starting to think about things.

Yeah, my wife's the only person I ever told.

I never told anybody — not my parents, not my brother,

not my best friends, not my wife, nobody.

I go in tears talking about it now.

It's affected me.

I'd like to think it hasn't affected me.

I'd like to think I could tough it out

and everything's O.K. It has affected me.

I will admit to it.

You just saw a little bit of it now.

I can't watch the bomb.

Hood was the biggest kiloton bomb blown up

within the continental United States.

The morning of July 5, 1957, about 4 in the morning,

they put us in a trench.

I think it was a mile from ground zero or less.

I was in a platoon with 40 other people.

And for protection, we just had our utility jackets,

our weapons, helmets and a gas mask.

The attitude in the trenches was,

these people were concerned, but they didn't know

what was going to happen.

They had no idea.

These were well-trained men, so I

don't think they would have been

afraid to go into combat, shoot people

without any problem.

But they didn't know what this bomb was.

We followed the instructions, which

were to crouch down, put our backs towards the shot,

and bow our heads and cover our eyes.

And we got to the point that everybody's basically

in the trenches.

They started the countdown.

They went, “59, 58, 57 — “

I got my gas mask on.

I had trouble cinching it down.

And it got down to nine.

I grabbed my helmet, put it up to my head about like that,

and the bomb went off.

It really was the most —

I'll never experience anything like it again.

I know that.

It was completely daylight at midnight,

brighter than the brightest day you ever saw.

I cannot begin to describe the light that came

into my eye.

I was totally blinded.

When I came out of the blindness, I saw my hands.

And by this time, I actually saw the blood vessels

in my bones in my arm.

You could literally just see every bone in there —

everything, even the guy's bones and back

that was in front of you.

That's how bright the light was,

to go from through the back of your head, through your eyes,

and into your fingers.

You're seeing your bones in your hands.

And how did it come through all

that to get to your bones, that you could visually

see them, like an X-ray?

The light faded, and it's like streaks of lightning

from the ground to the sky about every two

feet around you.

And then that faded, and it was like giant fireballs

in front of your eyes.

When the wave hit me, it knocked me over.

I actually flipped over.

All of us fell down on the ground.

The blast caught me in the face,

broke my glasses, knocked me on my butt,

put a whole bunch of shrapnel in my face.

It was mostly like little glass beads

that were melted glass beads in my neck.

And I had a hole in my neck and one in my lip.

And it felt just like you would take a red-hot iron,

like your iron on an ironing board,

and put it to your neck.

People screaming and running —

there was panic.

There was panic, and people screaming

because of the heat.

Everybody started yelling, and some people calling out

for their mothers, and some of the trenches collapsed.

I don't know.

It's like I had lost it, and I don't know why,

because I'm losing it right now.

The whole clump of ground 10 yards this way,

15 yards this way, 10 yards back over here —

A few guys were having a little trouble.

They were throwing up.

It was a normal thing, I guess.

We had to dig two guys out, and we're

standing there watching the mushroom cloud form.

And you could see it with the naked eye.

It just sucked all the sand up.

People were gathering and kind

of coming back and looking at the spectacular, spectacular

shot.

Actually — you're going to die when I tell you this —

it was so big, and it looked —

the colors were beautiful in a sense.

I hate to say that.

You see this molten cloud changing color

as it kind of turns within itself.

Beautiful purples and lavenders and popping

and blipping and just doing.

And it was boiling and just orange and reds

and black and gray and whatever.

And it just kept boiling, rolling like this.

And the higher it got, the more it flowed outwards.

That thing just keeps — it seems like it keeps on going,

and it keeps expanding.

And then it reaches a point where it kind of colors up

at the top.

As it closed in, it was a huge red ring

all the way around as far as you

could see for the horizon.

And as it closed up, like an aperture on a camera,

on one side of the red ring was daylight,

on the other side was night.

I saw planes going through it,

which even at its growth stage,

we were flying aircraft through it.

They took roll call, and there

were two people that were missing,

but we went on without them.

Never found out again what happened to those two.

There were a number of trucks that were turned over

on their sides, and things like tires

and whatever were smoldering from the fire.

And I seen all this steel, from bulldozers, cranes,

cars, trucks, everything, completely destroyed.

And when you see a bulldozer blade rip like paper,

you know it's powerful.

The tank retriever was the main thing.

That huge chunk of metal ended up

to be a puddle the size of a chair.

In the course of this, there was a one-star general,

Marine general, who was bewildered.

And I guess he had kind of temporarily lost his cool.

And he says, “I don't know where I am.

I've lost my men.

I've lost my men.”

And I say, “Calm down, General.”

I say, “Look.”

I say, “I've been in a few of these shots now.

It's O.K. We've just got to wait till the dust settles

a little bit.”

And he was all upset.

I don't know.

I think I calmed him down, but he was pretty upset.

And I seen some guys coming towards us,

like to the right of us, towards the bomb even.

Like they were walking towards us

as we were walking to the left of the blast.

And I thought, what are they wearing?

They have some kind of different clothes

on, because things were dangling, like they had

padded clothes or something.

It looked odd.

And through some other people and talking over the years,

I think it was their flesh.

Nobody had uniforms that dangled like that.

I think a lot of us knew that this was not

a good thing for us.

[sighs]

The only thing that they did for us was

swore us to secrecy where we couldn't talk about it.

We couldn't talk about it to anybody for $10,000 fine

or 10 years in prison.

Everyone was told that you're never

ever to discuss this again, that what you saw

stays with you forever.

You can't tell your wife.

You can't tell your kids.

And particularly, you can't talk amongst yourselves.

So you can't turn to your buddy

and say, "Gee, what did you think of that shot?"

or have any discussion regarding the atomic bomb.

That's where the paranoia was.

They put the fear of God in you.

When you start talking about treason, that you can be

executed, that's enough to —

I mean, go to jail is one thing, but treason.

It haunts me to think of what I had witnessed

and not realized at the time the import of what

we were doing at the time: actually

serving as guinea pigs.

We were just like an experiment animal

you'd use in a lab.

When I got out of the military,

I had after-effects.

Like I was losing my hair.

I had spine problems and this and that.

I have spent a number of years

when I was out of the service waking up

in the middle of the night seeing the atomic bomb.

I didn't sleep for a long time very well.

And I'd always have this bright light

that would flash on.

Hello, time to get up!

No, no, it isn't.

There's no light bulb out there, turkey.

You're just dreaming.

I had developed a tumor in '04 when I went down

and registered as an atomic vet.

And it turned out that the tumor

was called schwannoma tumor.

It was caused by ionized radiation.

And for 10 years now, I've been

trying to get compensation for that,

but the government does not want

to admit to anybody that was harmed by any radiation.

They've been putting me off for over 10 years now.

Well, they knew everything that was going to happen

and what danger was involved in it.

They're just hoping you all die before they

have to do anything.

I don't know that anybody will ever know,

because I suspect that nobody will

give a damn when I'm gone.

If it was done for science and the availability

to rest of the human race to know that we don't need it,

it's way too devastating.

If you could just see the colors,

if you could just hear it, hear it,

not on the television or in a movie, but the actual thing,

I think you would agree with me,

whoever is listening to this.