Continuing Tests in Nevada
The furor in Utah that had resulted from fallout two years earlier prompted the AEC to exercise more caution as
the continental atomic testing program—which excluded H-bombs during its first decade—restarted in February
1955 after a break of twenty months. But the AEC immediately received counterpressure. In a letter written three
days after the first of fourteen nuclear shots slated for "Operation Teapot" at the Nevada site, Senator Clinton
Anderson of New Mexico complained that he had been kept waiting for a week to witness the test series’ premier
blast, as one postponement after another was forced by poor weather conditions.54
Senator Anderson was in the midst of a personal feud with AEC chairman Lewis L. Strauss.55 As head of the
congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Anderson could cause trouble. "I do not advocate taking any real
risk with public health and safety," the senator said. But his message was clear: If the AEC was willing to let
weather interrupt testing schedules at the Nevada Test Site, then the tests might be banished to the far-flung Pacific.56
AEC commissioner Willard F. Libby fumed that confining tests to the Pacific would "set the weapons program
back a lot."57 But disregarding weather conditions in Nevada would bring more fallout to the St. George area—
"which they apparently always plaster," in the words of AEC Chairman Strauss.58
"I have forgotten the number of people at St. George," Strauss said. Informed that forty-five hundred people were
living in the town, Strauss ruminated, "So you can’t evacuate them."59
"St. George is hypertensified . It is not a question of health or safety with St. George, but a question of public
relations," commented AEC fallout expert Dr. John C. Bugher. "You remember the uproar at St. George last series."
After that experience, Dr. Bugher recollected, "We regarded southern Utah as a forbidden zone for future fallout in
this series."60
But the AEC decided that the people of Utah were less important than the atomic testing schedule. Former Rear
Admiral Strauss, into his second year as chairman, concurred with a suggestion by commissioner Thomas Murray to
"get on with the test."61
"I don’t think we can change them at this stage of the game," said Strauss, referring to Nevada testing criteria.62
A forty-three-kiloton blast, code-named Turk, proceeded as planned at the Nevada Test Site. So did ten more
blasts in the Teapot series, totaling 114 more kilotons.
At an AEC meeting midway through Operation Teapot spirits seemed to have improved. "People have got to
learn to live with the facts of life, and part of the facts of life are fallout," Commissioner Libby said.63
"It is certainly all right they say if you don’t live next door to it," responded Chairman Strauss.64
"Or live under it," chimed in K. D. Nichols.65
Vowed Commissioner Murray: "We must not let anything interfere with this series of tests—nothing."66
At the site about eight thousand troops—from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—participated in
Operation Teapot, observing from trenches officially described as being one and a half to five miles from the atom
bomb explosions. But Major Donald H. Anderson of Northridge, California, a twenty-year veteran of the Air Force,
remembered being still closer—one thousand yards from ground zero—when the nuclear shot Bee was fired on
March 22, 1955. Formerly trained as an instructor of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at the Sandia Base
in Albuquerque, Anderson was among "about 200 or 300 of us" closest to the blast, listed at eight kilotons. "Upon
detonation, we were in trenches 1,000 yards from ground zero."67
After detonation, we had to dig our way out of the trenches which had collapsed on us. For about 10 or 15
minutes, I was blinded by the blast. . . . Then we were told we had to advance forward from the trenches to
a location where toilet paper was lying on the ground. Not everybody who was in the trenches (about 200
or 300 people) advanced to the toilet paper marker which was about 200 or 300 yards from ground zero.
About a dozen other people and I went down to it all the way. Then, an emergency jeep came up and an
officer told us to get out of there—we did not belong there. He took our names and told us to report to an
officer at camp. We had to go back for decontamination testing at Camp Desert Rock about 9 a.m. We
reported to an officer who was threatening us with court martial because we did what we were instructed to
do! No action was taken. Our film badges were not returned to us and we were not advised of the amount
of radiation we had received.
I believe it was the commander or his adjutant at Camp Desert Rock who talked to us and threatened us
with court martial. At no time did they tell us there would be any possibility of subsequent illness as a
result of complying with their orders to advance down to the toilet paper laid out on the ground. We were
close enough to see parts of the tower that had been reduced to molten metal. . . . We were told that
something went wrong with the detonation—that it was larger than expected.68
Major Anderson later developed cancer, which he linked to "the radiation exposure I received while in the
military."69
An official report of the 1955 atomic exercises, issued by Marine headquarters, declared that "the realism
engendered by coming face-to-face with an actual nuclear detonation adds a great deal to the benefits derived, and
augments the total fund of training and experience of the Marine Corps."70 As an additional note of envisioned
battlefield "realism" some servicemen sat in tanks, moving toward the nuclear blast point after detonation—with
radiation readings up to twelve roentgens metered in the tanks.71
As usual Las Vegas newspapers presented the nuclear tests in optimistic terms: "ATOMIC WARHEAD
NEWEST YANK DEFENSE WEAPON"; "‘BABY’ A-BLAST MAY PROVIDE FACTS ON DEFENSE
AGAINST ATOMIC ATTACK." Often the news stories glorified anticipated military benefits, with themes replayed
by media across the country. In California the Oakland Tribune announced "ATOM BLAST TESTS SMOKE
SCREEN TO CURB RADIATION." When the government unveiled a taller detonation tower—five hundred feet
instead of the previous three-hundred-foot height—the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, "Use of taller towers
from which atomic devices are detonated at the Nevada Test Site introduces an added angle of safety to residents
living outside the confines of the Atomic Energy Commission’s continental testing ground, nuclear scientists
believe."72
Military spokesmen continued their public reassurances. "The time after a detonation of nuclear devices is a
period of caution, but a safe period if experienced personnel equipped with proper safeguards are used," Major Earl
R. Shappell, a radiological safety officer, told reporters. "Our Army clearing teams can frequently move with
impunity into the general firing area within hours following a blast."73 A few days after Major Shappell’s
explanation the National Broadcasting Company telecast its first TV coverage of an atomic bomb test.74
Meanwhile millions of American schoolchildren were being taught to hide under desks in air-raid drills, as though
such measures would provide appreciable protection in case of nuclear attack. Imagery of atomic holocaust became
part of American life. According to authors Douglas Miller and Marion Nowak in their study of the fifties, "For kids,
to whom the whole bomb-culture message was a thing to be inhaled like air, defense security could not help but get
garbled up with terror."75
With few exceptions Americans remained frozen in silence as the nuclear age progressed. It was only in the later
years of the 1950s, with Red-baiting on the wane and scientists beginning to speak out about biological dangers of
fallout, that implications of the bomb were questioned.
Meanwhile, the Nevada testing continued, and atomic blasts became fairly common sights for people living
throughout the West. One nuclear test explosion was visible from eleven western states.76 The thick fallout clouds
mostly moved through the targeted downwind corridors in rural areas of Nevada, northern Arizona, and Utah. But
sometimes, with shifting winds at various altitudes, large cities were contaminated, as in March 1955 when an
atomic shot sent radioactivity directly to Las Vegas.
Within six hours of that explosion "the cloud dropped invisible bits of matter that gave a total radiation of 174
milliroentgens in North Las Vegas," reported the Associated Press, which usually did not deviate from the official
government perspective on nuclear events. "Normal background radiation is 2 milliroentgens, but the Atomic
Energy Commission said the fallout was not harmful. The AEC has set a safety minimum of 3.9 roentgens, or 3,900
milliroentgens, per year for civilians offsite. Test personnel are allowed to absorb that much in a 13-week period."77
The Las Vegas Review Journal stated flatly: "Fallout on Las Vegas and vicinity following this morning’s detonation
was very low and without any effects on health." A front-page follow-up article relayed the AEC’s commendations
for the "matter of fact manner" in which Las Vegans responded to the fallout dusting.78
54. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, February 23, 1955, pp. 117-118.
55. Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers, p. 71.
56. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, February 23, 1955, pp. 117-118.
57. Ibid., p. 119.
58. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, March 14, 1955, p. 122.
59. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, March 14, 1955, p. 115.
60. Ibid., pp. 115-116.
61. Ibid., pp. 116-117.
62. Ibid.
63. AEC Commissioners Meeting Minutes, March 14, 1955, p. 121.
64. Ibid
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Atomic Veterans’ Newsletter, spring 1980, p. 14.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. U.S. Marine Corps, "Report of Exercise Desert Rock VI," 1955, p. V11-2.
71. Rosenberg, Atomic Soldiers, p. 71.
72. Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 29, 1955; Las Vegas Sun, March 13, 1955; Oakland Tribune, March 13, 1955; Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 11,
1955.
73. Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 27, 1955.
74. Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 29, 1955.
75. Miller and Nowak, The Fifties, p. 54. Added Miller and Nowak: "Adults, more accomplished at psychological defense, had an easier time of it. They could
dodge the great fears and moral questions with more deftness than their offspring."
76. Las Vegas Sun, March 13, 1955.
77. Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, March 23, 1955.
78. Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 22, and March 24, 1955.