Operation Hardtack 1
1958
US Atomic Veterans
Mike Jenkins
Mike Jenkins sent several documents and pictures about Operation Hardtack some of which I've scanned and included here. Mike has done an excellent job in speaking for the Atomic Veterans. He sent us copies of numerous letters of response from the Department of Energy, Veterans Affairs, The White House, House of Represenatives, U S Senate. Mike got some excellent publicity for the veterans from an article from the Los Angeles Times, speaking not so much for himself but for all atomic veterans that need medical and financial assistance.
Email: MikeSam@webtv.net
DOD Fact Sheet
Photo page
Atomic Veterans Memorial
JTF 7 Ships list
Telephone conversation with Mike Jenkins.
I live in Westminster California. I got a letter from a Lt. JG that was on our ship, Hartley Holte. He said that he could not say anything before because of the Secrets Act. And thats why in the records of the Mansfield, there is no record of it ever being out at the atomic test site. Because he said they were not allowed to write about it.
I asked a bunch of questions and contacted a bunch of people, and finally, it was not until 94, when I got this letter from Holte, that he said the Mansfield was only 3000 yds away from test Wahoo, in that test there were two submarines in the water and a destroyer that was even closer to the blast. It was never told that we were put that close to the blast, and the reason was to test hull security, and to test the serviceman's reaction, like they did the guy's in the desert in Nevada. We never knew it. Nobody ever told us. They could have killed us.
I told Mike that in some of the papers he sent, that Wahoo was a continuation of the Wigwam shot in (1955). And that they were still just experimenting and you guy's were a part of it. Did it damage the ship?
It did some damage. We knew something had to be up, when we were all told to walk around to the other side of the ship. I was a radioman, my general quarters post was communications between the bridge and CIC and the radar room. So I was above decks for every blast, and in one way it was a blessing, because I was able to see them all. And the other way it was not a blessing because I got the maximum out of exposure. That shot (Wahoo) we did not realize we were anywhere near that close to it, until it went off.
3000yds from that shot? So what happened when it went off?
It rocked and listed the boat pretty bad.
Were you sideways to it?
Yes, well it was on about a 20 degree angle from the bow to the side. It was hard to tell. I mean the thing was huge, it was an underwater blast, but it went 500 or 600 feet in the air too.
The bad thing was all the atomic waste in the water just sprayed all over everything.
Did it get the ship wet?
Oh yeah, the stupid part of the whole deal is that they would tell you to go take a shower.
It was recycled water, that they ran through the filtering system, the desal system. There was no way to take out radioactive contamination in the water. The systems were antiquated and weren't capable of that. They would run a gieger counter over you and you'd walk in to take a shower and come back out and you'd have just showered with radioactive water. And the same thing with the rest room facilities. On the Mansfield it was just sort of a long trough and eight or ten guy's would be sitting there and you'd have radioactive water running underneath you.
Did you get your dosimetry information?
Something like that from Las Vegas. I had film badges on and when they would go red you'd turn them in. We would turn them in and they would give us new badges. Once they went red or turned a certain color meant that you had received a certain amount of dosage. So they would take that one and put another one around your neck, and start you out with a fresh one.
The only place you could go, was to jump on one of the Mike boats and go down to the beach and the first thing you did was go swimming. You'd catch fish and bar-b-que them on the beach. They never said a thing about that. They say they did. We were never told not to swim or to eat the fish.
I've heard both kinds of stories from the veterans, some say they were told not to eat the fish and had all kinds of protection, some weren't told anything.
The only thing we had was goggles, we had a red tinted goggle. Some people say, on the other ships, they were told to wear long sleeved shirts, we never were. Most of the time, in general quarters state, you had short sleeves but you had to have a shirt on. In a lot of the cases, right after the blasts, when things were still in the air, guys were running around in shorts and no t-shirts, not only getting sun tans but radiation burns too.
Did people on your ship get burns, that you knew about?
Nothing that showed up. A lot of guys had red skin. I do welding and I'm very conscience of burns, that you can get from welding. I remember that in particular because you'd look like a raccoon, you'd have goggles on but your face was burned.
So what was some of the atmospheric blasts that you remember in particular. You've done a hell of a lot of work here. I'm looking at this chart you've sent me, and that was all taken from your ships logs evidently.
Ships logs and records of the blasts, the only thing I could do to compare, to make that chart up was to compare the height of the plumes. If you look at some of those things they go up to 80,000 ft. in the air. Huge blasts, there was one in particular, one of the first ones, they never really talked about that much, but if you look at the height of the plume on that on it was 80,000 ft. And they never even talk about it. Later on they talk about Pine and Cactus which was 18 Kt., and the Koa was 1.37 Mt. and then Oak which was 8.9 Mt.
Do you remember that one?
Yeah, Oh yeah, (he laughs) very well, because we weren't that far away, we were anly 20 miles away from that one.
Were you out on deck for that one?
I was on deck for all of them. The ones that we were close enough to go to general quarters on, which I think was under one-hundred miles, we went to general quarters. I'd say that was half of them. We were either docked moored or underway, crusing slowly, for some of them we were anchored 15 miles away, 10 miles away.
What was your impression of the Oak Shot?
It was incredible as far as the height and size, I see it on the television and videos but to see that thing, it just kept climbing and climbing and climbing and the top of the mushroom cloud kept forming, and forming.
Were you turned away from that one even with the goggles?
No, we were facing that one. I was on the bridge of the ship with a couple of the officers, the helmsman, signalman and other people on the bridge and the gunners were at their general quarters station. So there were a number of people who were outside when that thing went off. You see pictures of guys on the Boxer standing outside on the flight deck. Ranks of them looking at that thing.
Mike says he has several videos of atomic testing, and asked me if I had ever seen the tape Radio Bikini. Oh yes, I said.
My stepdaughter saw it, she was 14 years old the first time she saw it , she started crying, she couldn't believe it.
Mike said he has contacted 50 or 60 guys that were at Hardtack.
There were guys on the Boxer, guys who flew airplanes, helicopter pilots, army, Holmes and Narver, the Livermore lab.
Another thing, I found some information on the Mansfield as it was in mothballs down here in Long Beach, it went on to Argentina or somewhere like that. That ship, because it was so close to the blasts had a lot of radioactive hotspots still in the ship, so that anybody who served on the Mansfield after 1958, was exposed to high levels of radiation, from what was trapped in the metal of the ship.
We talked a bit about the VA and the historical perspective of the atomic tests, I complimented Mike on all the work he has done for the atomic veterans. He has contacted many members of the House and Senate about various issues for a long period of time.
I've only sent you about a tenth of what I could have sent. I've talked to the VA and the AEC many many times. I've had letter writing sessions where me and my wife and daughter spread everthing out on the floor during the weekends, sending letters, licking stamps, it takes a lot of time.
I've got a book I think it's used in Norway. It's a teachers aid book. Its all about the atomic testing. It's sort of a left-handed slap at the US. It's teaching their school kids on the stupidity of atomic testing, using all the documents and that kind of stuff in a grade school text book. It's something else. And the one from the Marshall Islands was printed in pictures and everything, and has little red crosses going through the fish and vegetables, for the people of the Marshalls not to eat that stuff. But they never said that to us.
Another interesting is that we were not allowed to have cameras over there, and even when we would write home, even if we mentioned, I remember when I got home one time, my parents had a couple of my letters and they were all cut up, I couldn't remember what I put in there that was cut out. There were holes in the letters, either I had mentioned an island we were at or something.
Do you rember any radiological problems happening to the ships out there. Getting caught in fallout or the wind shifting?
There were a number of times when you would turn to another direction and go at flank speed.
We escorded some boats out of there. It must have been the predecessor to Green Peace or something, which was never talked about. There was talk about escorting the Japanese trawler out of the area. We convinced them that they should leave. But this sailboat, they just sailed right into the middle of everything. It took some convincing to get them to leave.
Was it a Japanese ship?
No, they were a mixed group of Americans, Sweeds, French, nuclear protesters.
They sailed into the Danger Area?
Oh yeah, they didn't seem to have a name assoicated with their cause like Green Peace does now.
What a deal.
Yeah, they sailed right into the middle of it all.
One of the most hair raising things was when they tried to trigger a bomb and it wouldn't go off.
Duds you mean?
Yeah, like whoops, I forgot to hook that wire up. You could see these three or four boats heading towards where the bomb was set. You could see the towers through the high powered binoculars. Here these poor guys would go over there and they would have to trace and find the problem. We would take turns watching these guys. Waiting for it to go off.
Were there some other shots that you remember in particular?
We talked about Oak a little bit. How about Koa it says here on your chart, it went off on 13 May and that you were anchored 18 miles from that shot. It was a big one 1.3 Mt.
From what I remember that one was a lot wider, Oak sort of went straight up. Oak blew the biggest hole. Oak left a crater that was huge.
Did you go back and see that you mean?
We went by it yeah.
You could tell because the water was a different color?
Oh yeah, it was milky and everthing, its just a big lagoon, the consentration of radiation inside that lagoon was tremendously high. They never told us, but you set off 35 blasts and the majority of them were in and around that lagoon. Whats really stupid is they said (during the clean-up) they put 24 feet of concrete above all the waste, but thats a coral area, so its all going out through the bottom.
I mentioned one of the guys who worked on that crater cap contacted us on the website. He was a part of the Enewetak Clean-up.
On Shot Wahoo the Mansfield was close to the detonation, what was that like? Were there water waves?
Oh yeah, It's sorta like if when you were a kid you tied up a balloon and held it underwater and let it go. The balloon poped up this cloud and steam and water came flying up.
You guys got wet from that?
Oh yeah.
You you remember the shaking of the ship.
I didn't that much, I remember the movement, because I was high up on thte bridge. At that particular time I was just trying to hang on.
Did you hear Shot Oak?
Oh yeah, you could hear it, feel it.
I've heard some guys describe the thermonuclear shots as being a very loud clap and others describe a sustained roar.
It depends on how close and all that, we could see them go off, and on some of them we were two-hundred miles away. Cause they usual set them off early in the morning, when there wasn't much wind.
We would take turn, two ships would go out with monitoring equipment, one might go to the possible downwind area and monitor from outside the area, 100 or 200 miles away. They would set ships at different stations. And then we would trade off. We would come back in for close up shots and the other ones would go out on station. They would rotate everybody around.
We talked some more about things in general and finished our conversation. He said he'd be sending more information for the Hardtack section. I thanked him for his contribution.
Mike said he would really appreciate seeing the picture of the memorial he sent put up on the website.
Keith Whittle
April, 1998
Operation Hardtack