East Texas vet took part in first hydrogen bomb test BY JORDAN GREEN
Report for America/Longview News-Journal
He’d already been exposed to too much radiation, and the monitoring badge on his chest showed it. It was late 1952, and 19-year-old U.S. Navy engineer Richard Watson was in charge of operating the boiler onboard the USS Lipan, a ship involved in nuclear weapons testing near the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The military’s solution to his radiation overexposure, Watson said, was to issue him a new radiation badge and throw his old one overboard. “That was what they knew about radiation and the effect that it had on people in those days,” he said. “They did not know what was going on with us.” To this day, the federal government still maintains that service members such as Watson were exposed to low
levels of radiation and have “a low risk of health problems,” according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yet many of the men onboard the Lipan, including Watson, have battled cancer and other medical issues linked to radiation exposure. Unlike most of his Korean War-era shipmates, 91-year-old Watson, a resident of Emerald Bay near Bullard, is still around to tell his story. Seated at his kitchen table as the sun shined through the windows on a recent Tuesday, Watson described in vivid detail the mushroom cloud that he saw billowing toward the sky on Nov. 1, 1952. It was an explosion unlike any that came before it. It was the U.S. government’s first hydrogen bomb test. Watson raised his eyebrows and said: “You don’t ever want to go through one. It is not pretty. It is amazing what one
U.S. Navy veteran Richard Watson holds a map showing where his adventures in the military took him. Watson, who lives in Emerald Bay near Bullard, was involved in the U.S. government’s first hydrogen bomb test in 1952. Photo by Jordan Green/News-Journal Photo
of these things does.”
A FIRST OF FIRSTS The test was called Operation Ivy, and the 140,000-pound bomb was named Mike. It was too large to be dropped from a plane, so it was built in place on Elugelab Island. The blast was 450 times more powerful than the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II just seven years prior, according to Atomic Archive, a website dedicated to nuclear history. Watson was in the Lipan’s mess hall, about 26 miles from the blast site. Sailors asked a scientist onboard if they’d live through the blast, Watson wrote in a 107-page diary for his family. The scientist’s answer: “We just don’t know!” The captain prayed the Lord’s prayer, and then the bomb went off.
The sailors survived, and 30 seconds after the blast, they went out on the ship’s deck, Watson wrote in his diary. A bright, white light was still visible from where the bomb went off. Suddenly, a wave of water raced toward the ship. “When the shock wave hit us, it was as though a 60 mph wind smacked you in the face,” he wrote. “I was knocked against the bulkhead, and some guys lost their white hats off their heads. All this time, the mushroom cloud was rising higher into the air. Even though we were 26 miles away, the noise was terrific.” The island was gone — obliterated. “It really was quite a spectical [sic],” Watson wrote in a letter to his mother, “something I will remember for quite a while.” Just as memorable, though “as different as night and day” See VETERAN, Page 4B