While successive British governments have denied troops were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in the Pacific, the US has a dedicated compensation programme for its nuclear veterans.
Darren Calpin
Tue, 7 March 2023
Mayor Alan Dowson - Suppplied by Darren Calpin
Councillor Alan Dowson was just 19 when he witnessed most people’s worst nightmare – a nuclear explosion.
After entering the RAF Catering Corps to carry out his National Service, the teenager from Sunderland was ordered to do his bit for Queen and Country on the other side of the world in the spring of 1958.
On a balmy hot day beneath clear blue skies, Dowson found himself on an idyllic beach on Christmas Island (now Kiritimati), one of more than 30 low-lying Pacific islands that make up the tropical nation of Kiribati.
Sitting within the grand, present day surroundings of the Mayor’s Parlour at Peterborough Town Hall, the now 84-year-old closes his eyes and takes us back to that day: April 22, 1958.
“When the blast went off, you saw all your bones in your hands,” he recalls. “The X-rays ran through your body.”
This was Operation Grapple – an H-bomb detonation which was part of the UK’s atomic weapons testing programme. The awestruck 19-year-old had just seen for himself an H-bomb airdrop with an explosive yield of around three megatonnes. It remains the largest British nuclear weapon ever tested.
Operation Grapple – an H-bomb detonation – was the largest British nuclear weapon ever tested
“There was a heat…” Dowson says painfully, tears appearing with the memory. “There was a heat coming through, and there was a whiplash of sound.”
Regaining his composure, he continues: “The blast went over you and after 20 seconds you were allowed to get up and watch. There was one person who was allowed to watch it [all]. He went blind, [but] he got his sight back a few months later.”
Dowson, who was an Acting Corporal at the time, remembers looking around and seeing “thousands and thousands of dead birds.”
In total, the British government dropped nine thermonuclear weapons on Kiritimati between 1957 and 1958. Around 22,000 British servicemen, along with soldiers from New Zealand and Fiji, took part in the tests.
Utilising all three branches of the armed forces, the controversial weapons testing programme was the largest British military undertaking since D-Day. Upon its completion, Great Britain declared itself the world’s third nuclear power, alongside the United States and the Soviet Union.
‘Things were not right with the airmen’
Dowson and his comrades were driven to the beach in a lorry on that fateful day. Despite being just 40 miles from the blast, the men were issued no personal protective equipment of any kind, Dowson claims.
Safety guidance on the day was, he recalls, scarce: personnel were advised to wear a hat and make sure their sleeves were rolled down. The men were then ordered to “sit down with your back towards the blast area and cover your eyes.”
Despite assurances given at the time that the tests posed little risk to health (via radiation exposure), a significant number of veterans went on to experience significant repercussions.
Former servicemen and veterans associations, such as the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA), believe these nuclear tests ruined their lives, causing cancers and fertility problems, as well as birth defects that have been passed down through the generations.
Dowson, who was an Acting Corporal at the time, remembers seeing ‘thousands and thousands of dead birds’
The Ministry of Defence has declared that no link has been found between the tests and ill health. Dowson, who was last year elected as Peterborough’s mayor, disagrees fervently with the MoD’s findings.
“When we came back,” he says, “there started to be rumours that things were not right with the airmen.” Dowson believes his inability to conceive a child with his wife was caused directly by his presence on Kiritimati. “Most of us were infertile,” he says, visibly upset.
Of those veterans who were able to conceive, Dowson reiterates the issue of birth defects: “A number of them have had children and grandchildren who have been directly affected by the radiation.”
Nuclear test veterans have campaigned for decades to have their contributions to Britain’s ‘ultimate deterrent’ officially acknowledged. In November 2022, the Prime Minister finally decided to award medals to all those who participated in the UK’s atomic weapons testing programme.
Rishi Sunak described the medals as “an enduring symbol of our country's gratitude” for those involved in the test programme. “It is,” he said, “only right their contribution to our safety, freedom and way of life is appropriately recognised with this honour.”
Alan Dowson with a fellow serviceman
Dowson during Operation Grapple
Dowson welcomed the decision with mute enthusiasm: “It’s some acknowledgment, but I don’t think it goes far enough.”
Gazing out of the window over the busy street below, he muses: “Knocking out a medal for 1,500 people is little expense for the cost they’ve created in the past.
“The cost has been borne by the servicemen and their families.”
The mayor, who is a committed supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), is clear about what he and his former comrades really want from the government: “I think they’ve got to apologise,” he said.
The US Government has already paid compensation to British personnel who were present at Operation Dominic, a separate nuclear test program which the US and UK worked on together in the Pacific during the early 1960s
Yet the mayor acknowledges the chances of receiving a public formal apology are slim. It will, he admits, open the floodgates for compensation claims.
“If the British Government can ignore facts then they will, if they can get away with it,” he adds. “And they have got away with it – so far.”
The cost of nuclear fallout
Analysis, by Paul Nuki
Here’s a not-so-funny thing about the atomic tests that took place in the Pacific: if you were a US serviceman stationed there who has since developed cancer, you are compensated. If, on the other hand, you are a Brit like Mayor Dowson, you get a medal but nothing more.
“The MOD does not accept that participants at the UK atmospheric nuclear test and weapons experiments were, as a result, exposed to ionising radiation that adversely affected their health,” the Foreign Office told the Telegraph last week.
Quite the reverse in fact: “The findings … show that over the entire follow-up period of 1952-2017, overall mortality, and cancer mortality of the test veterans and military controls remain lower than the general population,” it added.
Can it really be that 20,000 British servicemen stood unprotected and at close quarters to a series of nuclear explosions and suffered no ill effects whatsoever?
And if that really is the case, why are the Americans compensating their people? Indeed, why worry about nuclear fallout at all?
While successive British governments have denied troops were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation in the Pacific, the US has a dedicated compensation programme for its nuclear veterans.
A mushroom cloud rises over the Pacific moments after the detonation of Britain's second Hydrogen bomb - Gilbert Carter/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
The scheme provides $75,000 for those who served in the Pacific and went on to develop one or more of 20 cancers known to be linked to radiation exposure.
In one case, the US government paid out to a critically ill British ex-serviceman who had been seconded to the US military on Christmas Island.
Roy Prescott died aged 66 of lung cancer, which he believed was caused by nuclear tests he witnessed. “I am a casualty of the cold war,” he said before his death in September 2006.
There is, of course, no doubt that exposure to radiation can cause a range of cancers.
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more leukaemias and solid cancers were observed among the survivors than expected, for example. Historically, nuclear workers have also been found to be at higher risk of leukaemia and many other cancers.
Then there are studies of soldiers who served in the Pacific. One US study of 3,020 nuclear veterans revealed increases in leukaemia; a study of 10,983 Australian veterans also showed an increase in leukaemia, as did a study of 528 men from New Zealand.
So how does the UK government justify its view?
The truth is the studies it relies on – ones it commissioned itself – are not as clear cut as it pretends.
Members of the press and naval ratings aboard HMS Alert 35 miles offshore of Malden Island, Kiribati. Seen here dressed in protective suits known as Goon Suits. The ships crew and passengers where there to witness the second test of Britain's Hydrogen bomb - Gilbert Carter/Daily Herald
Yes, it is true that Pacific veterans have better health than the general population but that is to be expected. It is true of all soldiers who are selected for their fitness and is known as the “healthy soldier” effect.
The long-term UK study tracking Pacific veteran's health actually finds they have a 2 per cent higher mortality rate than a control group of similar soldiers. They are also more likely to have contracted leukaemia as well as other cancers.
“The overall mortality rate in the [nuclear] test participants was slightly higher relative risk than that in the control group”, say the study authors. “This difference was driven by similar increased risks for both all cancers combined and all non-cancer diseases. Leukaemia … showed evidence of being raised relative to controls”.
Of course this link between watching nuclear bombs explode in the Pacific and a raised mortality and cancer risk is only an association. Proving one caused the other is a different question and would rely on the MOD having taken detailed and accurate radiation exposure reading at the time.
For Mayor Dowson and his colleagues who took part in Operation Grapple on Christmas Island this information hardly exists, with just 2 per cent of the men involved monitored for their exposure to radiation.
“Consequently… the power to detect any increasing risks with measured [radiation] dose was limited,” note the study authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment