Interview with Robert Martin "Doc" Campbell, Jr., March 12, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Robert “ Doc” Campbell, Jr. March 12, 2005 Santee, California Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Robert “ Doc” Campbell, Jr. March 12, 2005 in Santee, CA Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: Discussion of birth, childhood, family. 1 Joining the U. S. Navy. 2 Discussion of Corps School, job and duties with BUMED. 3 Process of getting clearance; and description of job and living conditions at Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory ( Naval RAD Lab) in Hunter’s Point, CA. 4 Explanation of job working with canine and swine. 6 Process of building the equipment to be used for animal tests at Enewetak. 7 Discussion of loading the animals ( swine, canine and mice) aboard USS Warwick, the process of prepping the ship and maintaining the animals while en route to the Marshall Islands, and working and living conditions aboard the ship. 8 Discussion about breeding the animals for specific tests, which animals were used for specific tests, logistics of stetting up the animals and equipment for tests, the expected outcomes, and description of units in which the animals were kept. 13 Recollection of watching atmospheric tests from Island of Japtan; removing animals after a shot, which includes reflections about “ hot spots,” procedures for detecting radiation and possible exposure. 15 Reading burn patterns on the animals; role of animals in various tests and possible outcomes. 16 Unexpected fall out from George shot resulting in exposure; discussion about secrecy of the program, pre and post Cold War. 19 Reflections and thoughts about first atmospheric test witnessed, followed by a description of fireball and icecap. 20 Discussion about secrecy surrounding findings from tests ( portions of information were never released to whole group); downgrading of clearance status upon returning from Marshall Islands. 22 Description of work at Naval RAD Lab ( post Enewetak) and of “ processing” the animals. 24 First impressions of the Nevada Test Site, and discussion of working conditions 25 Discussion of secrecy regarding hazardous working conditions then, and the secrecy that still surrounds the release of information about and government accountability. 27 Discussion of building Camp Mercury and living conditions. 28 Description of life on the tests site ( work and social). 29 Description, purpose and function of the Mouse House. 32 Description of Downtown Las Vegas and the Strip in the early 1950s. 33 Discussion of: DTRA dose reconstruction procedures, lawsuit against Congress filed by Atomic Veterans. 36 Conclusion: Discussions of personal reasons for involvement with Atomic Veterans 38 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 and the difficulties in navigating current system for compensation claims. Return to discussion of jobs at Naval RAD Lab in 1952- 3, and description of the process of photo dosimetry and making control ( radiation) badges. 40 Discussion of Grable shot in 1953 ( 280- millimeter cannon). 41 Working conditions and regimentation in life at NTS; typical work day. 42 Issues of secrecy and clearance; discussion of secrecy oath. 44 Discussion of reunion in 2002 with the five remaining members of his unit, and description of their reunion trip back to the NTS. 46 Present day reflections about the way Atomic Veterans were treated by Federal government during their service at NTS, and how they are treated now. 50 Types of information Atomic Vets seeking compensation are still not allowed to discuss. 52 Putting together “ Ionizing Radiation Review” newsletter. 53 Mr. Campbell discusses his job as an advocate for the Atomic Veterans, and of being the liaison between NAAV, the federal government and VA hospitals. Discussion focus on the difficulty of disseminating proper information. 55 Difficulties of getting Atomic Veterans on the Ionizing Radiation registry. 56 Discussion of processes and difficulties of getting Congress to recognize needs of Atomic Veterans, and to allocate money to cover compensations and assistance. 57 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Robert “ Doc” Campbell, Jr. March 12, 2005 in Santee, CA Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Robert “ Doc” Campbell, Jr.: My full name is Robert Martin Campbell, Jr., and I was born May 24, 1930 in San Diego, California. I was born in my grandparents’ house on 35th Street in San Diego city because my mother was very leery of babies being kidnapped out of the [ hospital]— the only big hospital we had at the time was Mercy Hospital. So that’s where I started out, with my grandparents. We lived with them for a short period of time and, of course, being a military brat— may father was in the service for twenty- two years— so we did a little bit of traveling. When we finally came back from Washington, D. C., while my dad was in dental school, we moved into El Cajon Valley, the little city of El Cajon, into a house which my great- grandfather and my grandfather had built back in 1919. It was an old wood building, used more for vacation than anything else in those days. It was what we called a board- and- batting house. Had a wood stove, kerosene lamps, kerosene heaters. We moved there in 1934 and lived with my grandmother and grandfather. In 1935, my grandfather passed away of a heart attack, and in 1935, my mother decided to buy the house from my grandmother. So we bought the house, and long about 1938, ’ 39, my father and myself and my mother started tearing the old house down and building a new house which is here in 2005. The house that we built and completed in 1939 is still standing on the corner of Renette and Avocado in El Cajon. We lived there until we took a trip to Hawaii in 1940 because my father was stationed there. We came back in 1941, just prior to December the 7th. Things were happening which were suspicious at the time, and so we came back. At the same time my father thought he would come UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 back to the States and reenlist and go someplace else. Well, we came back here and reenlisted and they sent him right back to Pearl [ Harbor, Hawaii]. So he was there for December the 7th, at Ford Island, the dispensary there in Pearl. We lived in El Cajon till 1946. My parents sold the house then and we moved into San Diego. I went to Hoover High School for two years, and because my father wanted to retire and my folks wanted to go to college. I felt that— I never did think school housing was much worth of anything. But anyway I went to the eleventh grade and had all but two or three credits. So to get out from underneath their feet and give them more breathing room and not have the expense of raising me anymore, I joined the Navy in July of 1948. I joined the Navy right here in San Diego, took a train to Los Angeles, had the physical, got sworn in, and took a train back down to San Diego and went to the Naval Training Center here for boot camp for thirteen weeks. Back in those days, we had what they called a father- and- son program. And because he was a pharmacist’s mate in the Navy, I chose to be a pharmacist’s mate at that time, which in turn became corpsman or hospital corpsman now, as they call us. And what is that exactly? A pharmacist’s mate in those days was in the medical department. In those days, they called them pill- rollers. Pharmacist’s mates. You doled out the medication. Well, not only that, but you were the medical personnel wherever there wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, and you worked with the doctor and with the nurse. [ 00: 05: 00] So I chose to go to Corps School and become a corpsman in ’ 48, because in ’ 48 is when the military made the big transfer. The Army Air Corps was abolished and became the Air Force. Pharmacist’s mates became hospital corpsmen. They did away with the white stripe UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 around the right shoulder of the Navy uniform. They did away with the one- two- three stripes on the cuff for the rating system and they went to a rating system all on the left arm. Prior to that they had both right- and- left- arm rates, so they went all to left- arm rates. This was all a big conversion in ’ 47 and ’ 48. Now were you eighteen yet when you joined the Navy? Oh, yes, I was eighteen. That’s the only reason that I could join without their permission. So I went to Corps School. In those days, you had to be a year in a Navy hospital after you went to Corps School before you could go out to any dispensary or to the fleet. So after fourteen weeks of Corps School, I spent a year at the U. S. Navy Hospital on ward duty. I was on three different wards learning. It’s like [ how] a doctor goes through his internship. The corpsmen do the same thing. You work under different nurses and [ on] different type patients and different situations. My last duty there was as the CO [ commanding officer] driver. I was responsible for keeping the CO’s vehicle maintained and drive him and the executive officer wherever they might want to go. In 1950, I got my orders to go to BUMED [ Bureau of Medicine] Unit One, which at the time was stationed at the U. S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory at the Naval Shipyard, Hunter’s Point, California. But prior to arriving there, I had to have a clearance. Well, this clearance entailed the FBI [ Federal Bureau of Investigation] checking my history. Now to do this, my folks got many phone calls from many friends and relatives, wanting to know what kind of trouble I’d gotten into because the FBI was checking up on me. Were you aware of why they were doing the clearance? I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. OK. So you had no idea. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 I had no idea until I got home and my mother says, I’m getting phone calls. What’s going on? And I said, Well, I’m going to a special unit. That’s about all I can tell you. But you’d had no idea. I had no indication what I was getting into. I didn’t volunteer for this. I was chosen. Which brings up a question of, why was I chosen? Well, the only thing is because I was raised on five acres and I had animal experience. We raised rabbits, we raised chickens, we raised a cow most of the time. Prior to my grandfather passing away, we always had a hog each year and we slaughtered the hog. So I had what we would call today in the science as animal husbandry. I was qualified in animal husbandry when I was finished with BUMED Unit One because that was one of the things that you had to do. So I was not aware of it. But anyway, the folks got phone calls from many, many people because I lived in El Cajon, went to one school for eight years minus about a year, a half- a- year in two different grades which I missed while in Hawaii, so it was pretty easy to follow my tracks. And what ended up happening is that we got a Queen clearance. What is that? Which is the highest clearance. The Q clearance. The Q, what they call Q or Queen, was the highest clearance at that time. It was the same level clearance as the President of the United States had. Right now, there is a clearance higher than that, and I believe that’s called crypto. Crypto, which is the highest communication level secrecy there is. There’s that one. But at that time, that [ Q clearance] was the highest. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 [ 00: 10: 00] Now we also had to sign, when we arrived at the Radiological Defense Laboratory at Hunter’s Point, we also had to sign a secrecy oath that we would not divulge any of our activities to any person. What were you thinking about all this out there? Well, we didn’t know. Every day we were learning something new. So we weren’t told what we were— What did you think, though, when they asked you to sign a statement like that? Well, we were pretty hot stuff. You know, a kid at twenty years old, you’re not thinking about that. You just take it in stride. Here I’ve only been in since ’ 48 and already I got special orders to this special unit. And the next thing I know, we’ve got a Major [ Robert H.] Veenstra who was the last veterinarian left in the Army at the time who was our boss as far as the animals went. The three specimens we used were mice, swine, and canine. Well, he was in charge of the swine and canine project of getting them ready for shipping, see that they got over there, and went through the experiments. So we reported to the RAD Lab, as we called it in those days, which was an extension of [ University of California] Berkeley. We got to the RAD Lab, and we had quarters that looked like something out of the Dark Ages, you know, the old steel two- bunks- high bunks with nothing but springs across them and a mattress pad probably not more than four or five inches thick. The old Navy terminology for those in those days was “ fart sack.” In parentheses. That’s like gedunk and some of those other slangs, which I have fifty- some pages of on my computer. But anyway, that’s a different story. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 So the next thing we know, we’re down with the hogs, and one group is debarking the canines, which were all purebred— I’ll think of it in a minute. Anyway, they were debarking the canines. Where did the animals come from? These came from down South. The canines were beagles, purebred beagles, and they came down from South, around Tennessee area down in there where they raise beagles for hound dogs for hunting. So they raised a bunch for the military. And they shipped them to us there at the RAD Lab. They were already there when I arrived. The same with the swine. Now the swine, I don’t know where the swine came from. Because, see, a lot of this information, it wasn’t need- to- know. Right. You were just there and knew there were— We knew that there were swine there and they had four legs and they had a lot of squeal in them. And with the dogs, until they were debarked, they had a lot of bark. So the dogs were debarked. Then I was assigned to the swine, and our first duties were to maintain, just keep the sow and the boar separated. That was the first primary duty. We notched their ears for identification because this was going to be a highly controlled program. As soon as the swine was given a number, we earmarked by taking notches out of the ears to identify that sow from that day on. Then we made up logs on each sow and on each boar for breeding purposes. So we were there at the RAD Lab, and that was the main job, to get the animals ready for shipping. How long were you out there? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 At the Radiological Defense Laboratory? You want to cut that off and I’ll look it up for you? I can look it up— I’m just curious if you had a general idea. It seems like we were there, oh, about three or four months, something like that. Like I say, I can give you a thing on here because this has the whole thing on it [ referring to documents compiled]. So the other thing was to get the crates ready for shipping off of the base because we [ 00: 15: 00] were going to have to transport them. Some of the other things they took on there was test equipment. We had a lieutenant, a Reserve officer, who was in charge of all of the equipment and the actual field operations. We built the equipment that we were going to use, and the equipment entailed— because when the detonation goes off, you lose all external power, so you’ve got to have equipment that will operate on both AC [ alternating current] and DC [ direct current]. This equipment now is mainly for the mice, because the mice are going to be in constricted areas and they need ventilation and they need heat or cooling. Ventilation or heating. We had no way to cool them, just ventilation or heating. So we had to build units which would work AC/ DC. In other words, have a converter in there, solenoids that would flip when the AC current went off, [ and] automatically turn and go to these batteries so that we’d keep the— if heaters were required, that we had thermostats set up, wired in— And they would kick in. We had built our own heater strips. He had designed them and then we ourselves— we were all corpsmen, now. These are all corpsmen doing this work— we built our own heater strips. He laid out the schematic and we learned how to wire this stuff up off of the schematics. So we were UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 doing this work also. This was the reason that after each operation, we would come back to the RAD Lab and get our equipment and animals ready for the next test. When we got ready to leave San Francisco, because we had a group of protesters outside the main gate, rather than load the ship during the daytime— and for some reason they decided to go ahead and load the ship over at Treasure Island— we had to crate up the animals, put them on the old military- type trucks, and take them over to Treasure Island and load them aboard the USS Warrick ( AKA- 89). The Warrick was an auxiliary cargo ship. And we loaded the animals aboard there. Now did you still not have any idea of what was going on? We didn’t have a full picture, no. We were just given kind of a thumbnail sketch. Did the protesters know what was going on or did they just know you had these animals? The animals. Somehow the word got out that we had these animals, and whenever the military has animals, you’ve got those people [ saying], Aha, aha, they’re not going to be up to any good with those animals. So it’s that type of a thing. Whenever the military has animals, something’s going on. OK, so they found out. So we got the animals all loaded aboard the ship and we left port. Now the way the ship is loaded, we have one hold which is loaded with dynamite explosives. That was a tedious job, getting that loaded, because they had to put mattresses up on the bulkheads so that whenever the ship would pitch and roll, it wouldn’t create any static electricity in any way. So they put all mattresses in there and on two or three levels they put fans blowing in there because we’re going into the tropical area— You want to keep it cool. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Keep it cool. Yes. Because we slept on one side of this hold. On the second deck was our quarters on one side of this hold, which is number two hold. Number one hold has all the booze in it. Number two is the dynamite. Well, we slept on the second deck on the starboard side of the hold, and our galley was on the second deck. It was the port side of the hold. Then in number three hold is where the swine were, and then in number four hold is where the canine were. Now, this is where the fun comes in. We’re heading out and we have to keep— animals when they go to sea, they defecate the same way they do on shore. Well, you got to do something with that. Also we found out that right below, the level below us, was cement [ 00: 20: 00] bags. Well, they had somehow sealed the hold below us and put us on the second deck of the ship, but still, with the hold open up on the main deck, the ventilation was very poor. So every morning we would go down and wash the residue from the animals off. Well, it’s got to go someplace. They have what they call sea cocks on board ships, and sea cocks can be opened up at any level on board the ship to give ballast or to drain a hold if one hold happens to get full. As long as that hold is above water, they can open that sea cock and the water will flow out of that one level of that hold. After about two or three days, we come to find out that we’ve got more water because when they built the deck for the hogs to walk on, they built it out of pine timbers. They put those timbers up off of the main deck so that the fecal matter would go through the cracks in the floor and would go out the sea cocks when we washed the deck down. Well, this wasn’t happening. The water was going slosh back and forth. As the ship would roll, this slosh [ was] going back and forth underneath our planking. After a few days, I don’t know, it must’ve been five, six days, this takes fourteen days to get over there, we’re getting into the hot tropic area and this water is not leaving the ship and the stench is getting worse. We can only go down there and work about thirty minutes at a time cleaning the pens out and feeding the hogs. We have to feed the hogs UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 twice a day. Come to find out, the ship had a port list and the sea cocks were only opened on the starboard side, so the only time any of this water was going out is when she took an extreme starboard roll. Finally they realized that the port cocks— now why they didn’t have both sides open, we don’t know. Of course, we were just passengers on the ship. By that time it [ was] stenchy and warm. We had even gotten augurs and bored holes in these timbers, trying to get this stuff to flow through and get out of there. And of course these timbers [ are] all wet, and if you ever try to hand- drill holes into timbers, two- by- sixes, it’s pretty hard to take a wet hunk of wood and drill a hole in it with a wood augur or a brace- and- bit. [ A] lot of people know it as a brace- and- bit. It’s bad. But anyway, they finally got the sea cocks opened up and finally we got it cleaned out. But still, everything, all the wood, lumber, that we were standing on, the hogs were walking on, the lumber got wet and they got slick. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a hoof on a hog, but it’s got no traction whatsoever, and if the ship took the least roll, those hogs were sliding off on their bellies and not on their four legs. It wasn’t a first- class trip. Finally when we really got out there, and about three or four days out of our destination, somebody finally got the smart idea of rigging a canvas off of one of the booms on the ship to give shade over the hold. That sun from about ten o’clock in the morning until about two or three in the afternoon; it was just beating right down into that hold, and it was hot. We didn’t have air conditioning in that hold. And you were on your way to—? We were on our way to the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. We pulled into Enewetak, finally, and they came alongside with the landing craft, what they called M- boats. Of course, a real unusual experience, not for us but for the ship, that they went to drop one of their anchors because there [ were] no docks there, we had to anchor out in UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 the lagoon. Well, they dropped it. They dropped the whole [ 00: 25: 00] anchor and all the anchor chain. Somebody forgot to tie off the anchor chain at the other end and the whole anchor chain went down. In fact, I have the recorded history of how many fathoms of chain and anchor they lost in the lagoon. But they had divers out there. Because out there, to keep the channel open to get into the lagoon or the atoll, you have to constantly blast out the coral. Coral grows and grows and grows, and you have to blast it out to keep the channel open. So they were out there doing that. That’s why they had divers out there. And I’m sure they had underwater tests when we did the tests, but they had divers. They were able to get a winch onto the end of the chain and bring it back aboard. But for the ship’s crew, that was a trip for them. So we got the landing craft, the M- boats, alongside, and we crated up our animals and took them over to the island of Japtan. Now there were three main islands as far as personnel goes. That’s the island of Enewetak itself, which was mainly Air Force and Army. They flew a lot of people in and out. The island of Parry, which at that time was where the contractor Holmes and Narver lived. And then there was the island of Japtan, which was the only island, both during the Second World War and while Holmes and Narver was doing any construction, that there were any palm trees left on. Coconut palms. It was the only one. In fact, when Holmes and Narver went in there, they were going to take out some of the coconut palms to build our desaltation [ desalinization] plant, our barracks, our galley, and our house for our mice and our lodging for our canine and swine. And they didn’t get too many out until somebody came along and says, That’ll be fifty bucks apiece for every one of those coconut palms you take down. So Holmes and Narver quit. So it was more comfortable living on Japtan than it was living on Parry or Enewetak, because it was just nothing but flat sand spit bars, is all they UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 were. It was just where sand had collected on top of the coral reef and created an island. That’s what an atoll is, is a coral reef in a circular dimension and sand accumulates up on that coral reef and eventually it becomes an island. Now there were other islands, but some of them were only visible at low tide. But then a lot of them were still visible at normal high tide, and those were up in the northwestern quadrant of the Enewetak Atoll, and those were our test islands. One that I can think of without looking up is Majuro, which was the main test island. I have a list of the different test islands. But Majuro was the main one, and I believe that Majuro is the one that they ended up with the Enewetak cleanup program. I believe Majuro was the one where they had the largest crater, so they used that crater to locate all of the contaminated material and they ended up— They put a dome over it, right? Put a concrete dome over it. But that was way after our time. Right. So you were out there in 1950? This was in 1950. We had separated areas for our swine and we had other areas, then, for our canine. Then we had a building where they flew in the mice because they could not in any way— mice are very delicate. [ And] all of these swine are purebred. They’re a known breed of swine. And how many animals? When you’re talking about canines—? Off the top of my head, I’m going to say we probably had a dozen sow, and probably twice that many dogs, or canine. But mice, we had literally hundreds of mice. Now, our main reason for getting out there in 1950 is because we have to [ 00: 30: 00] breed the animals and use the breed stock for the tests, so that they’re somewhat acclimated to that area. What we do from then on, is we start controlled breeding. We know what boar breeds with what sow so that we can document it. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 So you basically spend a year out there breeding the animals. Yes we spent almost a year out there breeding the animals. Now the mice, they were bred more often to get a strain which would be acclimated out there. They had a group that did nothing but the mice, and a group of us that took care of the swine, and another group that took care of the canine. And then what [ did] you do with them? We only had three tests at [ Operation] Greenhouse. We had cylinders, which I have pictures of, which are made out of all aluminum. Now in the different tests, depending on what results we were after— because we not only took what the radiation, as far as the unseen radiation, but also the thermal radiation. That’s what we used the hogs for, were the thermal portion of it. So we had containers, aluminum cylinders, which the animals would be slightly anesthetized so that we could lay them in these units. Some of these units would be a completely cylindrical unit with no outside apertures other than the ends which were parallel. Neither end was exposed towards the detonation, ground zero. So they, what I would say, was horizontal to the— And these were like long tube- like— Just a long tube, right. And some of those had no apertures in them. Now some of them had apertures in them because we wanted to see the difference of the burn pattern of having the swine exposed to the actual rays versus the swine not being exposed. You always have to have a control. Yeah. And this is still out at the islands. We’re still on the Marshall Islands, Enewetak Atoll, Operation Greenhouse. All this. So you saw some of the shots. All of them. All three. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 What’d you think of those? Well, they were very— I mean what was your first—? Well, the first one, it was very impressive. So anyway, in the mornings, we would take our animals up to the islands and then place the swine or the canine in these above ground units. For the mice, we had units which were buried in the ground with our batteries and our heaters and our fans in them. The portion that was above ground was a lead dome, and this lead dome sat on top of the instrumentation portion or the part where the support equipment was. There was a lead plug in this lead dome, and we pulled this plug out, and the mice were in a screened cage, oh, maybe ten, twelve inches long and maybe six inches in diameter. There’d be a few mice in each one of those tubes. Then we’d take the plug out and we would insert those mice in that tube through that hole. That’s the reason [ for] the shape of the container the mice were in, so we could get them through that hole and lay them on a platform above the support equipment, and then put the plug back in. Now the plug was built so that there were graduated steps on the plug so radiation couldn’t get in. The lead was a certain thickness, and we knew the capabilities of other tests. The only other thing was isotope tests in a lab or X- ray tests to see how much radiation you get [ 00: 35: 00] through this amount of lead. And the mice were put in those units. Now we were the last ones in. We came back on the last craft coming out of the test because our animals could not be sustained; [ we] had no way of sustaining those animals for long periods of time, so we were the last ones out and we were the first ones back in after the detonation. For the detonation, we were on the island of Japtan, and we would sit down on the beach with our head between our legs and cover our eyes, and I don’t remember that we even UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 had goggles there on Japtan. We might have, but regardless, when these things would go off and the brightness of this light, it was early morning hours, this brightness would be so bright that even with our hands over our eyes, we could see through our eyelids and we could see the bones in our fingers. That’s how intense this light is. It would go off and of course create this big ball of fire. Dependi