Tested, and Ignored
It is not entirely accurate to describe the veterans of America’s nuclear weapons tests as "guinea pigs." Until the
late 1970s the U.S. Government had made no epidemiological inquiries into the health of these servicemen,
established no studies about long-term effects of their radiation exposure. As "guinea pigs," at least 250,000 U.S.
troops12—directly exposed to atomic radiation during seventeen years of nuclear bomb testing—were neglected by
their overseers.
Between 1946 and 1962 orders routinely sent American soldiers close to hundreds of atomic blasts. The logistics
of their roles changed, as did the kinds of terrain. But what did not vary were the presence of radioactive fallout and
official assurances that it was harmless.
In the 1970s as some media attention focused on charges that participation in nuclear tests had caused serious
diseases, the U.S. Government denied any responsibility. Continuing to reject service-connected radiation claims
from veterans and their widows, the Veterans Administration asserted that servicemen had been exposed to harmless
"low-level" radiation.
In 1977, more than thirty years after Able exploded, pressure from publicized battles between the VA and atomic
vets moved a federal agency—the Center for Disease Control—to conduct the first health study of America’s nuclear
veterans.13
The survey was confined to the 3,224 men who were in the Nevada desert military maneuvers at a 1957 atomic
test code-named Smoky. An initial eighteen-month assessment, released in 1979, discovered more than twice the
normal leukemia rate among those servicemen. In more detailed statistics that followed, the federal researchers
found nine cases of leukemia among those same soldiers—a ratio nearly three times the average. "This represents a
significant increase over the expected incidence of 3 1/2 cases," reported a research team headed by Center for
Disease Control official Dr. Glyn C. Caldwell, in a study summary published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association in autumn 1980.14
The Smoky test soldiers, however, represent only about 1 percent of U.S. servicemen exposed to nuclear testing.
Extrapolation of the completed federal study conclusions would strongly indicate that several hundred veterans died
from leukemia alone as a result of their involvement in the tests. The estimate does not include deaths from
numerous forms of cancer, blood disorders, and other ailments.
The implications of the federal government’s own study seemed to make no impact on the VA. Consistent with
policies toward the veterans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the agency continued its practice of turning down the
claims. The VA granted an occasional publicized atomic vet’s request for benefits—being careful not to concede
that the terminal illness was tied to bomb test radiation exposure. But for the overwhelming majority of irradiated
veterans, the Smoky study results notwithstanding, encounters with the VA continued to mean dealing with an
administrative stone wall.
Sensitive to mounting public accusations of unfair treatment toward nuclear test veterans, VA general counsel
Guy H. McMichael III told Congress in 1979 that no individual autopsy or diagnosis could establish connection
between an illness and prior radiation exposure. "There are serious difficulties inherent in the adjudication of claims
involving more lengthy post-exposure development of cancer," he maintained, "when there is no pathological
evidence to indicate that the disease process began in service."15 The VA cited as a complicating aspect of radiation
compensation policies "the fact that radiation-induced cancers have no unique pathological characteristics to
distinguish them from cancer due to ‘natural’ factors. This makes it impossible to determine with certainty whether
such a disease would have occurred regardless of the radiation exposure."16
Meanwhile, as of 1981, the VA has turned down more than 98 percent of radiation-based claims for atomic
veterans’ service-connected benefits.17 In the summer of 1980 the Pentagon issued a widely circulated press release
claiming that "most exposures to DoD [Department of Defense] personnel during the tests were quite low—
averaging about half a rem. . . . Of course, many received no exposure at all, and some received more. Our research
indicates that only a very small percentage exceeded 5 rem per year, the current Federal guideline for allowable
annual dose to radiation workers."18
The Defense Department statement, released thirty-four years after America’s first peacetime nuclear test,
concluded on a soothing note: "In summary, based upon research to date, the average exposure of atmospheric
nuclear test participants is about one-tenth of the level that is generally agreed as an acceptable annual exposure for
radiation workers."19 Despite the Center for Disease Control’s findings a year earlier, the Pentagon stated that
"approximately one fatal cancer per 20,000 individuals" would result.20
But many of America’s veterans of nuclear testing were in no mood to be placated by Pentagon press releases.
Their voices, scattered around the nation, had grown louder and more cohesive as the 1970s progressed. In 1979 the
National Association of Atomic Veterans was founded by former Army sergeant Orville Kelly, and his wife, Wanda.
Kelly had witnessed twenty-two nuclear weapons test explosions while serving as commander of Japtan, a small land
mass in the Marshall Islands, two decades earlier.21
Kelly’s experiences were fairly typical. As described in an NAAV newsletter he "wore a film badge, which
measured gamma radiation, from April 1, 1958 to August 31, 1958. During that time, the badge recorded an
exposure of 3.445 rems. At no time was he measured for beta radiation or for possible internal deposition of
radionuclides. The equipment used on the island for environmental monitoring also only measured gamma
radiation."22
Formation of NAAV in August 1979 brought a strong response from atomic veterans and widows all over the
country. Within a year three thousand had become members of the association, operating out of headquarters in
Burlington, Iowa, the hometown of Orville and Wanda Kelly. Together with nuclear veterans and supporters in
every state, they set about challenging the Veterans Administration’s treatment of former servicemen exposed to
radiation while in the military.
Diagnosed as suffering from lymphocytic lymphoma in June 1973, Orville Kelly’s claims for service-connected
benefits were repeatedly rejected by the VA.23 Hobbled by the pain of his cancer and powerful chemotherapy drugs,
Kelly traveled as much as he could, meeting with atomic veterans and speaking out on their behalfs. In the process
Kelly’s own often-rebuffed claim became a cause celebre, and a severe embarrassment to the VA and Defense
Department.
In November 1979, after five years of denials, the VA’s Board of Veterans Appeals granted Kelly’s claim. The
decision conceded the plausibility of a link between in-service radiation exposure and later cancer, but stopped short
of acknowledging a definite connection. The VA made clear that the Kelly decision would not serve as a precedent
for other such claims, which would still be processed case-by-case.24
Kelly was well aware that only a handful of atomic vets had been successful in gaining compensation. In April
1980, two months before he died, Orville Kelly said from his sickbed: "Although our claims are difficult to prove
because we cannot feel, taste, hear or smell radiation, it is more deadly than bullets or shrapnel."25
Articulating the sentiments of thousands who had joined the National Association of Atomic Veterans, Kelly
added: "I believe I should have been warned about the possible dangers of radiation exposure and that medical
examinations should have been conducted on a regular basis after my exposure. The truth is that I was never warned
nor were examinations ever performed. During all the years after I left the Army, I was never once told to get a
physical because I participated in nuclear weapons testing. Even though I won my case, I have still lost the overall
battle because doctors have told me I have but a short time to live."26
After Kelly’s death it became clearer than ever that the NAAV would not disappear. In fact the organization
showed signs of continued growth, issuing bimonthly newsletters to its thousands of members and establishing field
organizers in every region of the nation. The federal department perhaps most hostile to the NAAV’s aims was the
Defense Nuclear Agency at the Pentagon. "We’re not in the health effects business—we’re in the defense business,"
DNA spokesman Colonel Bill McGee told an interviewer in 198O.27 However, responding to adverse publicity,
DNA had set up a toll-free telephone number in the late 1970s to gather information from veterans of nuclear
testing—and by early 1981 had accumulated more than forty thousand names and current addresses of atomic
veterans or next of kin.28
DNA refused requests by the National Association of Atomic Veterans for those names and addresses.29 The
Veterans Administration, meanwhile, after more than a year’s delay, in January 1981 agreed to provide NAAV with
its record of atomic vets’ names and addresses.30 But the VA had only 2 percent of the number of names
accumulated by the Defense Nuclear Agency.31
DNA’s refusal to share its large cache of data was consistent with the agency’s combative posture toward the
nation’s nuclear veterans. A DNA refrain has been the contention that servicemen received very low levels of
radiation.
But support for the NAAV cause came in the form of a rebuttal from Dr. Edward Martell, a former fallout analyst
for the Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission. Testifying at a citizens’ hearing in Washington on April 12,
1980, he said: "The best way of deceiving all of you about the effects of radiation is to talk about the effects of one
kind of radiation when you’re measuring the other."32 A scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
based in Colorado, Martell stated that internally absorbed alpha and beta particles are intentionally ignored by
government authorities.33
Martell alleged that Pentagon officials "take film badge records, which are a measure of penetrating radiation, and
they discuss the small degree of effect expected in the way of cancers and leukemias. But most cancer and leukemias
are due instead to internal emitters"34—nuclear-fission by-products such as strontium, cesium, and plutonium, which
were not measured by dosimetry badges.35
Even journalists priding themselves on hard-hitting investigative research are inclined to defer to seemingly
superior knowledge of Defense Department experts. Such was the case on September 28, 1980, when the CBS
television program 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on nuclear vets.
60 Minutes showed brief interviews with atomic veterans Orville Kelly and Harry Coppola, filmed only a few
weeks before their deaths. But the program focused on DNA director Vice Admiral Robert R. Monroe.36
Admiral Monroe informed CBS correspondent Morley Safer—and tens of millions of TV viewers—that at the
nuclear tests "meticulous precautions were taken to ensure that the exposures were within limits thought to be safe.
We have almost no indication today that there is a statistically higher proportion of cancer deaths." And, the admiral
added, "This weapon testing exposure is a very, very, very, very tiny amount of very low-level radiation." Admiral
Monroe explained that about 16 percent of American men die of cancer, so of course the disease would occur among
some nuclear veterans.37
The Pentagon representative’s on-camera assertions went unchallenged as CBS presented no contrary scientific
view. The 60 Minutes segment did not mention the government’s own Center for Disease Control study—public for
well over a year by that time—showing a leukemia rate more than twice expected among veterans who participated
in the Smoky test.38
Numerous veterans wrote angry letters to 60 Minutes, which quoted from a couple of critical ones on the air. But
the CBS editors seemed to have retained unshaken faith in the Pentagon’s integrity. The program quoted a viewer’s
letter charging that "the government’s treatment of these men is a national disgrace and perhaps the biggest
whitewash since Tom Sawyer painted his Aunt Polly’s fence." But 60 Minutes immediately sought to dispel the
aspersion on the Defense Department’s sincerity, as anchorman Mike Wallace declared flatly: "However, the
government is interested in getting the facts, and wrote to us to please tell atomic vets to call, toll-free 800-336-
3068."39
Among the outraged atomic veterans was a Hagerstown, Maryland, resident—George E. Mace. In a letter to 60
Minutes producer Joseph Wershba, Mace pointed out that "you graciously provided interested atomic veterans with
the Defense Nuclear Agency toll free telephone number, so they could seek information and help from a Government
which just the week before had said they were insignificant and financially not worth the bother."40
Three weeks after the atomic veterans segment was aired, in a one-sentence footnote to its mailbag excerpts, 60
Minutes finally mentioned the high leukemia rate among atomic vets found by the Center for Disease Control.
For George Mace, a participant in twenty-two atomic tests in 1958, the issues went far deeper than a sophisticated
journalist was likely to convey.41 "Cancer is not the only disease or health problems encountered by the atomic
veteran," he wrote. "There are blood and bone marrow diseases, respiratory diseases, general deterioration of health,
sterility, mental stress or breakdown, and genetic damage."42
In late 1980 the National Association of Atomic Veterans published a brief article advising members not to
donate blood or sign up for organ donor programs. The newsletter notice expressed a deep sadness common to
radiation victims: "All veterans who were exposed to radiation during atomic tests and are now participating in such
programs are urged to notify the state or national organization that they are atomic veterans and request a decision on
acceptability of future participation. It is a scientific fact that radioisotopes concentrate in specific organs of the
body, one of which is bone marrow which produces mature blood cells. Let us not perpetrate this curse on another
human being!"43
7. Bradley, No Place to Hide, p. 15.
8. Ibid., pp. 18, 19.
9. Ibid., p. 20.
10. Time, July 8, 1946, p. 20.
11. Bradley, No Place to Hide, p. 21.
12. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated there were approximately 210,000 atomic test servicemen. Most other sources say the number was higher.
The National Association of Atomic Veterans has calculated the figure at between 250,000 and 400,000. These estimates do not include the many thousands
of civilians who participated in the testing at close range.
13. G. C. Caldwell, et al., "Leukemia Among Participants in Military Maneuvers at a Nuclear Bomb Test: A Preliminary Report," Journal of the American
Medical Association, October 3, 1980, pp. 1575-1578.
14. Ibid., p. 1575.
15. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, "Statement by Guy H. McMichael III," June 20, 1979, p. 6.
16. Ibid.
17. Lewis Golinker, attorney, National Veterans Law Center in Washington, D.C., interviews, February-May 1981.
Atomic veterans appealing to the courts for help, after VA rejections, have been blocked by the government’s use of a 1950 Supreme Court decision in
the case of Feres v. United States. The "Feres doctrine" has made it nearly impossible for veterans or family members to sue the government for injuries
inflicted while in the U.S. military. (For an analysis of political and legal issues involved, see Lewis M. Milford, "Justice Is Not a GI Benefit," Progressive,
August 1981, pp. 32-35.)
18. U.S. DOD, Nuclear Test Personnel Review (Washington, D.C.: Defense Nuclear Agency, 1980), pp. 5-6.
19. Ibid., p. 11.
20. Ibid.
21. Account of Orville Kelly’s life and founding of NAAV is drawn from Atomic Veterans’ Newsletter, September-October 1979, pp. 6-7.
22. Atomic Veterans’ Newsletter, September-October 1979, p. 6.
23. Ibid., p. 7.
24. New York Times, November 27, 1979, p. 18.
25. "Statement of Orville Kelly," Citizens’ Hearings for Radiation Victims (hereafter cited as Citizens’ Hearings), Washington, D C., April 11, 1980 (National
Committee for Radiation Victims, 317 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Washington, D.C 20003.)
26. Ibid.
27. People, November 10, 1980, p. 44.
28. Years after they called DNA’s toll-free phone number and submitted information, all the scores of atomic veterans we interviewed said they had received at
most a form letter, and no substantial follow-up, from the government. For its part the Pentagon continued to gather informational responses from atomic
veterans. In 1981 the overwhelming majority of backlogged responses from veterans were not being put to any apparent use by Pentagon agencies.
Meanwhile the Defense Department was paying the National Academy of Sciences—an institution with long-standing and harmonious ties to governmental
nuclear interests—to study the health of veterans who participated in a few bomb test series. With no results expected before 1982 at the earliest, that study
addressed the health of about 15 percent of the veterans who took part in atomic tests.
29. Golinker, interview, February 1981; Golinker to authors, January 13, 1981.
30. VA Administrator Max Cleland to Golinker, January 2, 1981.
31. Golinker interview.
32. Citizens’ Hearings, pp. 26-28.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. The Defense Nuclear Agency, in support of its claim that the exposure received by atomic soldiers was too small to cause cancer, uses an average obtained
from film-badge readings. This approach is fraught with distortions. First, not everybody wore a film badge. Often a badge was issued to only one person in
the platoon. Second, and perhaps most important, the largest source of exposure to the troops was probably the inhalation of radioactive dust, or the ingestion
of contaminated water—neither of which was measured by badges. The several hundred isotopes produced immediately after an atomic detonation were
swirled around by high-speed winds. Although only a small percentage of this fresh fallout is made up of long-lived isotopes like plutonium, there would still
be a significant amount produced. Because the distribution of the fallout would not be uniform, there were no doubt several "hot spots" in the areas where
troops were posted.
36. 60 Minutes, CBS television network program segment titled "Time Bomb," September 28, 1980, transcript provided by CBS News.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., letters segment broadcast.
40. George Mace to Joseph Wershba, October 20, 1980.
41. We asked Joseph Wershba for his response to the criticisms leveled by nuclear veterans regarding the 60 Minutes story he produced. Wershba replied with a
note, dated January 22, 1981, saying: "As for personal comment, we’re responsible for what goes out over the air so the script and follow-up will have to
stand for itself."
42. Mace to Wershba, October 20, 1980.
43. Atomic Veterans’ Newsletter, winter 1980, p. 13.