Atomic-Test Veterans Win a Judicial Band-aid

When a federal judge in San Francisco ruled two weeks ago that the Veterans Administration had exhibited “callous disregard for all processes of the court� in destroying numerous documents important to radiation-related claims, she only confirmed what many atomic veterans have long felt: the government’s callous disregard for the fate of servicemen exposed to radiation in the line of duty.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel fined the VA for obstructing a class-action suit that seeks to broaden veterans’ access to legal counsel in hearings before the agency. The Veterans Administration deserved the court’s censure for “a pattern of misconduct . . . distortions, misrepresentations and misleading information.� But it was just one relatively small skirmish in a much larger battle to recover damages from federal policies that have been in effect since the first nuclear test on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, N.M.

In autumn of that year, thousands of U.S. soldiers were assigned to cleanup chores in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where radioactivity levels from the August A-bomb explosions remained high. The next summer 42,000 U.S. sailors watched two nuclear explosions at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. In 1951, nuclear testing began in Nevada, again with servicemen on duty at the test site.

By the time the Limited Test Ban Treaty went into effect in 1963, at least 210,000 American military personnel had participated in nuclear bomb testing conducted above ground. Often they were within a few miles of the “ground zero� blast center--experiencing a flash so bright that some could see the bones in their hands pressed over closed eyelids. Powerful shock waves and hot winds quickly followed. Cancer, leukemia and genetic damage came later.

The federal court ruling Jan. 8 was one welcome step toward ending the VA’s consistent efforts to avoid responsibility for dealing with in-service radiation exposure. But the agency’s recalcitrance is just part of a pattern involving the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the White House. And it is not a partisan matter; for the last six years the Reagan Administration has simply continued a bipartisan policy as old as the nuclear age itself--shafting atomic veterans.

It’s true that scientists have only gradually grasped the deadly long-term impact of radiation levels officially deemed low-level and “safe.� Government radiation standards, while still sanctioning dangerous amounts of exposure, have become much more stringent since the 1950s. But federal officials remain unwilling to admit that our nation’s nuclear tests have injured American citizens.

The odds against a cancer-ridden atomic veteran, or his widow, are slim indeed in the face of an unyielding VA bureaucracy that has turned down all but a handful of thousands of claims for service-connected benefits due to radiation exposure. The Pentagon’s Defense Nuclear Agency has earned the enmity of atomic vets because the agency--with the ironic acronym DNA--has worked closely with the Veterans Administration to stonewall their claims.

Civilians who happened to be living downwind of the Nevada test grounds also received profuse assurances that “there is no danger.� Yet independent epidemiological studies of downwinders and atomic veterans alike show unusually high rates of leukemia and cancer. In places like southwestern Utah, these illnesses have been joined by the further family tragedy of birth defects.

More than two years ago, a U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City awarded $2.6 million to 10 Utah residents for damages from fallout. The Justice Department is still appealing that decision, well aware that more than 1,000 other downwind residents had also filed for damages before the 1984 decision.

Meanwhile, natives of the Marshall Islands, where scores of nuclear tests included megaton-range hydrogen blasts, are suffering severe effects from radioactive poisoning of their bodies and their beloved islands. The U.S. government has agreed to pay them millions of dollars in damages. But no amount of money could come close to compensating for the human cost.

For more than 40 years the U.S. government--defensive about nuclear explosions ever since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--has been unwilling to own up to the harm caused by testing “improved� nuclear weapons.

Princeton scholar Richard Falk has pointed out that “(T)he United States as the first and only user of nuclear weaponry has a definite psycho-political stake in maintaining the legitimacy of this technology of mass destruction.� As long as that stake holds fast, atomic veterans will look in vain for justice and compassion from the government they unwittingly served so well.