Enewetak: Secrets of an Atomic Era

Enewetak: Secrets of an Atomic Era By - T-M Fitzgerald

At their inception, nuclear weapons were often touted as “tactical support weapons for ground troops”. However, in the grand scheme of things, atomic weapons have only been used twice in the process of war; in the WWII bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. However, since the creation of nuclear/atomic weapons, countless devices have been produced and hundreds of tests performed the world over (with over 335 atmospheric tests taking place in Nevada and the South Pacific Proving Grounds alone.) “My bomb is bigger than your bomb.” Several years following the end of WWII, the Cold War Era began between Eastern and Western Block countries and a new threat loomed for all mankind; nuclear war.

Back in the 1940’s and 50’s, the military veterans and civilian individuals who witnessed and were otherwise exposed to the effects of this newly discovered hell were obligated to secrecy. Classified information concerning what they observed and health records regarding conditions many experienced decades later were never declassified/brought to light, until most of the Atomic Vets (and company) were dead. It has been theorized that this was by design. The military swore that every nuclear operation/test they performed was safe, all in the name of funding and winning The Nuclear Arms Race among the Super Powers of the day. Acknowledging anything detrimental simply wasn’t done.

After exposure to nuclear/radioactive fallout, it took years for health issues, abnormalities to manifest. To this day, the military continues to deny that any health problems exist due to radiation in many veterans. They had to, all in the name of the Cold War and the Arms Race. Many people looking in ‘from the outside’ agree that the government did this to these men to save its corrupt nuclear industry. “We can’t admit to sick vets. Nobody will support our research, nobody will support us in the Arms Race.”

In the years following World War II, numerous Atomic Vets went quietly to their graves protecting classified information about the Atomic Age, information that ultimately killed them. But there would follow another collection of veterans affected by the nuclear age as well; men who came after those vets of the 40’s, 50‘s and 60’s. And as history would have it, these men are being discounted as well. Very few have heard of them and their own numbers are falling. (And if we continue denying that the potential for radiation-induced problems exist for these men, they will all die silently too.) But what about these other men? What about the Atomic Cleanup Vets of the 1970’s and 1980’s?

Between the western side of Hawaii and Mainland China is a vast expanse of Pacific Ocean dotted with islands and atolls. These locations were the background to some of the heaviest and deadliest battles of WWII. In the late 70’s/early 80’s, a group of men were assigned decontamination detail in a chain of islands the United States had taken over for nuclear testing called The Marshall Islands. These men did not arrive in mayhem or chaos as did their WWII brothers. Where previous Marines and Army infantry units were fighting because their lives depended on it, the 70’s and 80’s vets came ashore during the Cold War to attempt a Herculean task. Both eras of men consisted of platoons dangerously exposed to the task of clearing and securing the islands.

One group did it under heavy artillery fire; the second did it against an invisible enemy called radiation. (This is not meant to demean the conditions of WWII troops by any means.) Forty years after the first nuclear tests, the United States finally admitted that there was trouble afoot. A tremendous clean-up/decontamination campaign was undertaken by a vast assortment of members of all branches of the military. The atolls of the Marshall Islands were assaulted again by military troops but this time, there were no worries of snipers and tanks; no worries of running into enemy troops other than skeletal remains from a battle fought in February 1944. No worries at all…or so they were given to believe. But with most accounts military, this wasn’t the end of the story. Image: Battle of Eniwetok.

Though perhaps not in the exact same capacity as the Atomic Vets who handled the bombs dropped on Nagasaki or Hiroshima, or of the troops who set boots on the ground at the original Ground Zero in Japan, The Atomic Clean-up vets existed 24/7 for months at a time in radioactive-contaminated surroundings. They existed in an environment where dangerous wastes with decades of half-lives lay in the soil, the lagoons. To date, the government has only granted/acknowledged these men a status of ‘occupational exposure’ yet have paid millions of tax dollars in compensation to the Marshallese of those islands we destroyed. There is a cancer compensation fund for the Atomic Vets of the 50’s and 60’s but all because of the way things are worded in Washington (and the purposeful denial of the United States military) these Atomic Cleanup Vets are not so much as even acknowledged as exposed all those decades ago.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not the only places contaminated by radioactive fallout. By definition, Atomic Vets are men who served between the years 1945 and 1962. But on May 15, 1977 the United States government directed the military to decontaminate Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. What about the men who lived, breathed, ate, work, slept, swam in the decades of nuclear/radioactive fallout? The men who decades later are slowly all dying from diseases attributed to that exposure? For decades these men have been attempting to get a bill like the state of Hawaii has and be added to the VA definition of Atomic Veterans so as to have their conditions labeled as service connected.

These men served during the Cold War but certainly deserve to be taken care of as much as the combat vets of today.

The Atomic Cleanup Vets are a group of men who were exposed to the residual, cumulative effects of decades of radiation testing. They currently exist all over the world, mostly concentrated in the United States. These men wish to be recognized for their service by the government they served. Theirs is not the first activity to be ignored and forgotten and sadly enough, likely not the last. Their voices deserve to be heard, not condemned as just another forgotten page of history.