Atomic Veterans
Operation Dominic I & II
Over the years since I was discharged from the USMC I have received letters from the Defense Nuclear Agency or Marine Corps concerned about my participation with HMM-364 during the nuclear atmospheric tests at Johnston Island in 1962. They have asked for rosters or orders with names of others that were involved in the tests, if I had been sick with any particular aliments, or if I knew of others that were ill. One letter even asked if I would try to find someone in the city where I lived that they had lost contact. This didn’t raise too much concern for me until I had prostate cancer and was looking at the possibility of radiation therapy as a solution. The radiologist said that generally if you have not had a major health problem in the ten (10) years following the exposure, you had passed the critical time period. He also said that it might be a good idea to try finding out what my exposure really was and my quest began.
My first thought was that this information would be in my medical records located in St. Louis, Mo. Record Center. The answer I got from that source was my records had burned in a fire and were not available. My questions to Veteran Administration resulted in blank stares or phone transfers around the country till I hung up in frustration. I then went to the Internet where there were personal accounts and involvements, Congressional investigations, and Veteran Administration home pages relative to Atomic Veterans. I think after I changed my search strategy I finally found the following address relating to veteran radiation data:
Defense Threat Reduction Agency
ATTN: RD-NTSN
8725 John J. Kingman Road, Stop 6201
Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6201
(800) 462-3683, (703) 767-5870, FAX (703) 767-4450
Website: www.DTRA.mil
The call to this number was refreshing with people that were courteous, knowledgeable, and helpful. I was explaining on the call we had gone into the landing area next to where the missile had blown on the launch pad to evacuate more personnel the morning after that incident. I was concerned as there were a number of people with Geiger counters picking up pieces of the missile all around us putting them in plastic bags and the lady on the other end of the call said, “Oh, you were actually there”. I told her that I was not sure they would find any data on me as my records were burned up in a fire at St. Louis. She informed me the people in St. Louis were so lazy they tell everyone that and their agency had 3 of their own personnel in St. Louis to solve that problem. Three days later, DTRA Form 150 (Nuclear Test Personnel Review Information Request and Release) was sent to me along with fact sheets on Operation Dominic I and II. The form pretty much asks for your branch of service, service number, tests you were associated, location, unit designation, and permission to release files to you. Within a month I received all the paperwork from my military records that related to my involvement in Operation Dominic I and II along with readings from my film badges issued during each operation. The letter accompanying this data would be important in your designation of being an Atomic Veteran. I had some difficulty in reading the film badge file copy and asked for a written confirmation, which came immediately with a follow up letter. My daughter that works with radiation as a PhD Bio-Physics researcher said the reading is pretty low and not to worry about it. I have since taken copies of these records to my local VA hospital, but they really were not sure what to do with them other than put them in my folder. Atomic Veterans do get a complete physical as part of the designation and I was told to come back next year.
Data in the information forms sent related to these tests stated most of the film badges and dosimeters are kept at the Nuclear Testing Archive in Las Vegas, Nevada (702-295-1628). They have broken the doses down for the Dominic Tests by military groups with an explanation the 45% of the film badges had experience damage due to a defective wax seal when reevaluated in 1979-1980. The badges that showed reading above 0.4 rem, had a 98% defective rate. The good news is that the Marines only had about 4 people that had readings in the 2-5 rem range. CJTF 8 had set the maximum permissible exposure for the 13 weeks of testing at 3.0 roentgens with a maximum for the year at 5.0 R. The US population receives about 0.62 rem/year from natural background sources. A chest x-ray will give you about 0.02 rems.
The following is an Internet site that will give you information from the Veteran Administration relative to medical conditions related to ionized radiation exposure: http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/radiation/diseases.asp#other
I have recently been corresponding by email with an Army veteran, Harold Davis from the Johnston Island tests who found me from some of the information that was on HMM-364 website. Harold was in the Command Bunker #1 with 6 other people when the Thor blew. He was picked the afternoon after the blast by a C-118 and flown to Hawaii. When I asked about the men picking up piece of radioactive material after the Thor blew on the launch site, he said they were Navy frogmen stationed in the bunker next to his. They were using them because a lot of missile piece that were destroyed during launch fell back on the island or waters around them. They wanted make sure they retrieved the warheads. He said out of the five assigned to the task, 4 are now dead and the fifth one was very sick 2 years ago in Kansas. He didn’t say if the illnesses were radiation related. The government has found numerous “radioactive hot spots” on the island since the tests that have been excavated for disposal. The island has been used for years since as a chemical disposal site for chemical warfare weapons. Harold now lives in New Mexico and is in contact with 3 other servicemen from the tests that live in the same location. He has asked me to be on a radio talk show being aired in that area. He had a contact at the VA that he said was very knowledgeable about the Atomic Veteran issues. Her name is Ms Carol Sullivan in the Dept of Veteran Affairs, Jackson, Miss., (601) 364- 7056 in case you are having informational problems with your local VA.
Warren R.Smith
9/1/11