We were sent an article about Mildred from David Thomas a regular contributer for the Crossroads section.
I called Mildred and ask for an interview about her service at Operation Crossroads.
My questions and comments are in italics.
I explained to Mildred about the website and how I had a section on Crossroads. She doesn't have a computer but her daughter does. I also asked if she remembered Charles Decker (Crossroads Section) Pharmistists Mate on the Bountiful.
No, I don't, she said. So many things have happened since 1946. The Ship was decommissioned after that in Seattle Washington. Everyone went their separate ways. A lot of people were discharged from there. My husband was on there and was discharged right away. He was a navigator.
You know what started all this was the Women's Military Memorial. I wrote a long article for them, whether it will be used or not in the displays. It will be in the archives for references.
Yes thats a very good thing that they're doing finally for women who served in the military.
I'm looking at a picture of you, as a Navy Lieutenant is that right?
Yes, a full Lieutenant.
When did you join the Navy?
In 1943.
Where did you join?
Portsmouth, Virgina. Naval Hospital.
Where did they send you after you completed your training?
I stayed, see when you go in, when your a nurse, your already an RN, your ready to go to work the next day. Actually that's what happened, I stayed there until I went aboard the Bountiful. We were supposed to go to England, At the time I had orders, I had pneumonia. So I did'nt know where I was going. I was going to pick up a number in New York. But later I found out because there was another nurse that went at the same time, and she ended up in England.
Lucky her.
I don't think so, It was pretty rough duty.
Sure it was.
After that did they put you on the Bountiful?
I went aboard the Bountiful in San Francisco. We made runs back and forth, picking up patients in Honolulu, and bring them back.
The patients were men who were injured during the fighting in the islands in the Pacific,
right?
Its hard to explain, part of them were flown in, part of them dropped off from other ships, I don't know how they ever kept up with it. But they were trying to get them back to the states. It was mostly by ships until they got them to the West Coast. Then they would try to get them on trains.
The Bountiful was strictly a hospital ship, in fact we carried an emergemcy hospital that could be set up ashore or dropped off if needed.
How long were you on the Bountiful before you went to Bikini?
We went into Japan right after the treaty was signed, because the buildings and sewers were so damaged until there were no suitable buildings ashore for hospitals. We had two hospital ships anchored there, that took care of the sick.
Do you remember the name of the other one?
Gosh, I think it was the Haven.
Did you go ashore in Japan?
Oh yeah, we were there from September until the spring.
Did you go to Nagasaki or Hiroshima?
We got close, we went down to pick up patients at Kobe. Were were supposed to go ashore there but they had a typhus epidemic. We were scheduled a port call to pick up patients and also some passengers if there was space available, and we did bring back some Army patients from there. No one went ashore except the captain of the ship. He reported to the headquarters. When we left we came back to San Francisco, we were loaded completely, by that time we knew we were going to Bikini. Our first orders were to go straight down to Bikini, but the ship needed some work done, so we came back to San Francisco, unloaded patients, and us too, because they put her in dry dock and did some work.
Do you know how many nurses were on the Bountiful?
I think it was 18.
18? That doesn't sound like very many.
It wasn't, but let me praise the hospital corpsman, because so many of them were called independent duty. A lot of them served on ships that did not have doctors. Ours were supervising. You would go from ward to ward and worked all kinds of hours.
I told her about atomic veteran Charles Dittmer who was a corpsman and his visit to Hiroshima and the pictures of the flattened city he took.
I can imagine, that's the reason we didn't go into Kobe, we hit fog and didn't go in, we didn't go in there until noon because the harbor was so devastated, ships out of water, and sunk in the harbor, it was complete devastation. So far as Japan, that was devastation plus. The worst road in the United States at that time was better than the best road in Japan. I went up to Tokyo about 10 times, we could not go ashore there unless there was a male with us. You never felt safe, you were looking over your shoulder.
Were the people friendly?
Yes and no. The men were not. You would get just about even with them on the street, and you could see out of the corner of your eye, they would spit at you. The women would back off and bow, but at that time the women were about 2 yards behind the man anyway. It was about 50-50.
Tokyo itself was completely demolished, interestingly, right across the street would be total devastation, they knew what they were doing when they dropped those firebombs, even right around close to the Imperial palace, and downtown, where MacArthur had his headquarters.
I had never written anything about this (until recently), my child is so surprised, I'm 77 years old, and I just never talked about it, I didn't want to recall it. My service doesn't have bad memories and it does have bad memories, your talking out of both sides of your mouth. There were good times with it. I felt honored being able to serve.
The Bikini business, I typed 10 or 15 pages for the Womens Memorial archives.
Were you in the service?
Yes, mam.
Well then you know about rank and lining up ships according to seniority, well thats why.. we had a senior captain out there at the time. I believe the McKinley was acting as press and command ship. We followed right there.
We were less than 15 miles from that sucker when it went off. There were two of them there at Bikini, one above and one below.
Did you see both of those?
Yes.
And we got a great book, of coarse they took our cameras away, before we ever left the states.
The book was called Operation Crossroads?
Right. I treasure that. The pictures are great in it.
Were any of the sailors injured and came on to the Bountiful, any contamination that you know of?
No. We had checks after we were discharged. Everything seemed to be alright.
They only had a certain number of special glasses that you could actually watch. Otherwise, we had our eyes closed and in our elbows there. After counting, they said all clear, you could look, by that time the mushroom was up, and it just kept boiling and boiling.
You were on deck for that one?
You had to be on deck. We got up at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, everybody had to have breakfast and all the watertight doors had to be secure. All the patients had to be on deck, if they could sit in a chair they were in a chair, if they needed to be a bed patient they were strapped in a litter, they didn't know what was going to happen. My husband was on the bridge.
Is your husband alive?
No, my husband died in 1981.
I don't know if he had complications from that, because his family lived to be old as Methusala, up in their 80's. He kept having blood clots and had cancer of the prostate. He had poor health for about 2 years.
I'm sorry to hear about that.
So, Mildred when the first one went off, did you hear the noise from it.
Yes, and you could hear the command ship talking to the pilot who was going to drop it or detonate it, and they had trial runs before that, you could hear them counting it down to bombs away.
Then you heard it a little bit later?
No, it was almost instantly that you heard a boom.
And you could see the light from it?
Oh, yes, I could see the light, you could see it with your eyes closed as tight as possible, if you would bend your elbow and stick it (your head) in there completely, you know embeded in your arm, you could see light as bright as a flash of lightning or the noon day sun.
You worked as a nurse and were familiar with x-ray machines and..
Now that you said that, we had a piece of x-ray film, had everybody had a piece of x-ray film on them in their pocket, that had to be turned in afterwards. You were assigned a location on the ship, you couldn't just say, well I'm going to be here. Ships are marked off in yards. You were there and you knew where your patients were going to be, and patients were given a film. So they knew your exact location, so if you did get it, they would find out. We had to turn it in.
You knew something about radiation already, didn't you?
Yes.
You knew that there was something about the new bomb that had to do with radiation?
Definitely. We also had lectures out there. They had lectures frequently on all the ships, cause they had hundreds of scientists out there, technicians of all kinds doing these studies, but all these ships had different ones lecturing. I didn't understand it. Not even some of the line officers understood what they were talking about.
You (she) knew the danger of radiation from removing radium from people who were having treatment for cancer.
Were you doing things like that?
That was even in our nursing school. I had four years of school before I even went in the service. That you don't touch it with your own fingers, use a forcep when you remove it, it goes into a lead tube. You take it directly back to the laboratory for storage. If it had to come out in the middle of the night, you didn't stop. So I knew about radiation. I knew about the danger of radiation. But we went back in the same day, we did not take on water after that.
What did you think about the one below the water?
We got an unbelievable vibration, from that immediately, through our ship. We went back into the lagoon, that afternoon on the first one, we never did go back after the last one, because we came back to the states. We left a hospital ship out there, in fact there was a hospital ship out there acting as a hotel for scientists and what have you.
The second one was probably more dramatic than the first one wasn't it?
No, it blew that water up and it just kept going, it was the same in a way but not as colorful as the first, but it threw the water up so high.
Well, what a deal, your a pretty rare breed to have seen an atomic bomb go off!
Well, when your young you have no fear. If someone would take me now and say, this is what your going to do. I'd probably say, take me to the brig.
Mildred, when you would tell other people what you did out there, what kind of response would you get?
I really didn't talk about it too much.
I told her about the Crossroads video and promised to send her one right away.
I gave her the address of the website so her daughter can have a look and also told her I would ask David Thomas (Crossroads) who lives in the same town to give her a call.
Mildred asked me to put McGirt next to her name on her page, she said they wouldn't know her by the name Dudgeon which was her husband's name.
I wasn't married then, aboard the ship, it was McGirt.
Mildred said she still gets around and even went out and worked in the yard today.
She gave me her address for the video and I thanked her very much for taking the time with me.
Keith Whittle
April 6, 1998
Operation Crossroads