to come home from Enewetak. – Susie.” I painted a tear running down his cheek from behind his wire glasses.
I could continue, but I want to hear what others remember from their visit. Good and bad. I welcome any and all correspondence. I’ll add more memories at another time. Eight pages are enough for now. I thank all who have posted before me. Many versions of the memories of the Cleanup Mission have been a pleasure to read. Thank you again for sharing and allowing me to share too!
Sincerely,
Girard Frank Bolton, III
PO Box 501023
Mobile, AL, 36605-1020.
enewetakatoll@yahoo.com
Keith Whittle
May 16, 2007
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