MY ATOMIC LIFE
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“I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?”  ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

FALLOUT:  Intended & Otherwise

The Chief knew of the potential consequences his exposure could carry.  It is assumed his wife Jeanne did as well.  There is witness narratives the officers were advised there could be deformities or handicaps, DNA, chromosome, or genetic damage  How the fallout would present themselves was the unknown.  
The Chief had taken the Naval Radiologic Training courses so it is assumed there was some knowledge of the risk the government was exposing him to, now passed on to me.  It was shared consequence that would continue to unfold between us during his 20 years of cancer fights.  On the days he watched me suffer with related health issues, his guilt was palatable - but it was a bond we shared from the day I was conceived.
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The Chief had served in WWII, The Korean War, The Passage to Freedom and the Vietnam war officially started 6 months before I was born.  Even at this young age above, I knew when anyone was asked what my father did, the answer was that it was 'Above Top Secret' and we 'aren't at liberty to discuss it."  I had heard that answer as long as I could remember.  Not that we ever really knew, but what little we might have caught in passing, we could not talk about pretty much inside or outside the house.  These were more innocent days when he was still on active duty and we were having "Duck & Cover" drills in elementary school.  The Cold War, the Cuban Missile crisis & the war in Vietnam, Kennedy assassination were the topics of the day.  

Early Consequences 

Some might say I was eleven years old when the end of my innocence hit, but the fact of the matter was that I was never really felt innocent.  It was jokingly referred to as "a product of The Atomic Age."  What I did not know, was how literally they meant that until I was sat down by some high ranking military doctors and told that my father was quite ill and extraordinary care was going to be required for him.   It was Top Secret, the project he had been working on that got him sick, so this was to be kept within the household, and that is impacted his reproductive organs, and as such, this discussion included that it's quite possible I should not have children and that they would want to observe me as well.
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In, the summer if 1967, between 5th and 6th grades,
in a room full of Naval military doctors I was shown this Operation Ivy certificate and was informed that the The Chief is not well, there will be more tests and trips to the hospital.  
I was told his illness was related to this atomic test before I was conceived, and that they may want to examine me from time to time as there is concern for exposed veterans offspring.
Of course this was all very Top Secret... as would remain the nature and location of his cancer for the time being until further tests could be run...
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1967-68  Mostly Ice Skating
   and Horseback Riding
   before knee injury
1969 - Coming of age in
   San Francisco at the
   dawning of the Age of
   Aquarius. Haight-Ashbury for
   original production of
   "Hair" at 13 

1970 - Berkeley  @ 14
1971 - East Bay @ 15
   Freshman Year HS 

1972 - East Bay / Knee Surgery
   Sophomore Year - partial yr.
   then off to...
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In 1972, The Chief's doctors at Oaknoll Naval Hospital became concerned with having a hormonal teenager in the home while this health crisis was unfolding, they need privacy and I needed to be somewhere else.

My brother's young family was not to be exposed to the situation going on at the house, so I went to Texas at age 16 with my boyfriend, a Vietnam Vet who had just returned from two tours front line fighting in the Army, was 11 years older than me. and an Agent Orange exposed Vet.

He was being offered a job out of state, The Chief felt he could trust this combat tested young man to take good car e of me, so we lived out-of-state as a common-law husband and wife. It was in everyone's interest I be out of their home while some very radical physical and psychologically challenging, medical tests and procedures ensued for them to contend with as a couple.  I have no idea the strength it took for The Chief or my mother let me go at that young age. This photo taken by The Chief on a frequent visit to make sure I was being well cared for.
 
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Two and a half years later, in 1975, it's time to go home.  This was the last photo taken in Texas the winter before returning to California.  Back now to support The Chief and my mom for this mind-numbing surgery the three years prior was spent desperately trying to avoid.  Military and civilian doctors and surgeons around the globe were consulting and research teams were waiting in the wings.  

This demaculinizing surgery was going to border on a forced sexual reassignment without the breast implants or his desire to be transgender!  

For a man's man, this was monumentally life altering - 
For his wife and daughter, crushing to watch him endure. 

To his son and all others, they were on a need to know only basis, and not to be told of the radical nature of the surgery. Period.

I was now arriving back home about the time I should have been graduating from high school, but have been a wife for almost three years and coming home to a household preparing for the his future life without his sexual organs, his feelings of adequacy, both public and private humiliation, social embarrassment and the ever present of withholding of facts from my brother, family and friends. 

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1975-
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1986-
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1989

How scientists secretly used US citizens as guinea pigs 
during the Cold War

THE HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS 
By Alan R Cantwell Jr., M.D. 

In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of US citizens became the innocent victims of over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration (VA), the CIA, and NASA.

Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from the continental testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons, and from the hundreds of secret releases of radiation into the environment. Over 200,000 “atomic vets” who worked closely with nuclear detonations at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s were especially vulnerable to radiation fallout.

Also affected were the thousands of so-called “downwinders”, who lived in nearby small towns in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. These downwinders (along with the animal populations) suffered the worst cumulative radioactive effects of fallout, along with a contaminated environment teeming with radioactive food and farm products. The plight of these poor country people exposed to government-induced radiation sickness has been recorded in Carole Gallagher’s remarkable photo-essay American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (The Free Press, 1993).

In reviewing declassified AEC records (now the Department of Energy) from the 1950s, Gallagher was shocked to discover one document that described the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as “a low use segment of the population.” Her shock at such callous bigotry caused her to eventually move West to research, investigate and document those who lived closest to the Test Site, as well as workers at the site, and soldiers repeatedly exposed to nuclear bombs during the military tests.

Disinformation and Nuclear Fallout
In the nuclear arms race, government doctors and scientists brainwashed the public into believing low dose radiation was not harmful. Some officials even tried to convince people that “a little radiation is good for you.”  Totally ignored was the knowledge that the radiation from nuclear fallout could lead to an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, immune system disease, reproductive abnormalities, sterility, birth defects, and genetic mutations which could be passed on from generation to generation.  The full extent of this radiation damage to the American public during the Cold War years will never be known.

A secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them.  Under the title “Medical Experiments in Humans,” the memorandum read: “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits.  Documents covering such field work should be classified ‘Secret’.”

According to Gallagher, many downwinders testified that the Public Health Service officials told them that their ‘neurosis’ about the fallout was the only thing that would give them cancer, particularly if they were female.  Women with severe radiation illness, hair loss, and badly burned skin, were clinically diagnosed in hospitals as “neurotic.”  Other severely ill women were diagnosed with “housewife syndrome.”  When Gallagher’s investigation led her to ask a Department of Energy spokesperson about the AEC/DOE’s practice of waiting until the wind blew towards Utah before testing nuclear bombs or venting radiation in order to avoid contaminating Las Vegas or Los Angeles, the unabashed and unconcerned official actually said on tape, “Those people in Utah don’t give a shit about radiation.” 

Protective Gear Appropriated
& Exposure Radiation Comparison

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Chernobyl Atomic Cleanup Worker
4,200 R/h
Enewetak Atomic
Cleanup Worker
128,730 R/h
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Fallout Shelters of the 1950's & 60s


Random Interesting Links

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U.S. nuclear weapons testing began on July 16, 1945, with the explosion of the "Trinity" device near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Recognizing that future nuclear tests would have to be conducted further from populated areas, the military carried out the next two series of tests--Operation "Crossroads" in 1946, and Operation "Sandstone" in 1948--at the Pacific Proving Grounds. 

Concern with the difficult logistics of conducting tests in mid- ocean, as well as worry about the physical security of a proving ground located outside the continental United States, prompted establishment of the Nevada Test Site [NTS] on December 18, 1950, by order of President Truman. A majority of U.S. nuclear tests appear to have been so- called proof tests to determine whether and how well a prototype weapon would work. 

Second most numerous were tests meant to determine the effect of a bomb on military equipment or personnel; such tests included biomedical experiments on animals, tests of the psychological impact on troops nearby the explosion, and possibly other human subject experiments. 

Starting in the late 1950s, a large number of tests were safety related, reflecting an increased concern with the accidental detonation of a stockpiled nuclear weapon, and the enhanced prospect of a ban on nuclear testing.By its very nature, nuclear weapons testing is an inexact science. Especially in the early days of the nuclear arms competition with the Soviet Union, when entirely new types of experimental weapons were being rapidly developed and tested, it was not uncommon for a particular yield to exceed estimates by 50% or more. 

Such was the case in the November 1952 "Mike" proof-of-concept test of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb, and in the March 1954 "Bravo" test of a prototype U.S ICBM warhead.  Even as late as the 1970s, the unpredictability of yields led to the unintentional "venting" of radiation from underground nuclear weapons tests.   More >


ra·di·o·gen·ic
rādēōˈjenik
adjective
  1. produced by radioactivity.
    "a radiogenic isotope"
  2. Being a stable element that is a product of radioactive decay. 
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