Pete Moreno, Enewetak Atoll (1977) 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 Pete Moreno

Branch: Navy Rating: Weather Technician Location: Enewetak Year: 1977

Quote: “We need to recognize what our government has done, what we have forced people to endure and challenge this country to do better for them…”

“I am but one of a few of the survivors of the 1977-1980 Enewetak Atoll Atomic Debris Cleanup Mission that took place in the Marshall Islands.

A major focus of this group has been to help one another with information and moral support during some of the challenging times we’ve encountered following our time in service at Enewetak.

A secondary focus/goal is to urge Congress to change current law and recognize Cold War Era soldiers and contractors of the Enewetak Cleanup Mission as “veterans and workers who participated in radiation-risk activities during active service.”

By obtaining their second goal, individuals experiencing health complications resulting from radiation exposure at Enewetak Atoll will be eligible to apply for funds that have previously been set-aside for other Atomic Veterans who have already been recognized and acknowledged for their service.

““The government would just assume forget we were ever there (Enewetak et al.). We were denied a lot of recognition. They never understood the sacrifice of a bunch of normal guys who had no choice but to do the job they were sent there to do…”

“Before I went down to Enewetak, I knew very little. I only knew of the Marshall Islands as a general reference point on the map. I mean, I knew about the WWII battles fought down that way at Wake, Midway, the Solomon’s and such but I’d never heard about the nuclear testing grounds. It was all news to me. I knew nothing of the terrain until I actually stepped off the plane and got my rude awakening. It was as bad as any desert I’d ever seen. The land mass, I mean, I had never seen anything like it. Enewetak, the longest island in the chain was basically a runway.”

“When I was training in the Navy, I was sent to A-School (a kind of ‘after boot camp’ intro to the Navy) at Great Lakes in Illinois. After completing that phase of training, we got to fill out what they call a ‘dream sheet’. ‘Where would you like to serve?’ So me being the joker I was, I wrote ‘tugboat duty’ as my first choice on my sheet. (And you know, there are no boilers on tugs.) I ended up getting stationed at Pearl Harbor with Navy Salvage Divers in this command called Harbor Clearance Unit One. When I got to the barge, I was assigned to perform maintenance and fixed small service boilers, pipes, stuff like that. Our mission was to salvage: we retrieved sunken ships, repaired underwater projects, etc. My barge was YRST-1. (There were only two of these: one was up in Norfolk and I was on the one in Pearl.) That thing had been built during WWII and was used to lay communication cables up in the Atlantic. It could hold up to 80 men and supplies for a few weeks.”

“Clearwater Beach Cleanup Team was the first unit to deploy to Enewetak. By the time we got there, the place was fairly well developed, the development phase was already complete but it was just basic living conditions. We only had electricity for two hours a night, no amenities and we’d run out of supplies. There were no basics like fresh water showers to wash the sand and salt and dirt off you, no plumbing facilities. It was bad. If I got to shower once or twice a week, I was lucky. The base island Lojwa had plenty of running water and food but where I was at, there wasn't any. We lived in some pretty squalid conditions for many weeks at a time. It was primitive, but we were all literally in the same boat so…”

“For us, cleanup detail consisted of doing exactly that: cleaning up. If it was visible, we drug it up: tons of it by hand. We were issued RAD (radiation) badges but couldn’t wear them. If they got wet, they were useless anyway and working in 100-120 degree heat for 12-14 hours at a time, you tended to get pretty wet with sweat. So essentially, our protective gear consisted of a Boonie Hat, T-shirt (optional) leather gloves, shorts, combat boots and sunglasses. The glare off the sand and the water, even with sunglasses would hurt after a while. Your eyes took a beating every day. That was it as far as protection went.”

“After we’d pile stuff up on the beach, the Air Force guys would come up and test it. You could hear the machines (Geiger counters) going off. Every single one of those piles were ‘hot’ (radioactive). There were never any green (go) designations given. We asked those guys how bad it was and were told, ‘We don’t know. These machines were never calibrated for this job.’

“When did I suspect something wasn’t quite right about the place? Almost immediately. When we got there, we had a one-week orientation and flew all over the islands, places that had been basically denuded of everything. It became clear that this was going to be a pretty serious effort. Cesium, plutonium. Your ears perk up when you hear people talking about those things. For a 20-year-old kid, it was crazy. I knew something was up. They weren’t going to tell us everything. The amount of noticeable debris and wreckage was immense. We saw the (bomb) craters and what was going on up on Runnit. (The Dome construction at Cactus Crater.) I was 20 years old with no experience. We’d watched some films at Pearl about the legacy of the Bravo blast but that was our welcome to Enewetak.” Mr. Moreno paused thoughtfully. “I talked things over with a medical officer a few times and all he’d ever say was “Don’t worry about it. Everything will be just fine.”

“The Chief Corpsman gave us a direct order not to wear the RAD badges. Funny then how my RAD records didn’t even record the ordinary/expected background radiation from the sun. Six months: day in, day out, sleeping, living, breathing, eating all of that. As I said, the islands were stripped. I never saw any coconuts much less ate any but we did eat fish from the lagoon. We weren’t supposed to eat anything from the lagoon but I didn’t find that out until later. After about a month, I never ate anymore fish.”

“I was cruising through YouTube about a year or so ago (2014) when I first saw Frank Bolton’s site. I had talked to docs at the Vegas VA and they had told me how a lot of work was being done for Atomic workers out there in Nevada. You know, ionizing radiation contributes to the declination of health (heart, liver, kidneys) causing rapid decline of health. This information got me interested. I started wondering if I was the only one? Down Winders (people who lived south of nuclear testing grounds in Nevada) were officially recognized and compensated for their maladies. I am hoping at some point in time that we can prove our case…but the VA will never acknowledge that our service down there ever contributed to the declination of anybody’s health.”

“I did Google searches and found the Facebook page. There were days we had to still perform the mission at the same time as we were barely getting by. Those six months were as tough and grueling and physically challenging and disappointing as any time in the service could get, and the way we were treated after we returned? We were never allowed to decompress. Nobody counseled us. There were some stressful, dark times. Enewetak wasn’t any kind of paradise. Currents could sweep you out in a heartbeat, the heat, the loss of life…“

“We need to recognize what our government has done, what they forced veterans to endure and then challenge this country to do better for them. A lot of these things, missions like ours, were done in the defense of this country. We’ve harmed people, we’ve destroyed a lot of lives. We need to do better and ensure that this won’t happen again. We need to be recognized for our service. What we did down there was just as vital and we have never been recognized for our sacrifices. We’re paying for it now.”

"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