Interview with Delbert Sylvester Barth, December 3, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Delbert Barth December 3, 2004 Henderson, Nevada Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 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 Delbert Barth December 3, 2004 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: birth, family background, early life, education, childhood memories of World War II 1 Education: attends U. S. Military Academy at West Point 4 Military service: training at Fort Benning, GA and the Army Chemical Center, MD, then attached to U. S. Army Chemical Corps and assigned to Health Physics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN 9 Participates in Operation Sandstone at Enewetak 10 Transfers to Army Chemical Center, MD, then to U. S. Navy Postgraduate School and Ohio State University for master’s degree in nuclear physics 14 Marriage and family, death of son 14 Transfers to Panama Area Damage Control School, Panama 15 Transfers to Army Chemical Center, MD to attend Chemical Officers’ Advanced Course and work as instructor, one- year liaison with U. S. Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory, San Francisco, CA, then moves to West Point as instructor 16 Transfers to Office of Chief Chemical Officer, Washington, D. C., then to U. S. Public Health Service, EPA Branch 20 Recalls assignment to Panama Area Damage Control School, Panama 25 U. S. Public Health Service: assigned to Division of Radiological Health, Rockville, MD ( research and development); transfers to Las Vegas, NV as Chief, Bioenvironmental Research Program 28 Developed model of radiological effects using dairy cattle at Nevada Test Site ( NTS), development of aerosols to spray on forage, measurement of radioiodine herd’s the milk 29 Discusses work with EPA, creation of studies to determine radiological effects 32 Thoughts on arms race, nuclear weapons, and the Cold War 37 Talks about relationship with offsite monitoring program around the NTS 39 Conclusion: function of Test Manager’s Advisory Panel 40 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Delbert Barth December 3, 2004 in Henderson, NV Conducted by Mary Palevsky [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Mary Palevsky: Dr. Barth, thank you so much for meeting with me today, and I thought we would start this interview by getting some of your background, if you could state your full name, your date of birth, your place of birth, and something about your family background. Delbert Barth: My name is Delbert Sylvester Barth. I was actually born in Indiana, even though I grew up in the state of Ohio. My father was on a construction job on the Ohio River, and I was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. My father moved around quite a bit, taking construction jobs. Our family was quite poor, but I grew up on a farm in the neighborhood of Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Upper Sandusky. Be sure to use the word “ Upper” because Sandusky is on Lake Erie, but Upper Sandusky is at the upper end of the Sandusky River, which runs into Lake Erie. So you were raised there? Yes, I was raised on a farm, and we were quite poor, so we had to essentially grow our own crops and grow our own food. We didn’t have enough money to buy that during the early years. I was born in 1925. So we suffered during the economy of the United States at that period, 1925 to ’ 32 or so. Did you have brothers and sisters? Due to major problems that my mother had, I was an only child. But I had a sister who died at the age of three from a disease that is now controlled completely with immunizations. And then my mother had a son that was born early and did not survive. And then finally she had a tubal UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 pregnancy, which things had to be removed, so there was no other possibility. So instead of a family of three or four, they wound up with just one. And so your dad was a construction worker and—? Yes, he was a construction worker. He only had an eighth grade education, but he was able to take apart and put together anything like motors. He even managed to build his own tractors by combining the differential of trucks with the front end of cars. So we had a couple of homemade tractors, which I was driving by the age of eleven or so. But you were on a farm and he did this other work, as well? Yes. Actually, when we settled down on the farm in Ohio, that was when he stopped doing the other work. And so he was totally involved with that farm. We had about twenty acres, and we had chickens and we had pigs and a couple of milk cows. And we had a very large garden where we grew all of our, or most of our food. So your dad had an eighth grade education Yes. And what was school like for you? Actually I never had any trouble with school, and I credit my mother for that. Because even though she had only a seventh grade education, before I ever went to school she had taught me the alphabet and had me learning and reading things, which gave me a head start. It seemed like I was always ahead of everybody because of that head start I had going into the first grade. So you were telling me before we turned on the recorder about your high school years and what you did there helped you get into [ United States Military Academy] West Point. Why don’t you go over some of that for the record? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 [ 00: 05: 00] Well, I decided early on that I wanted to go to college, so I took a college curriculum in high school. I took all of the mathematics they had to offer and physics and chemistry. But also I enjoyed sports very much, and I lettered in basketball, baseball, and was the captain of our football team my senior year. What position did you play in football? I was the center, and believe it or not, in those days they did not wear the helmets with the nose guards. The first thing that the nose guard did was to hit me in the face and I would wind up with nosebleed almost immediately. It was a very punishing position, but it’s an important one in the line. I also in those days played both offense and defense. I was a linebacker on defense. So when you’re in high school, do you have an interest in science at that point or—? Very much so. I really enjoyed all of the science and I took everything that I could. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take all of the science courses, and I did not take biology. But I did take physics and chemistry, and in those years we were very interested in preparing people for the war, so a course was established on preflight aeronautics, which I took in high school. And at the end of that, I was reasonably qualified for a private pilot’s license. So you’re a teenager when the war breaks out. That is correct. This is a little bit divergent but I’m curious. What was it like in that place in Ohio at that time? What was the feeling in the community about the war, and what were just sort of your general—? Actually I had the feeling that everyone in the area was very much for the war. There were no problems at all like we ran into, for example, in Vietnam. Everybody was for the war, and a lot of people went away and fought and many of them did not come back because they were killed in the war, but people accepted this and they were very patriotic. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 Now when you’re in high school, are you expecting that you will probably be involved in the war, go into the service? I expected that I would and I applied to go to West Point to get an officer’s commission. But when I took the test, a civil service test where the top person got the appointment, I came out second, and the top person accepted the appointment. And so I felt that I would not get to go, being a first alternate appointment, so I immediately enlisted in the Army. And by enlisting in the Army, they gave me a six months’ delay. I was eighteen years old at this time. They gave me a six months’ delay on reporting to allow me to have one semester of college. And since I was the valedictorian of my graduating class, I had a scholarship at a university in Columbus, Ohio and I had already arranged to attend one semester there before I was called up to the Army. Which school was that? It was Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. But you do end up going to West Point, so how does that happen? Actually, as it happened, the people who control the number of people that go to West Point decided to enlarge the class at the very last moment. And so to get qualified individuals, they looked at their records of all the first alternates and they picked the ones that were considered to be the best qualified first alternates. And actually I had just left home to go to Capital University. [ 00: 10: 00] I stopped for gasoline in Upper Sandusky, Ohio and my mother called me and said, You just got a letter today. You’re supposed to report to West Point on a certain day in July. So I had to turn around and go home. I never did get to Capital University. She called you at the gas station? Yes, exactly. She knew you were stopping for gas? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 Yes, she knew. That’s a great story. What did you think when you heard that news? Oh, I was absolutely delighted because I did want to go to West Point very much. I didn’t realize at that time how difficult it was going to be. Because remember this is 1943 and I was going directly from high school at age eighteen, and we had people who were going to West Point who had one year of college, two years of college, three years of college, four years of college, and the competition was very, very tough at West Point. I didn’t realize that when I went. It wasn’t anything at all like my high school experience. So I went through some very rough times, particularly the first year at West Point. What was rough? Well, the physical harassing that they do for you. It’s not as bad now since women attend West Point, but back in 1943 the upperclassmen made it very, very difficult on the plebes, and that was all part of teaching you how to deal with various kinds of problems. I’m probably a better man for having gone through that, but I certainly didn’t appreciate it at the time. Now when you get to be an upperclassman, then just does it become—? Then you do that to the plebes. The freshmen who are coming in are called plebes. So the upper class has to take roles of responsibility over the plebes and help to teach them, not academics but all of the other things, the tactics and leadership training of that sort. So how were the academics for you there? Again, I found that some of the academics were quite difficult. And probably because I had graduated from a very small school and I didn’t have a lot of the courses that people did who went to larger schools. For example, I found that it was quite difficult for me to do well in calculus, at least for a while, until I managed to figure out how things were going there. And also UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 some of the professors at West Point in those days were military officers who really didn’t have very much training in the art of teaching. And so I didn’t get the same kind of special treatment that I always got in high school, where we had excellent teachers in the small school I went to back in Ohio. You said the school was small. I’m going to backtrack a little bit. Do you have a sense of what your graduating class size was? Oh, yes, there were only seventy- four students in my graduating class. And the entire population of Upper Sandusky, Ohio was a little bit over four thousand, probably still is somewhere a little bit over four thousand. It hasn’t grown much over the years. Did you ever wonder if you’d made a mistake going to West Point, or what was your—? Actually after I graduated from West Point, there was no question in my mind that it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it was the foundation for everything else that has happened since that time. And the kind of background that I received at West Point, not just the academics but the leadership training, manager training that you get there, was absolutely wonderful. And I would recommend it to anybody who’s eligible to get an appointment. And my [ 00: 15: 00] understanding now is, I still stay in touch with the people at West Point, for every opening they’re now getting somewhere between ten and fifty applicants, so they can really pick and choose and take the very best, only the very best people to the military academy. And I understand that’s the way it is also at the Air Force Academy and at the Naval Academy. I don’t know much about the military academies. Does everybody study the same things? When I went there, there was one possible choice academically, and that was foreign language which you would take. And I had taken four years of Latin in high school because I really enjoyed Latin and it’s the foundation of all the Romance languages. And so I decided that what I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 would do is put down German because I wanted to see a different kind of language, so my first choice was German. But unfortunately lots of other people took German. And I put down Portuguese as my second choice, and so I was selected to take Portuguese. But as it turned out, it was my very best subject. I graduated sixth in my class in Portuguese. That’s a great story. It’s true. That is not correct anymore. Now people at West Point can specialize in various programs. You can do engineering, you can do all kinds of different things, so everyone is not taking the same curriculum anymore, but that’s the way it was back in ’ 43. You had no choices except your foreign language, and I didn’t get the one I asked for. Thanks for clarifying that. Now when did you graduate from West Point? Actually they accelerated the program from four years to three years, so I went in in ’ 43 and I came out in 1946. And the way in which they accelerated the course was to take out many of the long leaves. They really did not lose very much of the academics. They tried to cover everything in three years that they normally covered in four years, so that also made it a little bit more difficult. Why did they do that? They wanted to get officers out as soon as possible to get them into World War II to replace the ones who were casualties. And they didn’t know that the war was going to end in 1945, it could well have gone on to ’ 46 or ’ 47, and so they wanted to get an extra amount of people into the class and get them graduated as soon as possible. Am I understanding this correctly that taking the extra and accelerating was part of this need created by World War II? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 That is correct. That’s why they accelerated, and I had a three- year course. Class of 1947 also had three years. And the class of 1948 was split. Part of them graduated in three years and part graduated in four. And the way in which they decided that was on the age, mostly, of the individuals. So had they done that with my class I would have had to stay for a fourth year. But three years was the correct value for ’ 46 and ’ 47. Do you remember the end of the war? Very much so. Yes, I do. Well, the part that I remember the most was at a graduation ceremony, there was an announcement made that we had just invaded Normandy, at the first graduation ceremony that I was at, which was in 1944. And then in 1945 when the war ended in Europe and then later in Japan, I was a cadet at West Point, and it was very greatly celebrated by everyone, the end of the war. And as someone with a science background, did you have any particular thoughts about the atomic bomb? Was it—? [ 00: 20: 00] Well, when you are getting ready to graduate, you have to select which arm of the Army you want to get your commission in. And of course we have the infantry, we have armor, we have engineers, we have Signal Corps, quartermaster. I decided that what I would like to do was get in the Chemical Corps of the Army. And one of the major reasons was that I was very interested in radiological warfare, chemical warfare, and biological warfare. I wanted to find out more about that, and also the people who came to talk to us about the Chemical Corps indicated that there would be a strong possibility that I would be able to get an advanced degree in one of the subjects. And that’s really why I selected the Chemical Corps. And that was, again, a very fortunate occurrence for me because a lot of the things that happened afterwards depended on my UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 starting off in the Chemical Corps and learning in their basic courses about chemical, biological, and radiological warfare. Now on a personal note, were your parents still alive when you graduated? Again, there’s a tragedy that I can tell you. At the end of my first year at West Point, after I was going home on leave— after my first year I had a thirty- day leave— and when I met my mother at the train station I asked where my father was and he had died the day before of a heart attack. So I found that out when I went home after my first year at West Point. And he was only forty- one years old at the time. My mother was very happy when I graduated from West Point, and she honored a wish of my dad. He was going to give me a brand new car when I graduated, and she gave me a brand new car when I graduated. And she lived to be seventy- six. I’m just thinking of where we’re going to go next. Why don’t you tell me how that works, then, to go into the Chemical Corps? Well, for my particular class you could select the branch of service you wanted to go into, but when the quota went out for that branch, then nobody else could go into that branch, and you got your pick depending on where you graduated in the class. So the number one person in the class was able to pick anything he wanted, and it kept going down, and finally at the very end all of them went into the infantry because that was the only thing that was left by the time they got down to the lower ranking people in the class. So the first thing we did after graduation was to go to Fort Benning [ Georgia] and take a course called Officers’ Branch Immaterial. And I think this was a major mistake for the Army to do this because everything that was covered in that class we had already had at West Point in much more detail in our tactical courses there. So what we were doing was essentially going over the same ground again. Tell me again what that was called. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 Officers’ Branch Immaterial. Immaterial means it doesn’t make any difference what branch you were in. Everybody had to take that course, whether you were infantry, engineers, armor, whatever. And then after that course, you could go for Special Forces or you could become parachute trained. I did not elect to [ 00: 25: 00] do any of those things. But after I finished the Officers’ Branch Immaterial I was stationed at Army Chemical Center, Maryland and I attended the chemical officers’ basic course. And following the chemical officers’ basic course I was assigned, let me see, yes, it was at that point after I finished the chemical officers’ basic course that I was selected, along with all of the graduates of the class of 1946 that went into the Chemical Corps, we were selected to become specialists in nuclear weapons, and how to employ nuclear weapons and how to defend yourself against nuclear weapons. We were then stationed at Oak Ridge [ National Laboratory], Tennessee and became members of the staff of the Health Physics Division there. And we were trainees in that Health Physics Division, and were assigned to different portions, different pieces, of the health physics program there. We would work for a certain period of time in each one of those tasks so we’d learn all about the health physics program. And while I was there at Oak Ridge, I was sent off to a major nuclear weapons test at Enewetak. While you were at Oak Ridge? While I was at Oak Ridge. I went from Oak Ridge to Enewetak to participate in Operation Sandstone where there were three nuclear weapons exploded on different islands at Enewetak. Let me ask you this. This is very interesting to me. The bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at which point— I sometimes pose my questions as statements and that’s what I’m doing now. I’m trying to get my thoughts clear on this. The Army must have to begin to rethink UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 everything in terms of what having nuclear weapons in the arsenal and in the world means, so this thing that you’re involved in must have been brand new at that point. It was brand new and we were assigned a new what is called an MOS in the Army, military occupational specialty number, and the number that we were assigned was a 7330, and we were the first ones. If I recall, there were seven of my class who went into the Chemical Corps, and we became the first ones. We were being trained in order to be involved with the employment of nuclear weapons against enemies and also how to defend ourselves if any of our enemies had nuclear weapons. So this was the training program that I was involved with, and it started at Oak Ridge, and then I went off to Operation Sandstone to actually see the test, the weapons test. Then I went back to Oak Ridge and subsequently was assigned to the Army Chemical Center and I became the radiological defense officer for the entire base at the Army Chemical Center, for the research and development that was going on. And six months later I was selected to continue as a 7330 specialty nuclear weapons effects, to attend a three- year program which started with one year at the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School. Then in my case I had two years at Ohio State University and graduated from Ohio State University with a master’s degree in nuclear physics. [ 00: 29: 46] End Track 2, Disc 1. [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 3, Disc 1. So let’s talk a little bit about Sandstone. All right. What I wanted to do is give you my assignment at Sandstone. I was assistant operations officer for the Radiological Safety Task Force at Operation Sandstone, and so we had to predict, based on the expected yield of these nuclear weapons, what the radiation levels would be at various places on the islands where the explosions were being held, and also possibly off the islands, into the ocean. And following the tests, I stayed around for approximately a month UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 afterwards and I actually was in charge of conducting a monitoring exercise on the islands to determine the levels of radiation on the islands which resulted from the tests. And the tests were actually in the air, so they were not on the actual island, but there were radiation levels. And I had what is called a duck, which is a kind of truck which can go either in the water or on the land, and we would go to the island and then drive up over the beach and then actually conduct a survey to determine what the levels of radiation were at various places as a result of the tests. So it was a very interesting assignment. I have a couple of questions about that. The first one is what were your impressions of the tests themselves? Did you see them? Actually they asked us to turn away when the test was conducted, because if you look at a nuclear test it can damage your eyes rather badly, and we didn’t all have very thick glasses, so we just had to turn our backs to the test as the bomb exploded. And then we all turned around and looked at the mushroom clouds that resulted from the explosions. So we were able to watch the mushroom clouds which contained a lot of radiation to see what happened to them as they went up in the air and as they moved away from the location where the tests had been conducted. I don’t remember offhand how many tests Sandstone consisted of. There were three weapons that were exploded at Operation Sandstone. Three. That’s what I thought. And the other question had to do with what was, if anything, your involvement with the science side, the laboratory side, of people interested in similar kinds of questions? At that point, I was not at all involved with the technical aspects. I was only concerned with the radiological safety aspects because that was my job at that time, and so I knew nothing about the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 inner details of the physical construction of atomic weapons. I was only concerned with the operation aspects of the radiological safety program. And were you close? You said you predicted, and then did you have to verify if your predictions were close, am I understanding that right? Well, we could only predict in a very general way because there wasn’t a lot of experience available at that time in 1948. The only other tests that had been conducted were 1946 in Bikini, and they were different kinds of tests, so the predictions were quite fuzzy. But yes, there were predictions, and ultimately when I conducted the survey I talked about, I developed an overlay of the islands showing the levels of radioactivity at each location where I sampled. And I didn’t actually sample the ground. I was only looking at external radiation. I was carrying a [ 00: 05: 00] meter around which measured gamma radiation, external gamma radiation. OK. Anything else about Sandstone that I should know? No. It did have an impact on a subsequent assignment that I had, in that the individual who was in charge of my aspect of the radiation safety program was a Navy captain, and that Navy captain was the commander of the U. S. Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, and he subsequently approved my assignment as an Army liaison officer to his facility. So it was because I went to Sandstone and met this captain from the Navy that I actually later on was assigned as liaison officer to the U. S. Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory. And do you recall his name? Captain Hinners, H- I- N- N- E- R- S. First name, do you know? I’m not certain of his first name, [ I believe it was Ralph]. I didn’t call him by his first name. In those days, I was a low lieutenant and he was a Navy captain. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 Point well taken. You wouldn’t even have it to forge. I’ll look it up. We can find that. But in the interim, you’ve gone back to school. Yes, I went back to Oak Ridge from there, and then I was stationed, as a I said, as a radiation safety officer at the Army Chemical Center in Maryland. I was there only six months when I was selected to attend a three- year course to make me what they were calling in those days an expert in radiation effects. That was the real purpose of the course. And that was when I went to the U. S. Naval Academy [ Postgraduate School] for one year and then two years at Ohio State to get a master’s in nuclear physics. Now at some point in this chronology, you’re going to have to let me know a personal side, which is when you meet your wife. Is this happening yet at that point? Oh, that happened a long time ago. It happened before. We’ll go back. I first met my wife when I was a senior at West Point and she was a model in New York City. And there’s a story about that. She was a very beautiful lady. In fact, this is the way she looked right here [ indicating photograph on wall]. I was wondering. And I submitted her picture to be Homecoming Queen, and they threw it out locally because they said, She’s a professional model, and I said, So what? She’s my girlfriend. But they would not consider her as a possibility. And I met her in the fall of 1945 and we were married in July of 1946. So she’s with you— well, obviously not— I was dating her while she was a model in New York City, and then I proposed to her and she accepted and we were married on July 10, 1946 in her hometown. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 So you’ve been married almost sixty years. Fifty- eight to be exact. That’s amazing. Yes, to be exact. So obviously not in the Pacific but as you’re making these various moves on your assignments, your wife and at some point your family is— Well, very quickly we had a family. We were married in ’ 46 and in ’ 47 we had a son. And that son was born in my wife’s hometown of Washington, Indiana because I was involved with some maneuvers, some training exercise, and she wasn’t sure that I would be with her when her time came. So she wanted to go home and I approved of this, so her father and her uncle were [ 00: 10: 00] taking care of her and made sure that she got to the hospital on time. So our son was born in Washington, Indiana in 1947. And incidentally, he just recently within the last year or so died of a heart attack. It was sad. [ The other children are Christopher, Deborah, and Diana.] I’m so sorry. [ Pause] So shall we go on or—? It’s up to you. OK. What’s the next logical place to go? Is there something we need to talk about before the Navy assignment? Well, no, I don’t think so because I got in all of the technical training that I had, as well as the operational training at Oak Ridge. I’m trying to make sure that I have this schedule correctly in my head. Let me think about this for a minute. After I graduated from Ohio State with a master’s degree in nuclear physics, my first utilization assignment was to Panama. And I went to Panama and I became the assistant commandant of the Panama Area Damage Control School, which was a chemical, biological, and radiological school for Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and civilian people, both officers and enlisted people. It was a three- week course, and I was in charge of that course for my period when I was in Panama. At the completion of that, I was stationed back at UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 Army Chemical Center to attend the Chemical Officers’ Advanced Course. And that is a nine- months’ course, and when we got to the portion of that course dealing with radiation and the effects of radiation, they took me out of the class and made me one of the instructors. So I actually became an instructor in the radiological defense because I had more background than the people that they had there that normally taught that. And so after I graduated from that Chemical Officers’ Advanced Course, I then went to San Francisco to this U. S. Navy liaison job. Well, let me ask you something else that pops into my mind. You’ve begun teaching at this point. You’re teaching in Panama, courses, and then you’re teaching—