Re: [CPEO-MEF] VETERANS, RADIATION, PRESERVATION: 1946 A-bomb testing

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

I come to this story from a different perspective. My dad served as a 
radioman on the U.S.S. Saratoga, America's first aircraft carrier and 
one of the world's largest in its day, in the mid-1930s. He died two 
years ago. My mother died this summer, and my siblings and I have been 
going through their belongings, accumulated over 62 years in the house 
where I grew up.

I found a file on the U.S.S. Saratoga. It contained typed notes on some 
of my father's shipmates, including some who died at Pearl Harbor. I 
found a pamphlet about the ship's history, from which I learned that the 
ship was tied up in San Diego on December 7, 1941. It was immediately 
dispatched to the war zone, and it played a key role in the Pacific war.

The Saratoga could have served as a floating landmark, to commemorate 
and understand World War II in the Pacific. But it was sunk in the 1946 
atomic bomb testing program.

At a recent meeting about Moffett Field's Hangar One - built for the 
U.S.S. Macon dirigible in the early 1930s -  I told this story. I argued 
that the Navy shouldn't be allowed to destroy another massive landmark 
that served our country in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lenny



Lenny Siegel wrote:
> Vet recalls 1946 atomic bomb tests
>
> He says it was 'the awfulest thing'
>
> By FRANK MUNGER
> Knoxville News Sentinel (TN)
> September 29, 2008
>
> CLINTON, Tenn. — 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.
>
> But he was too late for World War II. By the time he joined the Navy and 
> was 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.
>
> No safety gear issued
>
> The USS Saratoga made its first stop at Pearl Harbor.
>
> ...
>
> For the entire article, see
> http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080929/NEWS01/809290373/1006 


--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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