National Association of Atomic VeteransPortland Area Atomic Veterans Operation CrossroadsRadiation danger ignored by Navy
From The Oregonian, Tuesday, May 24, 1983 Washington -- Once-secret military documents reveal that the U.S.Navy ignored repeated warnings of health risks during atomic testing in the South Pacific in 1946, exposing tens of thousands of servicemen to potentially lethal doses of radiation. The documents -- memorandums and reports compiled by the military during two atomic tests code-named Operation Crossroads -- contradict the longstanding Pentagon contention that exposure was minimal and posed no serious health risk to those who witnessed the blasts. That Pentagon position has been invoked repeatedly by the Veterans Administration in denying almost 98 percent of the medical claims brought by former servicemen who were present at Operation Crossroads and other of the military's 235 nuclear tests and who subsequently developed health problems that they link to radiation exposure. The newly unearthed documents from Operation Crossroads indicate that fleet commanders pursued what one fleet safety officer called a "blind,'hairy-chested' approach to the matter of radiological safety" -- rushing men into the blast area within hours of two explosions conducted off Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, ordering the men onto unmanned target ships that had been bombarded with radiation, serving drinking water and food that might have been contaminated and allowing a fleet of 42,000 men to operate in such proximity to the target area that every ship may have received significant doses of radiation. The now-declassified documents were presented Tuesday at a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. They were obtained by the National Association of Atomic Veterans, a group of ex-servicemen formed to lobby Congress and the Veterans Administration for recognition that myriad maladies suffered by many veterans are linked to radiation exposure. The material was discovered this year in the library of the University of California at Los Angeles by Anthony Guarisco, a Navy veteran who served at Operation Crossroads and who suffers from a degenerative spinal condition, heart disease and disorders of the kidneys, bladder and prostate. The documents had been donated to the library by the widow of Stafford L. Warren, who served as medical adviser to the radiological section for Operation Crossroads. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency, which is compiling a report on Operation Crossroads, said Monday that the government had only recently become aware of the documents. During Operation Crossroads, two 20-kiloton bombs were exploded, one in midair and the other under water, to test their effect on an 84-ship unmanned target fleet and to determine whether the ships could be decontaminated and returned to service after the blasts. Several miles outside the Bikini Atoll lagoon where the target fleet was anchored, more than 100 other ships stood by to witness the tests and to provide personnel for the cleanup attempt. Within hours of the second blast, which showered the target fleet and the lagoon with radioactive debris, the fleet commander ignored a Warren memo that warned there would be contamination and sent ships into the area. That prompted a later memo in which Warren warned: "Contamination of personnel, clothing, hands and even food can be demonstrated readily in every ship in the (fleet) in increasing amounts day by day." In another memo he wrote that "the erratic location of high and low (radiation) intensities on the target ships does not permit an accurate estimate of any one individual's exposure," and he warned of a "subtle inhalation hazard, the exact magnitude of which is not known but which may be serious." In the same memo, written to the fleet commander 13 days after the second test, July 25, 1946, Warren cautioned that "some of the most important (target) ships have had many lethal doses deposited on them and retained in crevices and other places involved in the final cleanup stages, . . . Here the inhalation hazard will be extensive and unpredictable." A report of the fleet's Radiological Safety Section later that month indicated that "many persons received more than the permissible degree of radiation on a number of days, as indicated by the record of film badges. It is most likely that a number of persons not carrying film badges were likewise overexposed."
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