“Please except my apolgy. Don’t take me for disrespecting your service in the United States Navy. Those threats were very real and people got hurt handling those terrible weapons.
We know more about Chemical Hazards now.”
You OBVIOUSLY think I’m some sort of uneducated nincompoop.
My “service” in the U.S. Navy amounted to my being a HUMAN TEST RAT. I’m not going to tear your post apart in each of its inaccuracies, but you DID afford me some juicy retorts.
1. “That SHAD Ship” was one of the most insidiously dangerous spots on the face of the earth. Men were REPEATEDLY told, “It’s just harmless simulants”...which is an outright LIE.
The FACT is they didn’t CARE what happened to us. They [the DOD/VA] STILL don’t.
It’s only through the efforts of perhaps 6 to 10 of the most outspoken participants that the bulk of this causality has been revealed. You’re talking to one of them.
Of 10,000 men, a goodly THIRD of them are dead....and, even though a number of us asked Dr. Page of the IOM DIRECTLY at one of our reunions in Seattle a few years back to look into the deaths of those men....the government ignored our reasonable request to know what potential dangers we face....DEADLY dangers....!!! The IOM “study” [read whitewash] has just recently been completed [two years LATE] and it is “inconclusive”. In other words, yet ANOTHER $3 Million in taxpayers wages was pissed down the drain in the ongoing coverup.
Let’s cut to the chase.
Even though SOME of the things you say are true, you are incredibly naive if you “think” the U.S. Government is in the business of cleaning up its own messes...!!!
Only under IMMENSE public and congressional pressure do these matters even get discussed.
~~~~~~~
One final note:
You mention the Nuke Vets in your largely incorrect response.
Here’s the TRUTH...
We, on the USS Granville S. Hall, were operating with live bio-chemical agents on a ship that had been used for TEN YEARS previously in above ground nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands....!!!
Did anyone ever bother to MENTION that...???
Or that the ocean going Tugs that operated with us at sea to collect data were stationed at a site [Johnston Atoll] that was the site of at least two FAILED Thor Rocket tests which rained down significant amounts of Plutonium and Americium debris that was NOT “cleaned up” for at least 20 years AFTER our operations there.
Prior to my serving on the Hall, YAG-40, our shipmates were regularly dispatched to contaminated uninhabited islands in the Marshalls replete with nuclear contamination.
Hmmm.....
Perhaps it’s YOU who is uninformed and gullible....???
I was only there.
No, we’re talking about real, genuine WAR CRIMES.
Yep.
Scary, huh...???
~~~~~~~~~
Here’s a little tidbit about one of my recently departed shipmates:
http://projectshad.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1105
Project 112/SHAD REPORT
Larry Pilkinton, 1938-2007
BY JACK ALDERSON, CHAIR
Larry Pilkinton served with the Project SHAD Technical Staff. I first met him when the light tugs were reorganized, and I and other new crew members reported in October 1964. The following is an excerpt from his obituary: “In 1964 he was selected for Project 112/SHAD, which was a top-secret project of chemical and biological warfare tests. He had various duties for SHAD, and in addition to his laboratory research work, he was assistant safety officer and exposed to many agents. He was injured in the line of duty but could not receive a medical discharge due to the top-secret nature of his duties. So after serving almost 13 years, he received an honorable discharge from the Navy.”
Now for the rest of the story: Larry was not on board the light tugs (LTs) but was assigned as part of the laboratory and support staff. After returning from the test called Shady Grove, Larry was sent to Hawaii’s Big Island as part of a land test. He told me that he was loading bomblets with nerve and biological agents. The next thing he knew was when he woke up back in Oahu at Tripler Army Hospital.
When we heard that he had been injured, a couple of the crew went to see him. However, they were denied entry by a Marine stationed outside his room. The next time we were in port we were informed he had died and that his family had shipped back to the mainland. Everyone on the staff thought of him dead, including those who worked closely with him.
It came as a great shock then when I received an e-mail from him in March 2006. He had read one of these columns in The VVA Veteran. In talking with him and his wife, Doreen, he told me that he had been shipped to Oaknoll Naval Hospital and placed in the psychiatric ward. He was told that he had a prior mental illness and his security clearance was revoked. His medical records had no indication he was part of the SHAD staff. Rather than going back to being a regular hospital orderly, he preferred to leave the Navy and restart his life as a civilian.
The Project SHAD Technical Staff members were carefully selected and all had final secret security clearances and, periodically, interim top secret. This means that background investigations had been performed. Why had this not come up with evidence of his prior mental illnesses? Why were his medical records devoid of PSTS information?
Agent Orange Committee chair Buzz Sawyer noted, “Larry died on February 13. Many of us feel his demise was related to the latent effects of his exposure to chemical and biological weapons on the Big Island in 1966. Because of the classified nature of his work, he died without establishing service connection to his illness or survivor benefits for his widow. The VA would only consider his prior mental illness.”
Sawyer added, “It is truly a shame that agencies of our government hide behind the veil of “national security” to cover up and block requests for information that may aid veterans in their quest for their rights. They check out our backgrounds thoroughly. But they obfuscate and they lie, and it is the veteran who gave honest and upright service who is hurt.”
It just ain’t right.
http://www.vva.org/veteran/0407/shad.html
[Jack Alderson was the commander of the SHAD Tug Fleet circa 1962-65]
~~~~~~~~
Thanks for the copious info, much of which is DEBUNKED here:
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14573
Oh, yeah...apology accepted.
I get this crap all the TIME.
We can’t sue can we?
No one told us about the chemicals when my father worked in the paper mill either.
He smoked but he quit after a month employed by the company but this also voided any claim against the company. My father never got any compensation for his illness including his co-workers.
And since everyone smoked back then the company used that to get away with murder.
This is a common attitude towards workers back then.
My father got so ill that he tried to get into the VA hospital. He served in the Pacific during WWII and it was jumping through hops to get him in. He needed medical care because his Medicare did not start yet and couldn’t afford civilian health care.
The VA doctors didn’t know how to use his breathing machine and that was a terrible experience for him. VA building was falling apart, indifferent staff and incompetence.
Then we he got his Medicare. It was too late. He died two months later.
I’m not a insensitive person.