Atomic vets know war

Mike Driscoll is solving a puzzle that has bothered him for 46 years.

Could his health have been affected by exposure to atomic bomb testing?

The insight the Spokane Navy veteran is gathering is as personally momentous to him as his time aboard the USS Yorktown. He joined the aircraft carrier in 1961 after enlisting in the Navy out of high school.

The crew were told they were taking part in a test, but none knew the details. It became clear when a nearby destroyer became the first surface ship to fire an antisubmarine nuclear rocket.

Four decades later, Driscoll suffers from health problems that many Americans have, including a thyroid condition for which he takes medication. He’s now connecting with fellow veterans and using the Internet to review declassified documents about his ship and its missions.

Driscoll is not looking for a payout – he doesn’t know for sure his health issues are related to the test – but he wonders how the exposure to fallout from bomb tests is affecting others. Some may not even know they were part of it.

Several levels below the flight deck of the USS Yorktown, lying prone and bracing for impact, Driscoll wondered what was happening in May 1962.

Today he knows. He classifies himself an “atomic veteran.”

400,000 atomic vets

Veterans Affairs lists 400,000 U.S. military and civilian men and women as atomic veterans.

This includes about 195,000 service members who occupied Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities.

And it includes another 210,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel who participated in nuclear weapons tests from 1945 to 1962.

While the VA says it is nearly impossible to determine definitively if radiation poisoning from nuclear testing is responsible for veterans’ health problems such as leukemia, cancers and cataracts, it does recognize exposure may have affected the health of those involved in the testing and states that veterans can participate in a program to test radiation levels.

Recalling a ‘whump’

Driscoll carried a small, green Navy-issue memo pad in his pocket and kept meticulous notes. Of special interest now are his journal entries in May 1962. Driscoll wrote about the Yorktown leaving Long Beach and sailing to open ocean.

On May 11, sailors had to surrender their cameras. At about 1 p.m. a nearby destroyer, the USS Agerholm, became the first surface ship to fire an anti-submarine nuclear rocket.

The depth charge armed with a 10-kiloton warhead plunged into the deep water about 400 nautical miles southwest of San Diego, then exploded.

An impressive spray dome was captured on film from ships participating in what was called the Swordfish test. It was a small part of the country’s extensive and devastating series of nuclear weapons tests called Operation Dominic. Within the overall operation, the U.S. military detonated 36 bombs. Most were atmospheric bombs at remote South Pacific locations like Christmas Island and Johnston Atoll. Some were exploded at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas.

The sailors aboard the nearby warships during the 1962 test readied themselves. Driscoll remembers a “whump.”

“It was incredible that something could have such force,” he recalled during a recent interview, describing the event as if something had violently lifted the Yorktown and slammed it back down.

Radiation’s effects

Richard Sprute, of Spokane, talks about his World War II experiences, but doesn’t care to recall the terrible aftermath of the atom bombs dropped on Japan.

He arrived at the Japanese port of Sasebo on Sept. 22, 1945, on the USS Kingsbury.

That was about six weeks after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and the subsequent Japanese surrender.

Many sailors took bus rides from Sasebo to Nagasaki in a sort of ghoulish tour. “They said there was nothing left,” said Sprute, 84, who added that he had no desire to go.

“I just wasn’t interested. Sasebo was totally devastated and I didn’t want to see any more of that.”

Shipmates who did go to Nagasaki were upset.

“I think they considered the whole thing as regrettable, even though that was at a time when there was still a lot of anger toward the Japanese,” he said.

Sprute doesn’t know of anyone on his ship who was sickened by radiation exposure from visiting Nagasaki but believes it could have happened.

“There didn’t seem to be any kind of knowledge or awareness that you could be in a radiation area,” he said.

Critics, including some veterans groups, say the U.S. military used people as guinea pigs as scientists and leaders performed test after test to learn the effects of nuclear bombs.

Victim of French bombs?

Driscoll’s story doesn’t stop with U.S. testing of nuclear weapons.

Disillusioned with a country torn apart by Vietnam and then the Watergate scandal, Driscoll volunteered for the Peace Corps in the early 1970s and became a teacher in Western Samoa.

It’s a service he recalls with pride, much like his tour in the Navy.

But that service once again coincided with atmospheric testing of atomic weapons, this time by France.

He’s left wondering if fallout from some of France’s dozens of atmospheric nuclear tests from 1966 to 1996 drifted from Polynesia across Western Samoa.

Two years ago the French government confirmed a link between its nuclear testing and increased cases of thyroid cancer among Polynesians.

Driscoll is left with more puzzle pieces, knowing he will not fit them all together.

But he is writing about his experiences and hopes the legacy of nuclear weapons is not lost on generations coming after World War II and the Cold War.

“We must never use these weapons ever again,” he said. “We must educate the world about this period in our recent, memorable past (about) what was done.”