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ATOMIC VETERAN RECALLS 1946 BOMB TESTS AND THE

DIRTY AFTERMATH -- He doesn't know how much radiation

he received. Nobody does. That's because he never

received any kind of radiation measurement

device during Operation Crossroads.

Bikini Atoll test.

For more about atomic veterans, use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearc
h.php?q=atomic+veterans&op=ph

Be sure to watch the video at the link below.

Story here... http://www.knoxnews.c
om/news/2008/sep/21/atomic-vet-recalls/

Story below:

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Atomic vet recalls 1946 bomb tests — and dirty aftermath

By Frank Munger

When Ray Beatty turned 17 in July 1945, he was ready to go to war. He'd been ready for a while.

His older brother, a B-24 pilot, was shot down on his fifth mission over Hamburg, Germany, and spent nine months in a German POW camp. A favorite cousin had been a prisoner for most of the war after being captured by the Japanese at Corregidor.

The redheaded teenager was boiling for revenge. With the nod and signature of his father, he dropped out of Clinton High School and enlisted in the Navy.

"I had a lot of motivation," Beatty said. "I wanted to kill Japs and Krauts."

But he was too late for World War II. By the time he was inducted and trained, it was 1946 and the war was over. Instead of going to war, Beatty went to the Marshall Islands. There he met up with an adversary that was neither Japanese nor German but would hound him for life - radiation.

He was part of Operation Crossroads, the U.S. military's first postwar experiment with nuclear weapons. The fourth and fifth atomic detonations in history, test shots Able and Baker, took place at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946.

Now 80 years old, the Clinton resident remembers it well.

All told, 42,000 people participated in Operation Crossroads, with about 37,000 of them Navy personnel.

The USS Saratoga, one of the nation's first aircraft carriers, had been battered by kamikaze hits in the latter stages of the war, but it was patched up at the Bremerton, Wash., shipyard and ready for a final mission. Beatty and some of his new buddies - fresh out of Navy boot camp - hitched a ride in San Francisco.

Beatty remembers passing under the Bay Bridge and heading west. Four or five days later, the Saratoga made its first stop at Pearl Harbor.

"We turned in all our dress clothes, the Navy blues, and all the dress white pants," Beatty said.

The sailors were given field clothes, probably Marine castoffs, and that probably was an early sign that the mission was going to be dirty duty. During the voyage from Hawaii to the Marshall Islands, Beatty and the other enlisted men learned about the bomb tests.

"They told us at some point. I'm not sure when it was. In the Navy, you can't keep secrets. They get out," he said. "We knew what we were going to be doing."

The size of the military operation became more apparent as dozens of ships started gathering at Bikini Atoll and making preparations over a couple of weeks.

Bikini is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about as far as you can get from Clinton, Tenn., and Beatty was getting his first view of the world.

Young sailors swam in the warm ocean water before the tests and spent time on Bikini Island, where there were coconut trees to climb, abandoned war planes to check out, and beer to drink. The natives already had been relocated to other islands in the region.

Pretty soon things would get serious.

As part of experiments related to Operation Crossroads, live animals - including pigs, goats and rats - were placed on some of the target ships.

On July 1, as he stood on deck of a troop ship 10 miles from ground zero - or "water zero" in this case -

Beatty and other unlisted men were told not to look at the Able explosion until given the clearance. Unlike the top brass, the crewmen didn't have the protective goggles to look directly at the blast, but they looked anyway.

As the countdown for the air-dropped bomb reached its conclusion, everybody turned to watch the fiery mushroom grow on the Pacific horizon, Beatty said.

"I wasn't about to miss that thing," he said. "It was the awfulest thing I ever saw."

Beatty had grown up in the backyard of Oak Ridge, one of the wartime sites where the A-bomb was developed. He had gotten glimpses of the super-secret project while working part time for the post office during high school. But he didn't know any more about nuclear weapons than anybody else.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki made an impression on him, of course, but his perspective on the atomic bomb was shaped more by his pent-up anger. "It ruined my chance of getting into World War II," he said.

Watching it in person was hard to fathom and just as difficult to describe.

Compared to the size of the stem and mushroom cloud, which eventually covered most of the tropical sky, the sound of Able's atomic blast - by the time it reached the observation point 10 miles away - was almost disappointing, Beatty said. "It just kind of went boom," he said. "It was nothing special."

The stated purpose of Operation Crossroads was to test the effects of nuclear weapons on Navy warships and equipment and material. Beatty and others believe an unstated goal was to test the effects on military personnel. In order to keep their funding, defense agencies had an interest in making it all look manageable.

This was pre-Cold War. The Nuclear Club had only one member. It was before the hydrogen bomb multiplied the power to such an extraordinary level that Mutually Assured Destruction became a strategy for peace. There was an expectation that the United States would someday fight a war with bombs similar to what had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.

The military was getting ready.

More than 90 ships were assembled in the target area around Bikini Lagoon, fully armed and equipped, just as they would be at time of war. Many of the vessels were old U.S. battleships that had been through a lot already and were considered disposable. A few captured German and Japanese vessels also were put in harm's way to see what would happen.

The biggest of the target ships was the Saratoga.

A third nuclear test, Charlie, was planned as part of Operation Crossroads, but the deep-water detonation was canceled - reportedly because of contamination concerns created by the Baker test shot.

Not everything went according to plan with Able, starting with the bomb drop.

The B-29 pilot and crew missed their target by 1,500-2,000 feet. The drop was so far offline that it prompted an investigation, although the flight crew was cleared of wrongdoing. The problem was blamed on a flaw in the bomb's stabilizer.

Some of the target ships that figured to be sunk actually survived the off-target blast and were deemed not too hot for habitation. The Saratoga had a bent smokestack, but most of its damage was nonstructural. Beatty and other crew members reboarded the scorched ship within hours of the Able test and - after putting out several small fires on the flight deck - assumed their normal duties.

"We went in and opened up the hatches ... and went to our fire room to restart the boilers," Beatty said. That included drawing feed water from the Bikini Lagoon and putting it through the evaporator system, he said.

If there was a concern about radioactive contamination, it wasn't conveyed to the crew, Beatty said.

"I think they just let us go in wearing our normal field clothes," he said, "because we knew that night we'd be eating food that was on ship and we'd be drinking water that we'd picked up out of the lagoon."

Beatty remembers wondering about hazards. But people didn't know much about radiation, especially a country boy not yet 18.

"You just put it in the back of your mind. We got to do this, so let's do it, and the Navy will take care of us. It was still a wartime philosophy. Get it done now. We'll worry about it later."

Sailors stayed on the Saratoga while preparations began for the second test shot, Baker.

"The only places that we ever heard that were closed down because of radiation were the drinking fountains," Beatty said.

In the fire room, however, the crew drank water that came from the same pipe that fed the boilers, and they made coffee using the steam, he said.

Reboarding the Saratoga probably was his first encounter with a radioactive environment, Beatty said, but it wasn't his last.

As time neared for a dress rehearsal for the Baker test, Beatty departed the Saratoga again - this time for good. He was transferred to the USS Rockwall, the same troop ship he'd boarded earlier for the Able shot.

During a pause in preparations, Beatty volunteered - or was volunteered - for a work party that went aboard the USS Independence, another of the target ships in the large lagoon, to help salvage ammunition and explosives that survived the Able explosion.

Again, Beatty suspects he entered a radiation zone with no protection beyond his clothing, which wasn't much. Daily temperatures soared above 100 degrees at Bikini, and sailors wore as little as possible in the sticky, equatorial heat.

Unlike later tests, a large media contingent witnessed the 1946 A-bombs at Bikini Atoll, including correspondents from China, France and the Soviet Union.

After some flux in the schedule, Baker took place July 25, 1946. The bomb had about the same yield as Able - 21 kilotons - but the results were different.

The atomic device had been placed in an underwater position beneath a vessel in the target fleet, and there was no chance of this explosion going astray.

By official and unofficial accounts, Baker was a lot messier than Able - spraying radioactive water across the lagoon and seriously contaminating all ships stationed there for the test. Several of them reeled and ultimately sank from the damaging blast.

The underwater eruption was such that it hoisted the battleship USS Arkansas into the blast column, Beatty said. "When it blew, it really blew," he said of the Baker bomb.

Afterward, the Saratoga was listing badly. Beatty and some of his Navy buddies, including guys who had been stationed on the ship during the war years, watched as it went under. With his home ship on the ocean bottom, Beatty knew he'd be staying on the Rockwall for a while as a noncrewman.

The second test in Operation Crossroads created a major radiation hazard. Many of the target vessels were too hot to board for inspection, except for brief periods, and that reportedly limited the success of the testing program. Some of the hottest vessels were sunk near Bikini Atoll or towed elsewhere for sea burial, according to Navy reports.

Support ships that moved into the lagoon after Baker became contaminated, too, and had to be cleaned up.

One day in late July or early August, Beatty decided to venture out of his dark quarters on the Rockwall and get some sun and fresh air. He wasn't on deck long before he was assigned to scrape scum from the ship's hull to help reduce the radioactivity.

After being lowered to the water in a dinghy with ropes on either end, he was given a short-handled hoe and told to get busy. It was hard work. It was hot work.

As the water level rose and fell each time another vessel passed, the little boat would bang against the Rockwall's side. So would Beatty's head and shoulders.

"There was crud and barnacles. Mostly it was like green algae you see in ponds, and I was bumping against the side and trying to keep it out of my mouth," Beatty said. "I was scraping, and it was falling into the boat. I'm not sure I didn't get some of that into my mouth and innards."

From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. The most powerful was reported to be the 15-megaton Bravo test shot in 1954.

Operation Crossroads came to a close around Aug. 10, but that didn't mean the cleanup was over. For Beatty, it continued for months and thousands of nautical miles.

On Aug. 8, he and some of the other sailors on the Rockwall were transferred to the USS Appling for the ride back to the United States. Unfortunately, the Appling was another "radiologically suspect" ship because of its lengthy time near ground zero, drawing lagoon water into its operating systems.

According to Beatty, the Appling flew a yellow flag to warn of contamination.

"I don't know when it was put on there. I wasn't sure what it meant except that it was possibly dangerous and might crap up somebody's dock," he said.

About this time, the teenager started to worry about himself. One pay day, while playing craps with some sailors down in thehold, a buddy looked at him and said, "Beatty, your hair is falling out."

Sure enough, he was shedding his bright-red hair.

"At that point, I knew something was wrong," he said. "It came out a lot in my little brush. It finally got to where you could see the scalp all shiny."

Eventually his hair grew back, but the memory stayed with him.

After stopping at Pearl Harbor for sailors to retrieve their belongings, the Appling headed toward the U.S. mainland. Official accounts of what happened with the USS Appling aren't readily available, but Beatty said the ship was denied port - first at San Francisco and then at San Pedro, Calif., - because of concerns about the ship's radioactivity.

"So we went back out in the ocean and stayed about two weeks and did everything we could think of (to get rid of contamination)," he said.

That meant cleaning surfaces and flushing systems with caustic solutions, he said.

The Appling later was allowed to dock or drop anchor at San Pedro, Beatty said, but the stay was temporary. It wasn't long before the crew reboarded and headed to the East Coast, going down through the Panama Canal until finally reaching the Naval Operating Base at Norfolk, Va.

At Norfolk, the ship was fully decontaminated, Beatty said. That meant dismantling the water intake and boiler operating system, he said.

"We had to take all those plates out and crawl in there and clean the mud drums. We wiped everything down. We used hundreds and hundreds of rags. My buddies would take them out. I don't know what they did with them. Threw them overboard, probably."

The wipe-down of the Appling, from Beatty's perspective, concluded his participation in Operation Crossroads. He was based at Norfolk for the rest of his Navy tour, joining crews on shakedown cruises for a number of newly rehabbed ships.

On Nov. 12, 1947, he was discharged from the Navy following what Beatty termed "a very cursory physical examination."

Thirteen ships were sunk during the Able and Baker atomic tests at Bikini, and other ships were destroyed later because of damage or extensive contamination.

Ray Beatty has had a good life by almost any standard.

After returning from the Navy, he fell in love with Betty Fryer, and they've been married for 59 years, with three sons and a lot more to show for it.

He finished up high school, played football for a year at East Tennessee State University, and got a degree in transportation from the University of Tennessee.

He found out he had a knack for statistics, and that led to a successful, 33-year career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, including time as operations finance manager. He served 12 years on the Anderson County Court. Along the way, he accumulated more friends than freckles, and that's a lot.

Even at 80, Beatty is a strong man with handy skills. He cares for an 18 1/2-acre farm outside Clinton, which includes a barn and outbuildings that date to the 19th century. He built a fantastic stone chimney with his own hands, finished a deck this summer, and last week was climbing on a scaffold to paint the house.

He doesn't look like a radiation victim, whatever one would imagine that to be. He knows he has good genes because many of his family members lived past 90.

He has, however, suffered illness and conditions that could be related to his exposures - immune system deficiencies, peripheral neuropathy, respiratory problems and attacks of depression - and his doctors have suggested as much. He's had two skin cancers in recent years and surgery for prostate cancer.

Truth is, Beatty doesn't know how much radiation he received at Bikini or thereafter. Nobody does. That's because he never received or wore any kind of radiation measurement device during Operation Crossroads.

In fact, he doesn't recall ever seeing anyone on ship with Geiger counters or similar instruments, although historical reports indicate that there were radiation specialists on hand to guide the military's decision-making on deployment and use of personnel.

Beatty honored his military commitment. He honored the oath of secrecy he took before participating in the atomic exercises.

He didn't even tell his family until 50 years after the fact. What bothers him, now that restrictions have been lifted, is the perceived lack of honesty in dealing with the radiation exposures.

About 10 years ago, at the suggestion of a friend, he applied for disability compensation with the Department of Veterans Affairs. He's now working on his fourth appeal.

He said the VA officers didn't seem to grasp what he was telling them. The first dose estimate from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency in 2004 was well below 1 rem, just a fraction of what today's protected nuclear workers are allowed to receive annually.

In 2007, the agency upgraded his possible external dose to 18 rems, with a total dose to "any skin area" of 550 rems beta/gamma.

"No matter what they say, it's just a guess," he said.

Beatty was granted 10 percent disability for hearing loss. But his main claim for compensation, based on his exposure during Operation Crossroads, has been denied repeatedly.

He would have given up long ago, except they made him angry with low estimates of his radiation exposure.

"There can be no question that these tests involved uncontrolled and totally unknown radiation exposures, along with complete absence of radiation monitors or safety instructions, protective gloves, masks or clothing, or other protective measures," Beatty said in a written response to one of the denials.

"Your whole attempt to try to reconstruct and quantify my radioactive exposures, decades later, by individuals who have never been involved in the conditions or practices, defies not only all elementary science but also just plain common sense."

The Department of Veterans Affairs did not return calls seeking comment.

Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.

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