Excerpts from the book Operation Crossroads
By Johnathan M. Weisgall
continued from page 1
A host of factors-lingering radiation on the target and nontarget ships,
malfunctioning radsafe equipment, a shortage of monitors, failure to observe
radsafe regulations, and the ignorance and indifference displayed toward
the radiation hazard by officers and enlisted men alike- caused many Operation
Crossroads participants regularly to receive radiation doses in excess of
the daily tolerance dose. The anecdotal evidence is simply overwhelming.
The radsafe section detected 67 overdoses between August 6 and 9, with some
men exposed to 20 times the daily tolerance dose. Less than a week later,
Warren reported that 26 of the 125 film badges showed overexposures, with
13 over twice the daily tolerance standard.32
All decontamination work on two target vessels, the destroyer Wainwright
and attack transport Carteret, was stopped due to the crew's overexposure
from working and living on the ships: the crews were immediately evacuated
to the United States. Similar examples abounded throughout the task force;
not even the scientists and technicians were spared. "There were people,
particularly the scientists, who thought they knew better,"recalled
Warren. "I had to send some home because they were already overexposed-not
badly, but beginning to be questionable."33
To make matters worse, individual officers extended the crews' working
hours on target ships without consulting radsafe monitors. "It appears
that there is an attitude of indifference on the part of the ship's officer
of the Prinz Eugen to the safety standard set by RadSafe," wrote two
of Warren's men, who found readings of 5 roentgens per day on the superstructure,
50 times the maximum daily tolerance dose. Nevertheless, crew members stayed
on board the ship for as much as 16 hours or more. Some were ordered to
spend the night there, because the ship's officers believed that the daily
tolerance dose "has such a large safety factor that it can be ignored."34
The radiological crisis developing at Bikini was made more acute with
the daily departure of radsafe monitors. "Monitoring demands have been
increasing steadily while our numbers are being depleted," Warren wrote
to Blandy on August 7. "Attempts to delay these men have met with unanimous
refusal." He was going to lose more than 90 percent of his men in the
next week, leaving him with only a handful of monitors to protect the crews
working on more than 70 target vessels. He also recognized the difficulty
of enforcing radsafe regulations. "It is almost impossible to enforce
the wearing of gloves continuously on badly contaminated ships," he
reported. "Nor is it feasible to expect [men] to take the proper care
of their contaminated clothes."
Film badges, which were radiation-recording devices, were not designed
to measure beta radiation. Warren's Medico-Legal Board, a hand-picked group
of experts advising him on radsafe measures, assumed a 5 to 1 ratio between
beta and gamma radiation, but the actual ratios varied widely and were much
higher, probably 10 to 1. "Contamination of hands and faces with beta
emitters of intensities greater than tolerance . . . is exceedingly common,"
Warren warned two weeks after the Baker shot. "It is not infrequent
to find personnel with amounts on the bare hands bordering on erythema dose
levels"-a reddening of the skin caused by a dose of 300 roentgen or
more.35 Only about 6,300 of the 42,000 Operation Crossroads participants
were issued film badges, and no one, except perhaps for a few radsafe monitors,
wore a badge every day.36 Moreover, the information obtained from them was
only available after exposure had occurred and thus did little to warn or
protect the men, a point not lost on the wearers. Told by a radsafe monitor
that the film in his badge was exposed like X-ray film to determine "how
much you've been getting," one sailor replied, "Sure, but that
only tells you afterwards. A lot of good that is when you've been fried
all day in X-rays."37
Warren was most concerned about alpha emitters such as plutonium. Alpha
particles pose little threat outside the body and can be blocked by even
a sheet of paper, but once absorbed they can be lethal. Setting safety standards
for plutonium at Los Alamos during World War II was pure guesswork. Like
radium, the new element proved to be a bone seeker, but its alpha emission
seemed to be smaller. Guessing that the body could bear up to 100 micrograms
of plutonium, the Manhattan Project at first set 5 micrograms as the tolerance
dose, 50 times the dose for radium.
Further studies, however, showed that plutonium was eliminated from the
body at a much slower rate than radium, and it seemed to be five or 10 times
more toxic than radium despite its lower alpha activity. This led Manhattan
Project scientists to lower the tolerance dose fivefold to 1 microgram,
but the war ended with little knowledge about the behavior of plutonium
in the lungs and elsewhere in the body. Moreover, although scientists had
developed instruments to measure beta and gamma activity, they had no reliable
field instruments to detect and measure alpha activity.38
Warren's Medico-Legal Board concluded three days before the Baker shot
that the amount of plutonium would be "so small as to be unhazardous,"
but this was not the case.39 "In truth, we were grasping in a field
that was new,"recalled Robert Conard, a radsafe monitor who later
worked on radiological conditions in the Marshall Islands. "We had
no way of accurately assessing how much plutonium was present, so we relied
almost exclusively on beta and gamma monitoring."40
Two weeks after the test Warren noted that many ships had beta and gamma
intensities low enough in places to lead some monitors to think the ships
were safe. "This is not the case," Warren warned bluntly, because
of the "widespread presence" of alpha-emitting plutonium in the
target area. "It accompanies the gamma and beta emitters everywhere
in a definite proportion," he explained, "and the presence of
beta emitters in even moderate intensities is an indication that it is present
in dangerous if not lethal doses."
Moreover, he said, accurate detection and thorough decontamination were
not possible. "It can only be measured with very precise equipment
which is not available and cannot be made available," he wrote, adding
that "decontamination requires meticulous care and an elaborate set-up
of equipment and trained men, none of which are available."41
And even though gamma readings were declining, they were still high even
10 days after the test. Thirty-five target ships still had average topside
readings more than 10 times greater than the daily tolerance dose, and some,
such as the Pensacola, had an average daily reading 70 times greater. Nevertheless,
for weeks after the tests men routinely boarded target ships, swept them,
scraped them, ate their meals on board, and even slept aboard them; they
were constantly exposed to the danger of inhaling plutonium and fission
products from the Baker test.42
On August 3, nine days after the Baker shot, Warren was convinced he
had a disaster on his hands. Declining gamma readings resulted in more pressure
from captains to return their men to the target ships, but this did not
mean the plutonium situation was any better. He warned that decontamination
efforts were largely useless. "No practical method of decontamination
is known in the case of wooden surfaces and rough metal short of removal
of the actual surface," he said, adding that there was "increasing
evidence" of exposure well over the daily tolerance dose.
Warren was also worried about the daily tolerance dose of 0.1 roentgen
as a limit for long-term exposure. He told Blandy that as little as half
that level of daily exposure for three months ";may cause progressively
increasing sterility . . . which upon disappearing may still result in defective
children," and that such daily exposure for even less than three months
"may cause defects in children of the first and second generations."
Warren realized that several more weeks of continuous exposure would
be disastrous. "The majority of personnel exposed at Bikini are young,"
he wrote, "and their heredity is of prime importance to them and their
families."
Warren urged Blandy to end Operation Crossroads immediately, except for
work on target ships with relatively little radioactivity. All the other
ships, he recommended, "should be declared hopelessly contaminated
and be towed to shallow water and beached and time allowed for radioactive
decay to take place."43
The Medico-Legal Board met the next day and agreed with Warren's recommendations,
but Rear Adm. Thorvald A. Solberg, who was in charge of salvage operations,
insisted that work was proceeding satisfactorily. Blandy sided with Solberg.
"Admiral Blandy would not go along with Warren's recommendation to
close out altogether," wrote one participant. "He insists on continuing
a program of decontamination no matter how long it takes."44
Blandy was unwilling to admit that so many ships were contaminated, and
he was concerned about the public relations aspect of what he called the
"hot" ships. "These ships must not be considered as casualties
in the sunken ship sense of the word," he said at the August 6 staff
meeting, and he ordered that ships sunk or destroyed more than 30 days after
the Baker shot "will not be considered as sunk by the bomb." Like
Solberg, Blandy was convinced the ships could be decontaminated. "The
idea must not be fostered," he told his staff on August 6, "that
nothing can be done about the radioactive condition of the ships."45
Warren did not let matters rest there. "Control of the safety of
the target ships' crew is rapidly getting out of hand," he asserted
bluntly the next day, August 7. "The target vessels are in the main
extensively contaminated with dangerous amounts of radioactivity. Quick
decontamination without exposing personnel seriously to radiation is not
possible under the present circumstances and with present knowledge."
He was also alarmed about the state of his men and their equipment and he
called for an end to Operation Crossroads by August 15. "No further
gain can be obtained without great risk of harm to personnel engaged in
decontamination and survey work."46
Blandy reacted cautiously, taking no definitive action, but he was beginning
to understand the magnitude of the problem. On August 8 he sent a cable
to Washington asking Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of naval operations,
to allow him to decommission 39 target ships. "They cannot all be made
absolutely safe to board in the near future for sufficiently long periods
to either prepare them for movement to Pearl [Harbor] or to assess fully
the damage sustained," wrote Blandy.47
The turning point came on August 9. Lt. Commander William A. Wulfman,
a physician in charge of the target ships' radsafe monitors, wrote Warren
that "work on target ships has increased to the point that it is impossible
to provide adequate protection for the personnel involved in this work."
Wulfman, too, realized that many men had received doses well above the daily
tolerance of 0.1 roentgen.48
On that same day, Blandy finally realized that Geiger counters could
not detect plutonium, as Solberg asked Warren to inspect and measure radiation
levels on material obtained from the wardroom of the Prinz Eugen. Geiger
counter readings showed radiation intensity sufficiently low to permit men
to spend long periods of time on the ship without danger of injury, but
other tests on more sophisticated instruments showed what the navy later
described as "widespread presence" of plutonium. The few instruments
capable of detecting alpha radiation at Bikini could not operate outside
the controlled laboratory conditions on board the Haven, the ship housing
Warren's radiological safety section.49
Later, on August 9, following a conference aboard the Haven with Commodore
William S. Parsons, Warren sent a teletype message to the Manhattan Project
stating that an "urgent need exists for radiation measuring instruments."
He ordered 300 X-263 Geiger counters, 100 dosimeters, 18 ionization chambers,
six beta counters, and 50,000 film badges. "Strongly urge that . .
. this [be] treated as an actual emergency involving safety to life,"
he teletyped.50
Blandy called a meeting for August 10 to discuss Warren's findings. Warren's
chief adversary remained Admiral Solberg, the head of salvage. "It
was his group of ab[out] 2,000 men whom I was fighting," Warren wrote
his wife. "He felt he could clean up these ships & I'd been saying
he was butting his head against a stonewall & was only fooling himself
& risking a lot of men."
Parsons had seen the results of analyses flown in from Los Alamos just
before the meeting. "This stops us cold," he told Warren, and
supported him fully. Warren showed Blandy how alpha emitters in the scales
of a fish created an X-ray picture when placed on photographic film. Blandy
respected Parsons's judgment and said simply, "If that is it, then
we call it all to a halt." Decontamination efforts were considered
unsafe under the existing conditions, and Blandy ordered all further decontamination
work discontinued. Warren was pleased. "A self X-ray of a fish . .
. did the trick," he wrote home.51
As a result of the August 10 conference, all decontamination work was
halted. Undaunted, one ship commander proposed two days later that the external
gamma readings were low enough for men to board the bigger target ships
in order to start their engines for pumping. "This is not the case,"
replied Warren abruptly the next day in what a later government report described
as a "didactic" memorandum. "The widespread presence of an
alpha emitter has been demonstrated," he said, and the request was
denied.
Warren also realized that some of the commanders of the target vessels
were not complying with the radsafe guidelines, so he simply forbade further
work on the ships. Stating that the continued use of crews for decontamination
work without proper training and equipment "is exceedingly dangerous,"
he ordered that men could board the ships only to recover instruments, install
pumping gear, and prepare the ships for towing to Kwajalein.52 Warren's
radiological findings were later confirmed by Los Alamos based on analyses
of target ship samples that had been flown back to the laboratory.53
For Stafford Warren, it was the end of what seemed to be a single-handed
battle against the navy. He reported to his wife with near disbelief a few
days later that the navy had actually listened to him again. "Recommended
today that the area be abandoned by 1 Sept. and they tow the ships they
want to Kwaj[alein] & they will do so! If not sooner!" Thousands
of Crossroads personnel began leaving Bikini within days, including Warren.
Warren, who was given a "Mark III" lead jockstrap by his staff
to celebrate his fiftieth birthday at Bikini, was completely exhausted and
slept off and on for four straight days. He also had time to reflect on
the tests, and he hoped that the navy might have finally developed a healthy
fear of the bomb. "I think the navy now has an idea, a very little
idea of what a scourge it can be and what a boomerang," he wrote home.54
By early September the last ship had left Bikini, and the atoll was completely
evacuated by September 26. For security reasons, some of the evidence was
destroyed.
Most of the physical evidence, though, remained. More than a dozen ships
now rested on the lagoon floor. The steel towers that had mounted high-speed
cameras still stood, as did the concrete basketball courts, dispensary,
and baseball fields. The story of Operation Crossroads was also evident
on the lagoon side of the small islands in the western part of the atoll;
beaches were strewn with oil drums, mattresses, bottles, tires, boxes, and
rusting machinery, all smeared with tar and oil.
Flying at the edge of the cloud after the Baker shot, David Bradley's
Geiger counter clicked wildly and the needle showing levels of radiation
went off the scale. "It always seemed a little strange to me,"
he wrote, "that at such a time the pilot should be calmly looking down
at the fleet, or glancing over his instrument panel. . . . Something was
wrong. We should be able to feel the barrage of gamma rays tearing through
our bodies. It was there. It was hot."55
The greatest danger of atomic warfare lay not in the immediate blast
and heat from the atomic bomb but from the deadly lingering radioactivity.
However, as E. B. White put it, the navy "is contemptuous of anything
that isn't big and noisy and that refuses to come out in the open and fight."56
The ghost fleet would not sail back under the Golden Gate Bridge, triumphant
and invincible. The ships survived their familiar enemies of heat and blast,
but the navy had never fought an alpha particle.