TO THE ATOMIC VETERAN


From 1945 (the preparation and bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki) until the 1963 cessation of above ground testing, approximately 382,000 US Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine, as well as civilian and contract personnel were exposed to hazardous levels of ionizing radiation. They were exposed as US nuclear test participants at the Nevada and South Pacific test sites. An additional 195,000 service members participated in the occupation and clean-up of Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

The servicemen became guinea pigs for the express purpose of testing nuclear explosion and radiation effects on the ability of servicemen to function as war machinery. The exposure to radiation was never an "innocent mistake or miscalculation", nor was it due to a lack of knowledge regarding the dangers of radiation exposure,

Stafford Warren, an AEC scientific advisor, along with colleagues from the scientific community, were ignored as they warned of, pleaded, threatened and attempted to modify the dangers and lack of protection the servicemen were being exposed to. The military powers then wrested the control of the nuclear test program from the AEC and thus created the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) which is now called the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA). The dangers became even more evident with the results of Crossroads and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

The military powers saw fit to continue this insane idolatry for another 20 years as they proceeded to experiment with the new deity and human lives.

Men were ordered to march from trenches to ground zero (point of explosion) immediately following the dropping of the bomb. Planes flew into and circled mushroom clouds taking air samples and photos. Ship and ground crews washed down equipment and themselves with irradiated water. They swam in and drank contaminated water while eating food flecked with fallout particles. The men worked and maneuvered on neutron entrapped soil and water. They were provided with little or no protective clothing and seldom badged while some badges were falsified or not recorded because of high readings.

National Geographic Vol.169-No.16 dated June 1986 states that "Today, 40 years and 235 nuclear explosions later, the Bikinians are still waiting [to return home]...For as instruments on Bikini show, their atoll is still dangerously radioactive".

In spite of this long lived dangerous level of radioactivity, the DOD and DNA expect us to believe that the test participants were exposed to minimal non-hazardous levels of radiation.

At what point is commonsense overruled by political policy?

Thus this dedication to the Atomic Veteran who seeks only justice. In their search for honesty and acknowledgment and medical care, they have been forced to prove the unprovable and subjected to years long battles while the DVA awaits their ultimate solution and absolution to claims of radiation exposure. The victims death.

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