Big John Wills, Enewetak Atoll (1978-79) Glimmer of Lights

Introducing a series of narrative articles about the Atomic Cleanup Veterans of Enewetak Atoll.

The following are first-hand accounts told by comparatively few survivors of the Enewetak Atoll Atomic Debris Cleanup Mission, Marshall Islands; a mission that took place from 1977-1980. Their stories appear as told to T-M Fitzgerald(published author, veteran, veteran advocate) because theirs are tales needing to be known.

Read - H.R. 5980: Mark Takai Atomic Veterans Healthcare Parity Act

Introduction: “Where in the World is Enewetak?”

Enewetak is just one of many atolls and islands in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Island chain. Located about 2,365 nautical miles SW of Hawaii (just north of the equator), the Marshall Islands were once a major testing ground for nuclear weapons post WWII. This island chain is also home to the project called Cactus Dome, a 350’- wide blast crater located at the northern end of Runit Island that has become known as the ‘Nuclear Trashcan of the Pacific.’

Between 1948-58, forty-three nuclear weapons were detonated over Enewetak and its sister islands. Among these tests were ‘Ivy Mike’ and ‘Castle Bravo’ (a device 1000X as powerful as the bomb ‘Little Boy’ which was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan post Pearl Harbor.)

In 1977, a coalition of United States military forces and civilian support teams were sanctioned to ‘clean’ the islands of residual radioactive fallout. Men, many who were mere teenagers back in the day, were tasked with cleaning the contaminated fallout from the nuclear testing that occurred throughout the previous three decades. Keep in mind, that as recent as 2012, the United Nations reported that the cumulative effects from all that nuclear testing had effectively caused near-irreversible environmental contamination. There was a problem beginning in 1977 and currently, effects from that exposure have begun to manifest, taking toll on many surviving Enewetak vets and contractors today. Four decades later, survivors are telling their stories because the world needs to know.

Personal story by 'Big John' Wills

Branch: US Navy Rating: ABF3, 2 Aviation Fueler/Aircraft Handler Location:Lojwa, Runit, Cactus Crater Year:1978, 1979: 3 visits

Quote: “When we went, we were just a bunch of young men without a clue. Now we’re old men who’ve had decades to think about the situation we were all put into...”

“My first ship was the USS Midway (which (2004) has since been turned into a naval aviation museum in San Diego.) I was Assigned after my tour on Midway to a gator freighter USS LPD- 8 Dubuque, my job entailed fueling aircraft on are small flight deck including operating a small pump room for aviation fuel and securing tank tops on the well deck, clearing water, sand, and gravel on a daily basis; during well deck operations for the Runit (aka) cactus crater lcm 8’s for every time we dropped the back end of the ship the well deck flooded and refloated to bring the lcm 8s in and out for repair work and the jet fuel tank tops are in the well deck of that type of ship! SO I had to retighten the top of the tanks to keep sea water out and standing in water that was radiation HOT!!It was A daily grind while abreast RUNIT 2 miles from the start of the dome!! Cactus Crater!!!

I also Served aboard aircraft carriers MIDWAY–CV41 and ENTERPRISE CVN-65 and shore duty CUBI point R.P. and Worked on USS DUBUQUE LPD-8 (landing platform dock), all of this in a radioactively polluted environment 2 miles from Cactus Crater I was working in sand, water, gravel and other ‘hot’ material contaminated with radioactive plutonium, cesium, and americium. Even after all the years since leaving the islands, I hadn’t realized that so many of the guys I’d served with were sick and dying. There might be one or two who are fine, but I couldn’t even begin to list for you the names of who all has passed away.”

“We were anchored two miles off Cactus Crater at the southern end of Runit. You could see the guys working out there and all that dust they stirred up. And their safety gear? Cut-off fatigues, boots and a Boonie Hat. Not only were they covered in that dust and breathing it in, but that dust would blow out and across our flight deck. You could literally see it. Being out on that ship wasn’t any safer. You’d go up to the deck and breathe in that same plutonium polluted dust that had drifted from shore. At the time, nobody knew, nobody was concerned. Little did we know...”

“It’s not just my own belief that the Feds have been monitoring us and our health this entire time. They knew damn well something was going on with this. There’s one peculiar event I’ll tell you about. We’d been allowed off the ship and were taken onshore for some R&R. There was a pool there you know, because the water was contaminated. (You could throw a rock from in the pool and hit the ocean one side and hit the lagoon from the other. That’s how close we were to the ocean.) While we were hanging out there in this saltwater pool which was for marine life captured in the lagoon and the water was pumped to the lagoon side pool, I noticed there was this guy who wasn’t with our group going in and out of this nearby building all day long. He was watching us, I mean all day. He’d come out and act like he was smoking a cigarette or something then go back inside. Besides all of us from the ship, there he was watching, coming out every 30-40 minutes from 0900 to sunset…”

“When I completed my first day of work repairing the LCM’8 we were given a R&R ALL day Affair 9am till dusk as that’s when the landing craft was sent to get us 10 hours on an area they said was clean of any radiation it was cleared in the 50’s and if you go diving don’t touch anything in the lagoon; unexploded rounds, bullets, bombs, etc. from ww2!! But it was all hot underwater at the lagoon. Then, for a job well done I was eligible to go ashore for R&R but we had just left Pearl Harbor 9 days before and now were at Eniwetok for liberty. Later at CUBI point my next duty assignment (1979-81), I had a situation where my knee basically exploded. Little did I know how that state of affairs was only the beginning? It was sometime around 1988 when I was out of the service when a lot of little things started happening with greater frequency. Ten years to the day, one of my lymph nodes had enlarged to the size of a golf ball. I didn’t go to the VA and lanced it myself. A year later, I finally go to the VA to see a doctor. Keep in mind, up to this point; I still didn’t really talk about Enewetak. I mean, we weren’t supposed to talk about it for so long. (We had signed papers, after all.) Anyway, within all the doctor appointments for all the other things that were so steadily happening to me, I had this one doc ask out of the blue, ‘Have you been eating a lot of bananas?’ Apparently, I had a very high potassium level in my body.”

“Later around 2003-2004, I was working at a transportation company. My left knee had begun swelling up and within six months, it was huge. I had all sorts of pain, the sweats, was just really uncomfortable. So I went and had it looked at. The doctor drained it but by then, it had gone septic. They cleaned out my knee, offering all sorts of explanations as to how it could have possibly happened; other than the real one. I was on antibiotics for forty-five days for that.”

“In 2005 I was working for a tour company taking people to Disneyland from Orange County Airport. I was walking to my vehicle and could hear my heart absolutely pounding in my ears. I knew something was wrong so I went to the VA where of course, they dismissed me. I had a quadruple blockage and wound up having open heart surgery. (One more health condition to add to my list on top of diabetes, osteoarthritis, and sepsis arthritis). By 2009 I ended up in a wheel chair…piecing all of this together, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s related to Enewetak.”

So why would anyone need to know about what happened to a group of Atomic Cleanup Veterans on a collection of islands in the South Pacific that not a whole lot of people know even exist? Because it’s history; it’s our history. That, plus the fact there appears to be plenty of people in the government who’d prefer to keep these particular (forgotten) vets’ mission of the late 1970’s/early 80’s under the wraps of darkness..

“Since the Cold War Era in our history, this country has gone through ten presidential administrations. The Enewetak Atomic Cleanup Veterans have been purposefully excluded from any atomic compensation quite on purpose. To date, we have received no compensation and only one apology (and even then, Clinton really didn’t know what he was apologizing for.) Atomic vets before us and atomic vets after us have all received help in one way or another. Why not us? Why not this group? We just want to know when they’re going to quit lying to us all.” ‘Big John stopped in mid thought. “The world just doesn’t know. We’d spend time out in the ‘hot’ zones checking out everything, doing our jobs without any protective gear whatsoever. We were set up. When we went, we were just a bunch of young men in our 20’s without a clue. Now we’re old men who’ve had decades to think about the situation we were all put into. We gave the government a blank check and they did with us what they wanted. Now that we need their help, we’ve essentially been told, ‘Too bad, so sad. There’s nothing we can do.’

"The primary focus for this group is to urge Congress to change legislation and recognize soldiers of this seemingly forgotten cleanup mission as “veterans who participated in radiation-risk activities during active service.”

Follow our cause: Atomic Veterans of Enewetak Atoll