A Week Of Atomic Tests, A Life In Medical Hell

With eyes closed, Jim Lyerly recounts landing at Hickam Field, Hawaii, in January 1955 as if retelling a dream. He breathes deeply and names the island smells - orchids, pineapple and sugar cane all swirled by sea wind.

The young man from east Rockingham, N.C., with an eighth-grade education had just been dropped into the lap of paradise - and he knew it.

Lyerly enjoyed the Navy, but Hawaii made him love it. He decided on the spot that the service would be his life, the sea his path, foreign ports his playground. He'd stay Navy until forced out. Then he'd retire to the islands surrounded by his children and grandchildren. He'd die a Navy man with sea-salt on his lips.

He lives in a single room in his daughter's house on a dead-end street in Denbigh. Cans of fat-free baked beans crowd a low table next to a stack of unopened medical bills. A white plastic bag keeps his urine from leaking through his diaper and into his linens.

A Shar-Pei named Rocki sniffs distractedly in a cage next to his bed. Biographies of admirals and generals lie nearby. Red-white-and-blue ribbons hang from his window. A souvenir-sized U.S. flag with a plastic base sits on a shelf next to packs of adult diapers.

A black-and-white photograph of Lyerly holding his infant son, now dead, sits propped against a box. In the photo a surgical scar - the first of many - crawls down the man's flat stomach.

Loss, pain and fear surge in Lyerly's throat and escape in a long wail. His head jerks up as if slapped, and his chin juts out. His face twists and his Southern drawl goes thick.

"They've taken everything from me. They lied, and they've continued to lie all through the years," he says. "They've taken everything from me. The government wants me dead because I'm an embarrassment to them. Then they can forget about me for good, like they've tried to forget me all these years."

Lyerly's an "Atomic Veteran." One of an estimated 220,000 American troops who tested nuclear weapons in Nevada or the Pacific or served at ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki after World War II. Their names and numbers are now largely lost due to poor recordkeeping by the military.

Lyerly earned his status as an Atomic Vet at the Pacific Proving Ground, where from 1946 to 1958, men tested nuclear weapons more powerful than 7,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

The top-secret tests - Crossroads, Sandstone, Greenhouse, Ivy, Castle, Hardtack I and Redwing -hold little current interest. But in their day, they were considered crucial to the security - if not the survival - of the United States and the free world. America's superpower status today was built upon them.

Lyerly and his fellow Cold War warriors were expected to play their parts in unlocking the potential of The Bomb. Then they were expected to forget those roles for the good of the country.

Their secrets might've died with them if not for the radiation that burst like pollen from the flowery blasts. In the decades following the nuclear testing, the number of Atomic Vets complaining of rare cancers, multiple tumors and illnesses in their children and grandchildren grew.

When Lyerly entered the Navy in October 1954, the term "Atomic Vets" hadn't been coined, and the thought that something odorless, tasteless and invisible could destroy strong young men was unfathomable to everyone except those at the very highest reaches of the military and government.

Certainly Lyerly didn't believe such a thing and couldn't for years - even after he nearly bled to death, his wife miscarried and his children and grandchildren were born prematurely or with severe and mysterious health problems.

Many are convinced that military and government officials have led a decades-long disinformation campaign about the radiation dangers Atomic Vets were exposed to and are now waiting for them to die before issuing an apology for past sins and turning the page.

So, like a dying tribe trying to preserve its history, Atomic Vets are collecting their stories while pushing for recognition and compensation.

Time is not on their side. Even younger Atomic Vets are in their 60s and many, like Lyerly, are in poor health.

Complications from prostate surgery earlier this year, and other health problems, have withered him from a lean 155 pounds in 1999 to a shaky 133 pounds today. Headaches blur his vision and he's in constant pain, except when he's on medication, which prompts sharp mood swings.

With his crewcut, black watch cap and brown pea jacket, Lyerly, who turned 67 on April 28, looks like a thrift-store sailor on a Flying Dutchman and often feels just as damned.

"I think this is the last time that I'll be able to tell my story," Lyerly says. "I just want my story told true."

"I joined the Navy just as fast as I could when I turned 18," Lyerly says. "My father wouldn't sign me up when I was 17, so I had to wait."

After the snow and wind of boot camp at Great Lakes, Ill., a 19-year-old Lyerly took a long flight and landed on Sunday morning, Jan. 2, 1955, at Hickam Field, Hawaii.

Assigned to the USS Walton, a World War II-era destroyer escort based at Pearl Harbor, Seaman Recruit Lyerly was one of 215 crewmen. He worked in the laundry, cut hair and ran the ship's store.

The long hours didn't bother Lyerly. Back in North Carolina he ran three newspaper routes by age 5 and worked in a cotton mill after quitting school at 14.

In the Navy he finally found a life he wanted instead of one he didn't. And like millions of young men before and after him, Lyerly embraced the military as his ticket to a better life.

Lyerly thrived under military discipline and for the first time succeeded. Walton logs kept at the National Archives in Maryland document his steady march up the ranks. His success made him dream big, of one day commanding a destroyer escort like the Walton and of retiring an admiral. It wasn't impossible. Others had done it, and Lyerly believed he could, too. He'd show those who'd teased him for being too poor to own shoes.

With a promising career ahead of him, Seaman Lyerly left Pearl Harbor in the spring of 1956 for what he thought was Korea.

Instead, the Walton stopped in Sasebo, Japan, before steaming to what was described by the ship's captain as "special operations." Lyerly, the crew of the Walton and 11,000 others were going to the Central Pacific and Operation Redwing.

Consisting of Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands, the Pacific Proving Ground was the United States' premier nuclear testing site for the biggest and newest weapons in the arsenal. Smaller atomic weapons were tested in Nevada.

The Proving Ground was a bustling place. Redwing would be the sixth nuclear test series since 1946 to rip through the pristine lagoons and contaminate vast areas of ocean at this remote site.

Nearly 100,000 troops had already made their way to the beautiful atolls during 17 previous detonations, or "shots." One shot involved a hydrogen bomb that blew a canyon into the sea floor deeper than the Empire State Building is tall and large enough to hold several Pentagon-sized buildings, according to the Department of Energy.

Redwing alone would test 17 nuclear weapons. It followed the disastrous Operation Castle in 1954, which produced hundreds of radiation injuries and contaminated the Marshall Islands with uranium and plutonium fallout.

Wanting to avoid another Castle, Redwing's weapons were tested at reduced capacity to curb fallout, according to documents from the Federation of American Scientists, a think tank that studies defense issues. But even under that restriction, nuclear weapons equaling nearly 21 million tons of TNT were detonated at the Pacific Proving Ground between May 4 and July 22, 1956.

The government and the military counted on Redwing yielding a wealth of information as the United States faced the Soviet Union during some of the most frightening days of the Cold War. In 1956, nuclear war seemed possible if not likely. So learning how to win one was crucial. That meant developing powerful and diverse nuclear weapons as well as learning how men and equipment could best fight on the radioactive battlefield.

While a key Redwing test involved flying manned aircraft through nuclear clouds - including some planes from Langley Air Force Base - nuclear weapons testing was clearly the main goal of Redwing. Technical strides had greatly reduced the size and the weight of these weapons while increasing their punch. After a two-year testing hiatus at the proving grounds, weapons makers and the military were eager to see what their new designs could do.

Each of Redwing's shots was named for an American Indian tribe and ranged in power from a modest 0.19 kiloton device that weighed just 96 pounds to a massive 5 megaton one that weighed 15,735 pounds.

By comparison, the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, measured 15 kilotons and weighed 8,900 pounds. The "Fat Man" that flattened Nagasaki three days later measured 21 kilotons and weighed 10,300 pounds.

A one-kiloton weapon equals a thousand tons of TNT, while a one-megaton device equals a million tons.

To amass the most scientific information possible, the devices were detonated in various settings, including inside a water tank, from a tower, on a barge and airborne.

There were other differences as well. While some shots emitted relatively little radioactive fallout, others were dirty and emitted a great deal of radiation, according to documents from the Federation of American Scientists.

Besides gaining technical information, the military also wanted another piece of information and was willing to move troops ever closer to ground zero to get it.

"Injury criteria established by tests on dummies and animals should be validated by human tests to insure reliability," read a Sept. 6, 1955, Department of the Army memo titled "Amendment to Proposed Project Regarding Blast Injury Evaluation."

"All the volunteers," the memo continued, "concurred in the recommendation that this program be continued and that the participants be closer to ground zero in the future."

The reference is to nuclear tests that took place at Camp Desert Rock, Nevada, in the early 1950s.

"It is realized that the lateness of this proposal and other problems may make it impossible to include a volunteer program in Operation Redwing. However, since inherent dangers will necessitate a gradual approach to the threshold of intolerability of effects, it is probable that a program extending over several tests will ensue."

The letter that outlines de facto human radiation experiments runs counter to the "Nuremberg Code" issued in 1953 by Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson that barred experimenting on service members without informing them of the risks involved or getting their written consent.

While the authors of the Redwing memo might have thought it a good idea to move service members closer to ground zero, officials from the Atomic Energy Commission, which ran the nuclear weapons program in those years, had concerns.

Neither Lyerly nor other Redwing veterans say they volunteered for nuclear test duties. Nor, they say, were they informed of radiation dangers - or issued protective equipment other than dark glasses.

They do, however, vividly recall being ordered to watch spectacular detonations.

"We were told that we did not have a thing in the world to fear from the testing," Lyerly says. "But looking back, they used us like guinea pigs."

Planners had intended that everyone taking part in Redwing wear radiation badges - one to measure daily exposure and another to measure cumulative exposure. In fact, Redwing was supposed to be the first nuclear test series in which radiation exposure for every participant was recorded.

But, for a variety of reasons, that never happened according to federal documents and Redwing veterans.

Lyerly recalls seldom getting a radiation badge. When he did, he said, the results were ominous.

"You would put them over your heart," Lyerly said. "And I remember one time I got one and within what seemed like seconds after the blast, it turned green and then went black. I remember looking down on the badge and watching it turn."

After the explosions, "They would come with a Geiger counter," Lyerly said, "and tell us what we had to do. I remember that one time we had to scrub down three times. I was washing clothes in water that was contaminated and taking showers in it, too."

Walter Lewis, Lyerly's shipmate, tells a story that hints at just how radioactive the waters were that the Walton was sailing through. Lewis posted his recollections on an Atomic Veterans' History Project Web site in October 1999.

Lewis said he never heard much about the level of radiation in the water until the day of the monster clams.

"One day me and a couple of others were diving on the coral reefs of Japtan Island, and we found some huge clams. We decided that we could talk the cook into fixing some clam chowder.

"So we collected a couple of them - they weighed 50 pounds each - and brought them back to the Walton. One of the biologists onboard saw us bring it aboard and he asked us to let him check it with a Geiger counter.

"He did," Lewis wrote, "and those clams were so radioactive that they probably glowed in the dark! No clam chowder that day!

"I believe that the level of radioactivity in the areas we sampled was far greater than anyone ever thought."

"You didn't do a lot of complaining," Lyerly said. "I had one idea in my mind - the Navy was my home." Newport News Daily Press September 18, 2002

Petty Officer 3rd Class James E. Lyerly joined the nuclear club on June 6, 1956. From the deck of the USS Walton, where he and his shipmates were ordered, Lyerly watched Shot Seminole explode 23 miles away with a force equal to 13,700 tons of TNT.

The 1,832-pound nuclear device was detonated within a large water tank and resulted in "one of the most peculiar weapon effects tests ever conducted as well as one of the most spectacular," according to the Federation of American Scientists, a think tank that studies national security.

Before the blast, the Walton's crew members were told to shield their eyes and turn away from the impending blast.

Lyerly obeyed but adds, " I still could see the bones in my fingers like an X-ray when I shielded my eyes.

When he turned back toward the blast, he watched the atomic concussion ripple darkly across the ocean toward him like wind rippling wheat.

"At zero hour, the flash of light was so bright, you could see the extreme brilliance through your arm," commented Gary Anderson, a sailor aboard the USS Estes, another ship at Redwing. Anderson's recollections are posted on the Atomic Vets History Project, a Web site that collects the experiences of Atomic Veterans. "But the light was too dazzling to see any bone content as you might think."

James Oscar Carrell, another Redwing veteran, who served aboard the USS Catamount, wrote: "I saw the shadow of the bones in my arm and felt the heat like you would backing up to a fireplace. We were given no warnings or protective gear and had no idea of the danger of these tests."

Yellow-orange-red-purple fists of boiling flame rising from the sea, unfolding into a glowing jellyfish with 94,000-foot tentacles.

Lyerly said that World War II-era ships were placed near the detonation sites and that some of the ships held caged animals. After the explosions, sailors boarded the smoldering ships to assess the damage before shooting the surviving animals.

"The patrols would go out to the ships six to eight hours after the blasts," Lyerly said. "Even then it would be hard to climb up the side of the ships because the ships were hot" to the touch.

"I came around the forecastle, and there was this little lamb laying flat on her stomach. One of its front legs was blown off along with both of its rear legs. It kept trying to come up to me like I could help it. But I couldn't do anything. I told them I couldn't go back there again."

Nothing in the Walton's logbook or the Blue Book refers to animal testing during Redwing, though such testing did take place during other nuclear test series. Lyerly swears he saw it.

Other Redwing memories are less dramatic, but possibly more significant in terms of explaining radiation exposure.

During one blast, Lyerly said, the wind changed and blew fallout across the Walton.

"It looked like our ship was covered in snow from stem to stern," said Lyerly. "We had to scrub every inch."

Paul Teachey, aboard the USS Granville S. Hall during Redwing, found a quarter inch of radioactive "snow" on deck following one explosion.

"We were told that we were very 'hot,'" Teachey wrote to the Atomic Vets Web site. In this context, "hot" means radioactive.

Not long after witnessing his first nuclear explosion, Lyerly began vomiting blood. Bouts of bloody diarrhea followed. Then blood ran from his rectum without warning.

When he sought medical treatment, a corpsman told Lyerly, who served as a barber and a laundryman on the Walton, that he was just seasick. Lyerly didn't believe it.

Then the skin on Lyerly's right hand peeled - the same hand he used to push uniforms into soapy water - and there was plenty of laundry since Walton sailors turned in their uniforms after each detonation.

He wasn't sure what to believe. He didn't get seasick, certainly not all the time or on glassy water. He'd never had blood pouring out of both ends.

"I was a good barber. I could give a damn good haircut - even the skipper said that. And I could shave a man with a straight razor while at sea and never nick him," Lyerly said. "But after the tests, I didn't have the strength to cut hair. I didn't even have enough strength to walk."

Lyerly now believes that obeying orders and doing his duty exposed him to dangerous amounts of radiation that have savaged his health and that of his family for more than 45 years.

Ernest Sternglass, emeritus professor of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh, has been studying radioactive fallout and cancer for more than four decades. Sternglass said the desalination process that Navy ships used probably would have removed most radioactive isotopes from the drinking water. But not all of them.

In addition, a Defense Nuclear Agency report noted that water intakes were known radioactive hotspots on ships, though there's no mention of precautionary measures being taken by the Navy to counter this.

Sternglass said it's probable that Lyerly's "ringworm" was actually radiation burns caused by sticking his hand into wash that was a slurry of radioactive fallout and water.

His startling digestive problems could have resulted from inhaling radioactive vapors in the steamy laundry and drinking radiation-tainted water.

"His symptoms are consistent with radiation exposure," said Sternglass. "They found the same thing after the atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima."

Lyerly's job in the barbershop might have increased his radiation exposure as well.

"From our experience with the fallout after the first shot on Enewetak, we found most of the people had fallout in their hair," said Thomas Shipman in 1951.

Shipman headed the health division at Los Alamos, N.M., the birthplace of the atomic bomb. His comment was contained within 55 pages of declassified notes released in 1995.

The notes also reveal that military officials deliberately chose not to protect servicemen from known radiation dangers because it would be "psychologically bad" at a time when the government was trying to portray radiation as benign - going so far as to lie about radiation effects.

When Lyerly became too sick to work, he asked to be treated at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. He was instead transferred to the USS Hamul in mid-November 1957, according to the Walton's personnel diary, found at the National Archives in College Park, Md. Lyerly hasn't set foot on his beloved Hawaii since.

Before joining the Hamul, Lyerly said, he spent 32 days in the hospital at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. For weeks he was too weak to walk. Doctors had no explanation for him.

It's impossible to verify Lyerly's medical claims because most of his military records, along with those belonging to about 17 million other service members, were destroyed during a 1973 fire in St. Louis.

But Dr. Stewart Bushong, a nationally known professor of radiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said it would take a "near fatal" dose of radiation to produce the symptoms Lyerly describes.

"It means that you are sicker than hell," Bushong said. "Most people who get that much radiation would probably die."

"There is no absolute proof of anything," Sternglass added, "but there is a high degree of likelihood that his condition is radiation related."

Sternglass estimated that it would take 150 to 200 rads of radiation to produce Lyerly's symptoms. A rad is a measure of radiation absorbed by any material. In comparison, the standard chest X-ray exposes someone to 0.01 rads.

Lyerly's bleeding eventually lessened, and in late December 1957, he reported to the Hamul, a ship-tender based in Long Beach, Calif. There he met his future wife, Jerry.

On the Hamul, Lyerly was again assigned to the barbershop. But "just did not have any strength," he recalls.

On Aug. 19, 1958 - a date forever etched in Lyerly's mind - Navy officers ordered him to report.

"I thought they were going to give me a pep talk to re-enlist. But I didn't need it because I was all ready to sign," said Lyerly, who stopped blood from running down his legs with two sanitary pads. "Then they told me that they were going to discharge me."

The Navy discharged Lyerly and escorted him to the gate that very day. On his discharge papers, under reason for exiting the service, it says "expiration of term of active obligated service" although it also shows that he was on a four-year enlistment and had more than three months left to serve.

"I said, 'My tour isn't up.' They said, 'Your ship is going to get underway and you aren't going with it.' "

"Man, I fought it because I didn't want to go. I said, 'Give me some kind of a discharge so that I can get back into another service.' But they said no one would take me."

Though he was entitled to $300 mustering-out pay, Navy records show without explanation that he was paid $100 and sent on his way.

"I wanted to spend 50, 60 years in the Navy," he said. "I wanted to stay in the Navy and stay in Hawaii. ... I wanted to be a Nimitz."

Adm. Chester W. Nimitz led U.S. forces to victory at Midway and signed the agreement of surrender with Japan that ended World War II. Technically, Nimitz served on active duty from 1905 until his death in 1966. Most aircraft carriers in the U.S. fleet are Nimitz-class carriers that were built in Newport News.

The Navy discharged Lyerly "Under Honorable Conditions" and transferred him to the reserves on Aug. 20, 1958, according to a copy of Lyerly's discharge obtained from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.

Those records show that although he never attended a single drill - Lyerly said reserve officials wouldn't let him in the door - his discharge was upgraded to "Honorable" by the time his commitment ended on Oct. 26, 1962.

All told, Lyerly spent 3 years, 9 months and 23 days in the Navy with all but three months and 14 days spent aboard the USS Walton. He received the Good Conduct medal, successfully completed four schools and had passed his test to make petty officer second class.

Being tossed from the Navy crushed Lyerly. But in the coming decades he'd learn just how crushed a man and a family could be.

In 1958 Lyerly filed a disability claim with the Veterans Administration - the first of four. That same year he returned to North Carolina because he thought he was going to die. He survived, though his health never recovered.

Doctors found a peptic ulcer and removed most of Lyerly's stomach and a pre-cancerous gall bladder in 1964. The North Carolina welfare department paid for the operation because the military refused.

As it turned out, Lyerly's bid for VA compensation would have been helped immensely had the doctor let his gall bladder go cancerous. At least then he would've qualified for some compensation.

Lyerly and his family spent the next decade struggling financially, fighting illnesses and trying to make a life.

By the mid-1970s, under pressure from a growing Atomic Vets movement and a few lawmakers, the Defense Department decided to "bring together the available information ... pertinent to the exposure of DOD personnel."

As a result, a report was done on each nuclear test series. The reports are called "Blue Books" - probably due to the pale blue color of their covers. In August 1982, the Blue Book on Operation Redwing was published.

Roughly five years in the making, the 439-page Redwing report relied on "military and technical documents reporting various aspects of each of the tests" to reach its conclusions, according to the Defense Nuclear Agency, which wrote the document.

According to the Blue Book's findings, very few service men were exposed to very much radiation during Redwing. But the report also notes several instances of radiation monitoring equipment either not being properly calibrated or arriving too late to be used.

In addition, no exposure records exist for the crews of 14 entire ships - including the USS Walton - and only partial records exist for another.

Altogether, exposure readings for 2,249 sailors, and an unknown number of Defense Department workers and contractors, are missing for a test series in which everyone was supposed to be monitored.

No exposure records were kept for anyone aboard the Walton, according to the Defense Nuclear Agency. There was no need to, according to the agency's reasoning, because the crew's exposure was so minimal.

The Blue Book's section detailing the Walton's role in Redwing is little more than a paragraph.

"Walton, a destroyer escort, arrived at the Pacific Proving Ground on 5 June and departed on 23 June. Its mission was to make radiological surveys. There is no record of radiation exposure readings for the ship's crew. The ship's mission and operating area were such that there was little likelihood of any exposure."

That might have been the last word on what Lyerly and his 214 Walton crewmates encountered during Redwing. But it's not.

The Daily Press obtained a copy of the radiation survey done aboard the ship by University of Washington researchers hired by the Atomic Energy Commission. The survey details a much different story than the official one told in the Blue Book.

On June 5, 1956, the Walton arrived at Enewetak Atoll, where seven University of Washington scientists went aboard and the ship was outfitted with radiation monitoring equipment.

The researchers were hired to measure radiation levels in the water and sea life near Bikini and Enewetak atolls between June 11 and June 21.

On its face, the mission seemed hectic but unexceptional. The Walton would speed from point to pre-set point across nearly 80,000 square miles of ocean while the scientists conducted their tests.

The Atomic Energy Commission directed the ship to map the contamination of the Pacific Proving Ground - from the most radioactive area to the least. This meant the crew would be working in the heart of the most radioactive waters in the world during ongoing nuclear testing that threatened to contaminate them and their ship.

The first half of the 3,300-mile trip went according to plan. But the second half turned into a scramble as the Walton tried to dodge the fallout from four nuclear blasts while sailing through waters contaminated by six earlier ones.

By mission's end, the ship had covered 78,000 square miles and had taken multiple water and marine life samples at each of 53 locations to a depth approaching 400 feet.

"The entire area covered by the Walton was contaminated to some degree," and "the regions of greatest contamination were included in the survey," according to the 39-page report done for the Atomic Energy Commission.

"The highest radiation levels for each depth were immediately north of Bikini Atoll," said the report. "A secondary area of concentration was found in a limited region north and west of Enewetak Atoll."

Surface water - the same water that 21-year-old Petty Officer 3rd Class Lyerly used to wash clothes every day, the same water he and the other Walton sailors washed in and drank every day after it was sucked through the ship's water intake and desalinated - was the most contaminated of all.

The radioactive isotopes found in fish, plankton and water samples included Molybdenum 99, Cerium 141, Ruthenium 103, Iodine 131, Barium 140, Lanthanum 140 and Zirconium 95.

"Clearly the area was heavily contaminated," said Sternglass, who reviewed the 1956 report at the request of the Daily Press. "Very, very high levels of radiation were found on the surface water and only gradually went down in the lower depths."

"Sailors on the Walton would've very definitely have been exposed," said Sternglass, though he couldn't say to what degree, "especially from the radioactive fallout that was still no doubt falling from past explosions and those that were still taking place."

Radiation experts within academia, the military and government disagreed on the potential harm the radiation presented, but nearly all refused to review or comment on the University of Washington report.

One professor said anyone receiving Department of Energy money for radiation research projects would be risking his or her grant by commenting on such a controversial subject. The Department of Energy funds many such projects.

After reading the University of Washington survey, Antone L. Brooks, an environmental science professor at Washington State University and a longtime skeptic of Atomic Vets' claims, said he doubted that anyone aboard the Walton received much radiation from the contaminated water the Walton sailed through.

He does, however, agree with Sternglass that radioactive fallout probably did land on the Walton and its crew from previous and ongoing nuclear testing.

"The numbers here are way over what you would have normally. But you would have to get it in you to hurt you," Brooks said. "But you could get a contamination from drinking the water or inhaling the water vapor."

When Lyerly and other Atomic Vets sought government compensation for their illnesses, their cases invariably hinged on whether they could prove they were exposed to certain levels of radiation.

To prove their cases, Atomic Vets had to rely on Atomic Energy Commission and military records, which either never existed, were admittedly flawed, were destroyed in a 1973 St. Louis repository fire or favored the government's position that the Atomic Vets never were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

Lyerly found himself in the same boat as the vast majority of other Atomic Vets when it came to proving his case.

This knowledge gap didn't keep Department of Veterans Affairs officials from repeatedly turning down Lyerly's claims or telling a congressman who tried to help him that "detailed Department of Navy reports ... place his radiation exposure level during the operation at less than one-fourth of the national occupational radiation exposure standards in effect in 1981."

A 1985 General Accounting Office report on Operation Crossroads, conducted in 1946 also at the Pacific Proving Ground, found that only 6,300 of 42,000 participants were issued radiation badges. The badges that were issued had an error margin of 30 to 100 percent and might have measured only a 10th of the inhaled radiation.

The Defense Department disagreed with the scathing 118-page report and the GAO's conclusion that the DOD had "provided incorrect or unsupported statements, misinterpreted certain Crossroads-related documents or presented information inconsistent with Defense Nuclear Agency historical reports."

Lyerly did his best to raise his family and live his life. But every time he seemed to get ahead, sickness knocked him or someone in his family down.

For nearly as long as Jim Lyerly dreamed of being a sailor, he dreamed of being a father.

But early attempts by Jim and his wife, Jerry, to have children were heartbreaking and futile.

In 1958, Jerry went into labor 24 weeks early and bore a stillborn daughter in the back of a station wagon as Jim made a mad dash to the hospital.

"She was perfect. She had hair and fingernails," said Jim, who still weeps for his daughter more than 40 years dead. "But her lungs just weren't formed enough for her to live."

Premature births and unexplainable health problems have plagued the Lyerlys' children and grandchildren ever since.

"I thought to myself - I didn't tell Jerry this because I loved her - but I thought that I had married a dud," Jim said. "But the doctor said that my wife was as strong as a horse and that the problem was me."

Doctors told Jim that his sperm count was too low to father children. At this time - the late 1950s - the Lyerlys were still years away from connecting Jim's radiation exposure to the medical problems they were encountering. It's now well documented that radiation can cause sterility and low-birth weights.

"I prayed on it," Jim said. "I knew I had to have kids. I knew I couldn't go through life without kids."

After years of praying and trying, James E. Lyerly Jr. was born in October 1963 - six weeks early and so tiny he could sleep in a cigar box. Doctors gave him only a slight chance to live. Though Jamie would survive, he'd always be self-conscious about being physically smaller and mentally slower than his friends.

In the next four years, Jerry had three more children, including daughter Michelle. One was born prematurely and all four suffered chronic illnesses as adults.

Lyerly loved all his children, but Jamie might have been his favorite. In 1992, at age 28, Jamie choked to death after a drinking binge. His parents believe he's as much a victim of radiation exposure as his father.

"When he was born, Jamie stayed in the hospital and they told us that he was not going to live," Jim said. "His brain was not developed, and he didn't have any lung capacity. He was always embarrassed about the way he was. He was a sad person."

"I guess he weighed 110, 115 pounds. He wasn't right mentally. But he could tear down an engine. I could say, 'Jamie, I need this rebuilt.' He didn't have any education whatsoever," Jim said.

"But I could go back two or three days later and it would be done. But as far as keeping a job, he just couldn't do it."

Next to his bed, Jim keeps a black and white photo dated July 1964. In it, Jamie sits on his father's lap. Only a scar centipeding down Jim's stomach hints at the devastating health problems the family was living through and foretells future ones. Most of his stomach and a pre-cancerous gall bladder were removed in June 1964.

If linking Jamie's death to his father's radiation exposure seems like a stretch, other health problems the family pins on radiation might be on firmer scientific ground.

The Lyerlys' eldest grandchild - Michelle's firstborn - was born with a partially webbed left hand.

The two grandchildren Lyerly lives with - Shana, 7, and C.J., 10 - miss so much school due to complications from asthma that they need a tutor.

Each of the postcard-beautiful children has been whisked to the hospital at least a dozen times for harrowing breathing attacks that are only marginally managed by medication and a breathing machine.

Michelle McRoy - Shana and C.J.'s mother and the Lyerlys' daughter - knows exactly what her children are living through. She's labored her whole life with severe asthma and has taken medication since childhood. Michelle still gets sick easier than most people and stays sick longer - just like her children.

"There are so many hospital visits," said McRoy, 35. "My son is so allergic to so many things. This started when he was about 9 months old. He would get sick and just never get over it."

"We'd go from an ear infection to a respiratory infection and then on to something else. He's kept back from doing things, taking gym and going on field trips. I make him wear a coat and hat when the other kids aren't because I'm afraid he's going to get sick. I don't want him to think he's a geek, but I tell them this is how it is."

McRoy doesn't know about the scientific debate regarding low-dose radiation or its potential to mutate genetic codes of succeeding generations. She simply knows that no chronic health problems existed in her family before her father's military service and now they surround her.

McRoy doesn't hesitate when asked to pinpoint the source of the health problems: Operation Redwing in 1956.

"What convinced me is that in my extended family nothing like this exists," said McRoy, a restaurant manager. "There's no asthma or respiratory problems on my husband's side of the family either."

Radiation-altered genes have been found in animal studies, but none yet in humans, said Dr. Stewart Bushong, a professor of radiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.

Researchers at the University of California and in Britain have discovered that radiation-induced genetic mutations can be passed from one generation to the next in mice. More studies are ongoing.

Atomic Veterans have long begged the government to do a study of Atomic Vets' children and grandchildren to settle this debate.

Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., one of the few friends Atomic Vets have in Congress, requested such a study in 1999. It was also Wellstone who, after a 1994 meeting with Minnesota veterans who took part in nuclear testing in Nevada, dubbed Atomic Vets "America's most forgotten veterans."

But officials from the Institute of Medicine, which is largely funded by the federal government, turned Wellstone down saying the study wasn't feasible.

Atomic Vets are convinced that the government intends to stall them into the grave and thereby save billions of dollars in compensation and much embarrassment.

If that's the plan, bureaucrats might be whistling through the graveyard, said Dick Conant, commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans, an Atomic Vet advocacy group that's waging an e-mail and letter-writing campaign for recognition and compensation.

Genetically impaired offspring, Conant said, could easily exceed the number of Atomic Vets, which at one time numbered about 220,000.

The government refuses to investigate the correlation between radiation exposure and genetically based health problems, Conant said, because of what might be found.

Jim Lyerly has written every president since Eisenhower - except for Johnson, whom he didn't like - and has petitioned the Department of Veterans Affairs four times for help since 1958.

But help has rarely come. A partial victory is the best he's done in more than 40 years of trying and only came after the late Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, R-Newport News, took up Lyerly's case in 1991.

In response to a Bateman letter, the Veterans Administration sent the congressman a fact sheet on Lyerly.

"Detailed Department of the Navy reports of 1981 and 1983 place his radiation exposure level during the operation at one-fourth of the national occupational radiation exposure standards in effect in 1981," it read.

"Mr. Lyerly's claim history has been reviewed repeatedly during the past two years in response to multiple inquiries on his behalf from a wide variety of public officials.

"However, no jurisdiction of VA has concluded that there is an evidential basis sufficient to establish a reasonable doubt" of Lyerly's conditions being caused by his military duty.

VA officials might not have thought the government owed Lyerly anything. But Bateman, a man not known to suffer fools or deadbeats gladly, did.

"Herb always believed that Mr. Lyerly wasn't dealt with fairly," said Angela Welch, a former Bateman staff worker on the Peninsula. "He absolutely believed Mr. Lyerly's story. It all checked out when he looked into it."

"In fact, I probably shouldn't tell you this," Welch said, "but Herb raised the money for Mr. Lyerly when he was going to lose his house because he couldn't pay the mortgage."

Bateman also took the uncommon step of speaking on Lyerly's behalf at a VA hearing convened to evaluate his case. With Bateman's help, Lyerly received a 40 percent disability compensation for having most of this stomach removed after the Navy forced him from the service.

It pays him $427 a month, which does not begin to cover Lyerly's medical bills that now top $150,000. Lyerly has no idea how he'll pay or how much longer doctors will continue treating him without being paid.

And Lyerly is one of the lucky ones. Few Atomic Veterans - or their widows - ever get any money from the government.

In fact, government policies make it tougher for Atomic Vets to qualify for VA compensation than it is for Vietnam or Gulf War vets to do so, said Dr. Susan H. Mather, a senior VA official.

"I think it is fact that by law the Atomic Veterans are held to higher standards of proof than Gulf War vets," said Mather. "This has been pointed out and Congress has chosen not to act on it."

Until the late 1980s, Atomic Vets could only qualify for disability compensation by proving they'd been exposed to at least 5 rems of radiation, a standard that has proven nearly impossible to meet.

That standard changed in 1988. Under the Radiation Exposed Veterans Compensation Act, Atomic Vets suffering from leukemia, cancer of the thyroid, breast, pharynx, esophagus, stomach and gall bladder and six other cancers found were entitled to benefits. All Atomic Vets had to do to qualify was to prove they were present during nuclear testing.

Veterans' organizations applauded the act, but were disappointed that more cancers weren't included and that there were no benefits for Atomic Vets with non-cancerous health problems.

Lyerly fell into this latter group. Despite getting sick while in the Navy, then having most of his stomach and a pre-cancerous gall bladder surgically removed, he failed to qualify for benefits.

In 1990 Congress passed "down-winders" legislation that benefited people living down wind of nuclear testing in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Uranium miners were also covered.

The cancer list for down-winders included those listed in the 1988 act as well as cancer of the lung, colon, brain and ovaries.

"Veterans exposed to radiation suffer debilitating illnesses and disabilities, but are treated as second-class citizens by the federal government," said Michael E. Dobmeier, the DAV national commander at the time.

Dave Autry, a DAV spokesman, wasn't surprised. He'd seen Atomic Vets repeatedly slighted over the years and this slight was just another in a long line.

"The way Congress compensates some veteran groups and not others," Autry said, "is arbitrary, and the government has been historically slow to help Atomic Vets."

Lyerly said he's seen first hand what he considers unequal and even mean-spirited treatment.

"The VA has fought me. You wouldn't believe what their officials have said to me over the years," Lyerly said after a recent visit to a Hampton VA center. "One guy said, '45 years after the incident you are filing a claim?'"

"I said, 'I was filing claims before you were born,'" Lyerly recalled. "Since 1958 and in four states."

Vietnam Vets have won where Atomic Vets have lost, Autry contends, because, "The Atomic Vet community is not very well-heeled and does not provide money for congressional leaders. All they have is a committed grassroots effort. It is not a block at the voting booth."

In October 2000, President Clinton signed the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act that included the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act. It benefited certain Department of Energy employees, contractors and subcontractors.

Wellstone used the legislation to argue that fairness dictated that veterans get the same benefits as civilians. The law was eventually expanded to cover veterans and took effect in March.

"The new rules will not cure their cancers, but they will ease the burden of proof required to receive appropriate compensation for their disabilities," said Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi.

The latest act is expected to cost $80.3 million a year for the next 10 years. That's based on approving 16,764 of an expected 139,617 claims for both disability and death benefits.

The 12 percent claim-approval rate forecast would be more then double any approval rate Atomic Vets have seen in the past.

Bernie Clark, a spokesman for the National Association of Atomic Veterans, proclaimed this "the best time ever" for an Atomic Veteran to get a claim through.

"The VA wants to get a lot of these claims settled," Clark said. "Of course a lot of these vets have passed on. But their widows can file."

But the "best time" is just the same old time for Lyerly and his family. None of the legislation helps them because he has no condition recognized as resulting from radiation exposure. For Lyerly, absolutely nothing has changed for the better and time grinds on.

Lyerly's health is now deteriorating by the month. Lately, his mind wanders on the wisps of pain medication taken to counter complications of prostate cancer surgery.

Surgical tubing pokes out his zipper and runs to a large pouch of urine that he carries around in a doubled-up plastic supermarket bag. He might be catheterized for life.

A growth on the inside of his leg might be cancerous, but fear and cost keep him from finding out.

"He's worried," said his estranged wife, Jerry. "He's scared. He doesn't know what is going to happen."

Lyerly can't speak of his life - much less his time in the Navy - without becoming distraught. Bitter does not begin to describe his feelings.

But he draws a sharp distinction between what the United States stands for and the injustices he believes have been done to him by those in the government.

"No one is more patriotic than I am," Lyerly said. "I love this country more than I do my own life."

In the next breath, he equates America's treatment of Atomic Vets with Saddam Hussein's use of poison gas on his own people. He verbally lashes out at Jerry in front of company and leaves his daughter Michelle, whose family he now lives with, wondering what to do.

Jerry fears that radiation exposure may have addled her husband's mind. Sometimes his actions are an argument that she may be right.

When not raging at someone or something, sickness and loss envelop Lyerly in an oppressive cocoon that can be suffocating to be near. Interspersed are calm moments of clarity and acceptance.

"I don't think anything will happen until after we are all dead," said Lyerly of the Atomic Vets. "It will come out afterwards. I just wanted my story told so people would know what happened to me."

"I want you to talk to everyone. Don't take my word for any of this. And if you find that one word that I have told you is a lie, I want you to write that Jim Lyerly is a liar. You must tell the truth about this so everyone knows what they did."

From the shirt pocket over his heart Lyerly pulls out a small, dog-eared Bible. The nine one-dollar bills that his son Jamie Jr. carried in his wallet when he died mark a passage from Romans:

"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Much of Lyerly's Bible is underlined, especially the passages promising comfort and justice in the next life.

"They took my life away. They ruined my whole family and took away my life and the only dream I ever had."

I met him on Feb. 16, 1958 - two days after Valentine's Day - at a restaurant in Long Beach, Calif., where my mother worked. The restaurant was near an amusement park on Ocean Avenue and near Terminal Island. The area was where all the sailors went when they had liberty.

He was in uniform. He was very good-looking and very outgoing and very flirtatious.

Me, I was kind of shy and overweight. I had no idea that he would ever have any interest in me. There were much better-looking women than me. I thought he was cute, but I didn't figure I stood a chance of being with him.

My mother introduced me to him. She had kept telling me about what a nice guy he was. I was coming from church, and I stopped into the restaurant. I wasn't that talkative to him because I was shy.

When I met him the second time in the restaurant, he invited me to sit down and offered to buy me a cup of coffee. I was only 18 and wasn't a coffee drinker, so I bought a Coke. We sat and talked a long time, several hours. And then it was late and he walked me home. That was Feb. 17 and that's the date when we started going out. I was 18 and he was 22.

When we were going out, he told me about what he had been through and how he was on deck during the atomic explosions.

He kept his health problems to himself. He was really self-conscious about that, even after we got married. But I could see for myself.

I would see blood on his uniform and on his underwear, and he would be sick a lot and not feel good. I'm the type of person who couldn't talk to him about this because I knew that it would make him embarrassed.

He enjoyed being in the Navy. He talked a lot about being in the Navy and about all the places he had been and all the things he had seen.

He was really proud to be in the Navy. When I met him, he was on the USS Hamul. He worked in the laundry room and, I think, he was also a barber and ran the ship store.

He washed their uniforms and pressed them and would stay aboard the ship when the other guys were on liberty and work and make a little more money.

I remember that he started to have a lot of stomach problems and pain not long after we got married. He was seeing a doctor at Terminal Island at Long Beach. The Navy doctors were giving him pills, but they were not working.

He continued to get worse. I don't think he knew why he was sick. I don't think radiation back then was ever talked about or known. I don't remember that being talked about. They said that he had an ulcer and they were treating him for it.

He would throw up blood and then he started bleeding from the rectum. He tried to keep that covered up.

I didn't know what was wrong. The Navy didn't seem to be concerned. They'd say take two aspirin and go on. I felt that there was something wrong. People just don't throw up every time they eat.

They discharged him. His ship was fixing to leave and they went and discharged him.

He was disappointed. He was kind of mad because he wanted to stay and retire from the Navy. I know he was bitter, but at the same time he needed to be discharged so that he could get the medical attention to find out what was causing the vomiting and bleeding and all that stuff.

In 1958, he was so sick. He kept saying that he was going to die. He tried to work a few jobs in Long Beach. He was eating baby food for this ulcer to heal.

He had a couple of jobs. He worked for American Can Co. He worked. He really tried hard and he worked when he was sick. But there were some days when he was too sick. He lost his job because he missed too many days.

Later he worked at a drugstore. He worked there the longest. He seemed to really like that job and they liked him. He made a lot of friends there. He was sick there, too, but they were accommodating. From there we went back to North Carolina.

I wasn't working. I did get a job as a waitress, trying to make a few dollars, and taking in some laundry and some ironing.

We went back to Carolina because he said that he knew he was going to die and he wanted to die at home. He was not getting any better and he knew that you could not continue to bleed like that and live.

I didn't know. I kept hoping. I kept saying to give it time. I kept trying to be optimistic. I really believed he thought he wasn't going to make it. He is sometimes dramatic. Right now he is scared to death. He keeps saying that his days are numbered.

When we left Long Beach for Rockingham, I was pregnant with my oldest son. I was sick a lot. Jamie was born Oct. 25, 1963. He was six weeks early. He was born with a lot of problems. Born with yellow jaundice and a respiratory problem. And they did not give him much chance to live. He was so tiny he could fit in a cigar box. He stayed in the hospital a month.

I was worried about him because I had lost one baby. I carried a baby to about six months, labor started and we rushed to the hospital and the baby was born and then it died. They didn't tell me anything. They just said that it was a little girl and that it had hair and fingernails and everything, but was just born too soon and couldn't survive.

When Jamie was a baby, he had all these respiratory problems. Many times he would have mucus down in his throat, and I would have to take him to the child hospital.

When we first got to Rockingham, Jim didn't have a job. Finally got hired by Standard Coffee. He had a van. He really liked it. It wasn't the kind of job that he was stuck in one place. He is a good salesman. He could sell a Popsicle to an Eskimo. He has a way with people.

It seems like he had to give the coffee job up because he had to have the surgery on his stomach. That was in 1964 because I was pregnant with my second son.

Michael was born Oct. 23, 1964. He was also six weeks early. He was sickly and had to stay in the hospital. He is now an asthmatic.

When he was a little kid, I would have to rush him out to the hospital because of his asthma attacks. He was little, but not as little as Jamie. His birth weight was 4 pounds. He was somewhat more healthy.

Then Jim had his first operation. I think they removed most all of his stomach. That was a scary operation.

If it weren't for me, he would be dead. I went in to see him, and he wasn't breathing. I went out and got a nurse. She kept telling me that he was fine, and I kept saying that he wasn't breathing. Sure enough, he wasn't breathing. She thanked me for letting her know.

The doctor said Jim didn't have enough blood in his body to pump his heart. He said, "You're a walking dead man." He said, "You need emergency surgery right now." He was bleeding himself dry.

He spent about a month in the hospital. One time the hospital called and said that I had to get there. They said that he was hemorrhaging and threw up blood all over the room, the walls, the nurses and the doctors. He just got so sick and it just flew out of his mouth. He almost died.

Once he got out of the hospital, he seemed somewhat better. I don't think he was bleeding anymore. I don't know if they said what was wrong with his stomach.

After the operation, he was still throwing up but not blood. After he would eat, he would often throw up. It was a stressful time. I was worrying about him. I thought that it might be my cooking. I didn't know what to do.

I remember when we moved, I was pregnant with my daughter, and Jim's brother-in-law was working in the Newport News shipyard.

We moved up there so he could get a job at the shipyard. He did get a job there in 1967. I think he was working in the machine shop. It went OK. He was still sick. Not long after he went to work there, there was a big strike. He got chased down by people because he didn't honor the strike. But he said he had to work because he had the kids.

My daughter's due date was June 15, 1967. I was worried that she was going to be born premature. Michelle was born July 6, 1967. She was born healthy and fat and I got to take her out of the hospital. We didn't have any insurance so she only stayed in the hospital overnight.

While Jim was working, he got this job on this ship or submarine where they built some nuclear stuff. When they did this radiation test, they told him that he had more radiation than 10 or 100 men should have.

They wouldn't let him work at the shipyard anymore. That was when we started putting all this together with the radiation. This must have been about 1969 that he got kicked out of the shipyard.

He wasn't fired. They just said that he couldn't work there anymore because he had too much radiation and couldn't work around that stuff anymore. No compensation or pay or anything.

He was very upset about not being allowed to work in the yard. He begged to just let him sweep the floors or clean the bathrooms. But they said he had to go.

He worked at the shipyard from 1967 to 1969. He was trying to find another job. Then he saw something in the paper and got in touch with a man connected with Gulf Oil and he got himself a little gas station.

He started his own little station probably the last part of 1969. It was on the corner of Denbigh Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue, and it was called Patrick Henry Gulf. It went good. He built up a nice clientele and then he moved on to Exxon and leased an Exxon station over at Tabb Lane and Warwick.

His customers followed him over there. Across the street was another Gulf station that was nicer than his. He was running two gas stations, a Gulf and an Exxon. I tried to take over the Gulf. He kept the books for both businesses. I got out and pumped gas and checked oil. We did good.

When we had the service station, Jamie would beg his daddy to let him go to the service station. He was about 9 or 10 years old. We had a car wash machine, and he would run the car wash machine.

Jamie was smart and knew exactly how to tell people how to pull the car up. He picked up a lot of mechanical skill. He could figure out things in his head, but as far as book knowledge, he didn't go by that.

Jamie stayed depressed a lot because he didn't have the nice, fancy, in-style clothes like the other boys had. One of the things that had him really insecure, he had a tooth broken playing football. His tooth broke in half and not getting it fixed it turned black, and he was missing a front tooth. That made him very self-conscious. He was very good looking, but he didn't feel like he was.

He wanted him a tooth. We got a cheap tooth made for him. We kept talking that we would get his tooth fixed, but we never could. He wanted a pretty girlfriend.

After they put in cheaper gas stations and the gasoline business started dropping off, we began to go downhill. He gave up the Exxon station and concentrated on the Gulf. But we started losing money. Eventually we had to sell what we had. Took a big loss. That was 1974.

The family was doing, I guess, pretty good. We've been poor all our lives. The kids would be sick. Michael, who had the asthma, we were always having trouble with him. We had to rush him off to the Riverside Hospital at 2 or 3 in the morning. It happened several times. He was about 9 or 10 years old. Actually, all his life he was on medicine and all through his childhood he got taken to the hospital.

The nausea stands out in my mind. There was no bleeding. He would eat something and it would not agree with him. He would get deathly sick and he would have to lie down until it passed. The kids knew he was sick, but they weren't old enough to know that something was really wrong.

I think that had Jim not been radiated and been healthy and well, he could have worked every day and we would have had things a whole lot better.

The church helped us. Thanksgiving was coming up one year, and we had no food, no money. And I had a box of prunes. We were Christians, and we did praying. I went and cooked them. Before I put them on the table, the church people had come and brought us a turkey dinner.

They gave us clothes. Everything we had were hand-me-downs. They gave me their old stuff. If he had not been sick, we could've had an easier life. I knew he was doing the best that he could.

I do blame the government because they did them boys terribly wrong, especially after they got sick. They would never admit that it was radiation. They lied to cover up and they still do.

I believe this radiation has hurt me. I've had five surgeries. I had to have my thyroid taken out, a hysterectomy, a huge tumor in my breast removed, a gall bladder operation.

The grandchildren are constantly sick. They have been in the hospital several times. I do think there is a connection here.

I took Jim out to the VA on Mercury Boulevard to talk to this man and he wasn't friendly at all. He wasn't nice. He didn't even want to talk about atomic exposure.

I think they want them to die off. They keep stalling, and you deal with the VA and it takes months and months, more red tape and questions. I wrote letters to the senators to please do something about it. Please get them to confess, but it did not do any good.

I think this is not going to do any good. I think the VA is going to stand firm.

Long read, but excellent. The atomic veterans are one of the few groups of victims that can be classified as "victims", without any whining. Many of the "X-Files" type of conspiracy theories come out of gov't actions like this.

While I think that the gov't owes these vets medical care, do I really want them to have to go to the Veterans Hospital system for treatment? Has it gotten any better than it used to be?

"No one is more patriotic than I am," Lyerly said. "I love this country more than I do my own life."

This guy's story makes today's perennial whiners with their complaints of being 'disrespected' seem pretty petty & small minded indeed. God bless and keep him & those like him.

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