New Concerns Raised on 1954 H-Bomb Tests

A document uncovered recently in Laguna Niguel has opened a disturbing chapter of Cold War history.

The declassified memo shows that hundreds of American servicemen stationed in the South Pacific may have been exposed to unusually high levels of radiation during hydrogen bomb tests conducted in 1954. The high dosages appear to have been approved by the government after the tests had already occurred.

The disclosure has set off a firestorm among “atomic veterans” who participated in America’s secret nuclear testing program. They say the information bolsters their claims that exposure to radiation has left them with a host of deadly cancers. And they accuse the Department of Veterans Affairs of ignoring the new data instead of using it to grant them compensation for their illnesses.

“There is just so much skulduggery going on,” said Monarch Bay resident Pat Broudy, who successfully petitioned to get the memo declassified from the Laguna Niguel office of the National Archives. Broudy is convinced the 1977 death of her Marine captain husband from lymphoma is the result of his exposure to radiation from nuclear tests.

The hydrogen bomb tests, dubbed the “Castle Series,” were among the largest blasts ever fired by the United States. They included the “Bravo Shot”--750 times more powerful than Hiroshima--which scattered radioactive fallout for 7,000 miles and forced the natives of Bikini Atoll to abandon the island for the next 25 years.

The Department of Defense memo revealed the rationale for waiving the normal limits for radiation exposure for 767 servicemen present during Operation Castle:

“The technical import and the medical aspects of Operation Castle . . . required a departure from the occupational safety standards in situations where completion of missions was essential,” the report of June 17, 1954, states.

The government also released a list of numbers--the authorized doses for each serviceman. Many are listed as 7.8 rem of gamma radiation, or double the allowable dose of 3.9 rem for a 13-week period. Some are higher; others are lower.

William Jay Bryan, formerly chief health physicist at the Nevada Test Site, said the government was forced to grant the required medical waivers because the Castle Series blasts turned out to be much bigger than expected.

“Castle was kind of a disaster,” Bryan said. “The hydrogen bomb was unpredictable and things got so far out of hand that they had to just authorize the exposures after the fact.”

Broudy still is lacking the information she really wants--the names of the soldiers and sailors exposed to the radiation for whom she wants to help obtain benefits. Due to privacy restrictions, the names were stricken from documents she received under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Broudy said she was told by Department of Energy officials that former Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary planned to unveil the names as one of her final official acts in January. But the news conference was suddenly “zapped,” Broudy said.

O’Leary, who now heads a consulting firm in Maryland, referred a request for an interview to current DOE officials. A DOE spokeswoman said the agency has turned over the document to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“If Veterans Affairs wants to contact the veterans individually, that’s up to them,” said DOE spokeswoman Jane Brady.

But the memo is insignificant, a “non-event” in the words of Dr. Neil Otchin, a spokesman in the Environmental Medicine and Public Health division of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Otchin agreed that the doses appear to have been altered after the test. But he added that the report does not signify that each individual soldier or sailor actually received the dose that was assigned to him.

“Some were lower, some higher,” Otchin said.

He said the agency had considered contacting the affected veterans individually to give them the new information, but decided doing so “would unnecessarily alarm veterans who are already in their 50s and 60s.” He said that all atomic veterans are eligible for a free radiological screening exam.

The Veterans Administration’s response infuriates veterans who say the agency is denying them the very information they must provide the VA to prove their diseases were caused by radiation exposure. Only 2% of 18,000 claims have been granted.

Irwin Salovin, an Army cook stationed on Eniwetok Island in 1954, recalls the Bravo Shot most vividly of the 12 nuclear tests that took place during his year in the Pacific.

“They told us we could go down to the edge of the island to watch it,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in New York. “We were wearing short sleeves and sandals, no protective items at all. We saw the mushroom cloud and then our faces started getting hotter and hotter. Then the ashes started falling on us.”

Four months later, Salovin lost all his teeth. His son and daughter developed multiple sclerosis. He blames their illnesses on the tests.

Salovin has been told by VA officials that records of his exposure were destroyed in a fire in St. Louis. He believes the VA’s “dose reconstruction” of his exposure is too low. He says the new memo could help him receive benefits he has so far been denied.

“I don’t know when they’re going to wake up and take responsibility for what happened,” he said. “You can’t just walk away from people after you’ve done something to them like that.”