Nevada Veterans
In early January 1951 President Truman approved the first series of Nevada atomic tests scheduled to begin later
that month. When the nuclear testing started there, little information—let alone consultation—had been accorded
residents in the surrounding region.
The first series of nuclear tests within North America was labeled "Operation Ranger." Over a period of ten days
beginning January 27, 1951, five air-dropped A-bombs exploded over the Nevada Test Site, ranging from one to
twenty-two kilotons. Sixty-five miles away, Las Vegas took the tests in stride; the only ostensible negative effects
were a couple of broken windows resulting from an eight-kiloton blast code-named Baker-2.52
As with the Pacific test program, no plans were incorporated to evaluate the impact of radiation on human beings.
Rather, the Army chose to evaluate servicemen’s psychological reactions to participating in atomic bomb tests. The
plan got under way in the summer of 1951, financed by the Department of Defense and administered by George
Washington University, under the heading of the "Human Resources Research Office."53 The Pentagon also entered
into a similar arrangement with the Operations Research Office of Johns Hopkins University.
When soldiers arrived at Camp Desert Rock to participate in "Operation Buster-Jangle" in autumn 1951, they
knew little about what they were in for.
Introduction to the bare facilities at the Nevada Test Site came partly from an "Information and Guide" booklet
distributed to incoming GIs. "The officers and men of this operation share with you the hope that your visit to Camp
Desert Rock will prove an informative and revealing experience which you will always remember," read a greeting
signed by U.S. Army Major General W. B. Kean.54 Every page bore the inscription "RESTRICTED," and the
booklet was replete with injunctions against talking too much.
"To assist in maintaining the security of Exercise Desert Rock it is desired that you maintain secrecy discipline
regarding classified information observed here. Everyone will want to know what you have seen—officials, friends,
and the enemy."55
The Army booklet handed to the first nuclear soldiers at the Nevada Test Site did not discuss atomic bomb
radiation hazards. It did discuss possible hazards from indigenous reptiles and poisonous insects.56
Scenarios for tactical war games, assuming an enemy invasion sweeping inland from the West Coast, postulated
that "the decision has been made to employ an atomic weapon to effect maximum destruction of the enemy." The
maneuvers, while testing numerous facets of infantrymen’s responses to atomic weaponry exploding in their midst,
were depicted as realistic dry runs for future combat situations.57
"Indoctrination in essential physical protective measures under simulated combat conditions, and observation of
the psychological effects of an atomic explosion are reasons for this desired participation," said a preparatory
memorandum from the Pentagon’s Military Liaison Committee to the AEC chairman. Added the Defense
Department panel: "The psychological implications of atomic weapons used close to our front lines in support of
ground operations are unknown."58 The AEC ordered strict exclusion of the media during the forthcoming autumn
nuclear tests in Nevada.59
Like Army buddies with him in the engineers A Company and other servicemen who arrived at the Nevada Test
Site that October of 1951, twenty-two-year-old private William Bires did not know that military authorities were
placing major importance on gauging mental and emotional impacts of close-range atomic blasts on foot soldiers like
himself.60
Sleeping on the desert ground got very cold in October and November. ("We didn’t even have decent sleeping
bags. We froze our asses off.")61 Of far more lasting significance was the actual experience of seeing half-a-dozen
nuclear bomb detonations, ranging up to a thirty-one-kiloton blast code-named Easy.
Bires participated in the series of atomic tests over a period of a few weeks, with the largest nuclear explosions
coming from bombs dropped by aircraft. Several thousand men watched from about seven miles away as fierce
atomic light slashed across the desert; some were marched to within half a mile of ground zero. After the
indescribably vivid bright flash Bires took note of "bizarre effects of the bombs"—weird designs of permanent
shadows left in the atomic wake, charred into test range buildings, vehicles, gun emplacements. Animals situated in
calibrated proximities to the A-blasts were singed and sometimes pathetic. "I can still see this damn sheep with its
rump burnt," Bires commented three decades later.62
The Pentagon eagerly assessed behavior of GIs as they responded to orders soon after the half-dozen nuclear
detonations, which totaled seventy-two kilotons. The more intimate, and more lasting, consequences apparently
were not of great concern to the military brass.
"I was then, and I still am," William Bires said in 1981, "living with the firsthand knowledge that we do indeed
have within our power the ability to destroy ourselves. Most people have heard this, but have not been able to
observe firsthand the effects of those terrible weapons."63
When he filed the first in a series of claim statements with the Veterans Administration in 1978, Bires cited the
psychological jolts left by his hitch at the Nevada nuclear tests. Recurrent fits of depression, the tenacious imagery
of atomic weapons exploding close by, and an acutely painful spinal affliction came to plague him.64
Less than five months after the first troop maneuvers in the shadow of a mushroom cloud over Nevada, the U.S.
military was pushing for more daring escapades for GIs. The distance of seven miles from nuclear blasts seemed too
remote, and tame, to high-ranking occupants of Pentagon offices along the banks of the Potomac River. In the future,
declared Air Force Brigadier General A. R. Luedecke, a less cautious policy would be appropriate. In a secret letter
to the AEC in early 1952 he attributed "unfavorable psychological effects" among soldiers "to the tactically
unrealistic distance of seven miles to which all participating troops were required to withdraw for the detonation."65
The Pentagon now suggested that soldiers be stationed a little less than four miles from the exploding nuclear
weapons in subsequent tests. The AEC’s director of biology and medicine, Dr. Shields Warren, didn’t like the sound
of it. "The explosion is experimental in type, and its yield cannot be predicted with accuracy," he warned.
"Deviations from established safety practices would result . . . in larger numbers and more serious casualties the
closer the troops were to the point of detonation."66
Despite such in-house warnings from its own staff experts the AEC capitulated to the Pentagon plan.
Commission chairman Gordon Dean promised the Department of Defense that the AEC "would enter no objection to
stationing the troops at not less than 7,000 yards from ground zero."67 All discussions leading to the decision that
would affect thousands of soldiers were conducted in secrecy. The Pentagon had exercised its unwritten dominance
over the AEC.
In Nevada nearly eight thousand Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force personnel were in the early stages of
"Operation Tumbler-Snapper"—involving eight nuclear weapons dropped from airplanes or perched on towers, with
total explosive force of over one hundred kilotons. During the largest blast of the series—a thirty-one-kiloton bomb
air-dropped on April 22, 1952—selected reporters and television crews were allowed for the first time to record an
A-bomb shot in progress.68 At that test, and again the following month, soldiers were less than four miles from the
explosions, often moving into the central blast area within two hours.
Back in Washington, according to classified AEC minutes, Commission chairman Gordon Dean "commented that
a popular article on fall-out to reduce the possibility of public anxiety resulting from lack of information might be
helpful."69
The kind of publicity the AEC sought did not come from Army veterans like James W. Yeatts, whose description
of Operation Tumbler-Snapper would calm no public fears—neither at the time, nor twenty-eight years later, when
Yeatts issued the following statement from his home in Keeling, Virginia:
At the test site we had no protective clothing or equipment, not even a gas mask. When the bomb was
detonated, we had our backs to the blast, kneeling with our hands over our eyes and our eyes closed. The
flash was so bright we could see the bones in our hands. Then we turned to see the fire ball form. The
shock wave hit us and knocked me backward. The dust was so thick that we could not see anything. After
the dust settled we marched toward Ground Zero until the radiation got too hot. We then turned back and
had a Geiger counter check for radiation.
By the time we arrived back at Camp Desert Rock, most of us had severe headaches and were nauseated.
We were told to lie down—that it would go away.
Two days later, back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I was told to turn the uniform that I wore in the tests
in to the stock room. It was put in a rubber bag. Nothing was said about how much radiation we had
received.70
Two months later Yeatts began having serious health problems—"rectal abscesses, headaches, nausea and severe
back pains," which persisted into the 1960s. Ten years after his participation in the atomic testing Yeatts lost all his
teeth. "They became so loose, I could pull them with no pain. About a year later I began having breathing
problems." By the late 1970s Yeatts was unable to work. In 1980 his weight had declined to 103 pounds. "I can
only walk a few steps. I am now losing control of my bowels and urine."71
As far as the family was concerned, the aftermath of Operation Tumbler-Snapper did not end with James Yeatts.
"My son was born in 1969, with many birth defects—the sutures in his head were grown together, a severe heart
problem, an imperforate anus, he had only one kidney and an obstruction in the urinary tract. He had to have a
colostomy at one day old. At three months old he had a ‘Pots procedure’ operation on his heart. He had a
ureterostomy at six months, which will be permanent. A pull through was done on his rectum at 2 years old. At the
age of 5 he had open heart surgery. He cannot attend school and still suffers from these problems. . . ."72
Ultimately Yeatts asked physicians at the M.C.V. Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, "if radiation exposure I had
could cause my son’s defects. The doctors asked me why I did not tell them about the radiation exposure when my
son was born. They said my son would have to have close check-ups for other problems that could come up."73
The Veterans Administration denied Yeatts any service-connected benefits. "It is not enough for the Government
to use me for a guinea pig," he said, "but to cause something to children years later is more than I can take."74
52. Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers, p. 34.
53. For detailed account of role played by Human Resources Research Office in the U.S. nuclear testing program, see Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers.
54. U.S. Army, "Exercise Desert Rock Information and Guide," 1951, p. 1.
55. Ibid., p. 8.
56. Ibid., p. 19.
57. Ibid., pp. 9-11.
58. Military Liaison Committee Memorandum MLC 31.4, July 16, 1951, pp. 1, 2.
59. AEC memo by General Manager M. W. Boyer, September 20, 1951.
60. William Bires, interview, March 1981.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. USAF Brigadier General A. R. Luedecke to Director, AEC Division of Military Application, March 7, 1952.
66. Shields Warren, M.D., "Draft Staff Paper on Troop Participation in Operation Tumbler-Snapper," AEC memo, March 25, 1952.
67. Gordon Dean to Brigadier General H. B. Loper, April 2, 1952.
68. Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers, p. 58.
69. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, May 14, 1952.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., pp. 12-13.
74. Ibid., p. 14.