THE USS REAGAN SAILORS CONTAMINATED BY FUKUSHIMA RADIATION - THEIR SICKNESSES, THEIR STRUGGLE, THEIR PHOTOS - And the class action lawsuit they launched in spite of Pentagon's refusal to support them

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Soon after the devastating tsunami struck Japan's east coast in March of 2011, the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan showed up to provide humanitarian aid. It may have exposed those on board to toxic levels of radiation. Here, sailors scrub down the flight deck to clean the ship of radiation on March 23, 2011.

Steve Simmons was honorably discharged from the Navy for medical reasons last June. His complaints began about a year after he returned from Japan when his muscles began to fail and his hair began falling out by the handful. Four years ago, he competed in triathlons and hiked in the mountains. Now, he can no longer walk -- and nobody can tell him why.

See more images, and continue reading this and other reports on the Fukushima radiation effects on the SS Reagan sailors, and their struggle to find help.

The tsunami caused explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. It has since been determined that the disaster released much more radiation than did the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Japan initially sought to play down the catastrophe.

Manuel Leslie with an urn containing the ashes of his best friend, Theodore Holcomb. Holcomb was diagnosed with thymoma, a rare form of cancer that could be caused by exposure to radiation, in January of 2014. He died not long later. Leslie has joined the class-action suit against Tepco, et. al. on behalf of his friend.

Charles Bonner is one of the lawyers leading the class action suit that has been filed on behalf of dozens of sailors that became sick after being on the USS Ronald Reagan during its aid mission to Japan following the tsunami.

Ron Wright is one of those who became ill after the aid mission to Japan and believes it is connected to the radiation he was exposed to. He has been suffering from swollen testicles since the mission and doctors have told him they don't know what is causing it.

One of the many explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Photos and text:  Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/photo-gallery-fighting-for-justice-after-fukushima-fotostrecke-123472.html

RELATED

February 11, 2015 - KOMO News  -  Part 1

 

Fukushima management chose not to tell the US sailors that they were sailing into a heavily radioactive zone.

 

The US Department of Defense has been a key roadblock in obstructing the sailors' class action lawsuit.

 

"So these sailors literally were marinating in radioactive particles," said Attorney Charles Bonner. He represents more  than 200 sailors and Marines in a class action lawsuit against TEPCO, claiming radiation from Fukushima has caused devastating health effects, including cancers, tumors, brain defects, even death, and a whole host of other difficult-to-diagnose complaints.

"Very serious illnesses for a very large population of very young people," Bonner said.  And Bonner adds the 7th Fleet didn't know it was sailing into a radioactive emergency because TEPCO intentionally underplayed it.  "They lied to the world and told the world that there was no meltdown, that everything was under control," Bonner said.

 

Honda and Wright are both plaintiffs in the lawsuit.  For at least the first few days to a week of Operation Tomodachi, the sailors say no one aboard ship took any extra radiation protection measures.  Honda remembers when the Navy started changing protocols:  "One of the helos took off and when it came back like they quarantined the whole area by my shop, like my shop was Ground Zero."

Sometime after that, Wright and Honda say every top-side sailor had to wear extra booties and gloves and get scanned for radiation before entering the ship below.  Wright remembers one time the machines went crazy while scanning the pants he was wearing.

"It was just being all like beep, beep, beep, beep beep," he said. And when the scanners went crazy, that meant the radiation technicians would confiscate whatever was hot, "Yes, I lost my pants.  Other people lost boots, coats, probably a mixture of everything."

Neither Wright nor Honda worried, saying the Navy continuously reassured them.  Honda adds, "they said onboard you know, it was no big deal."

But right after Tomodachi, Honda says he started experiencing frequent migraines and unexplained fatigue which he'd never suffered from before.  And he says his doctor told him he has several discs degenerating at an unusual rate.

"Mine are degenerating rapidly compared to people in my age group and it's not something that is normal for people my age to have," he said.

Within a month of Operation Tomodachi, Ron Wright, now a civilian, says he started experiencing painful swelling in his groin.  He's undergone three surgeries but expects to suffer pain the rest of his life.  But even more frightening is Wright's diagnosis of varicocele can lead to male infertility, leaving Wright's future uncertain.

"I don't know what the long term effects can be," Wright said.

One of the biggest roadblocks to the class action lawsuit will likely be the Department of Defense.  Though it's not a participant in the suit, in a 2014 report to Congress the DOD said it calculated doses for all sailors of the 7th Fleet and they were, "well below Federal regulatory limits," and that it believes it is, "implausible that these low-level doses are the cause of the health effects," to sailors.

In a statement to KOMO 4 News, TEPCO referred us to the conclusions of the DOD report, adding it appreciates, "the service of all the men and women of the United States military who provided the Japanese people with humanitarian and disaster relief."

 

Read more

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Fukushima-Fallout-Part-1-291553081.html



Part 2 of KOMO News report - February 12, 2015

Hundreds of sailors and Marines, some from right here in the Northwest, are in the fight of their lives, battling a baffling mix of diseases they say came from radiation exposure.  And it all started with a mission of mercy in 2011; bringing life-saving supplies to survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.  Some sailors insist the contamination lasted long after Operation Tomodachi ended.

March 2011, it was easy to see the physical devastation of the massive earthquake and tsunami that reached heights of 128 feet in some areas.  Impossible to spot but just as frightening, were clouds of radiation from meltdowns and explosions at the crippled Fukushima Nuclear plant.  Japan's Science Ministry detected radiation 25 miles inland from the plant at 400 times normal levels.  But prevailing winds carried most of the radiation out to sea where the US Navy's 7th fleet, led by the USS Ronald Reagan, was stationed on a humanitarian mission to help the Japanese people.

"The Reagan initially docked within about two miles of shore," said attorney Charles Bonner, who represents more than 200 sailors and Marines. He's suing plant owner and operator TEPCO for debilitating illnesses they say came from exposure to Fukushima's radiation.  "And even at 100 nautical miles they were taking on 30 times more radiation than is normal," he said.

Even sailors who joined the 7th Fleet immediately after Operation Tomodachi say they were affected.  "I was on board the USS Germantown," said former sailor Thomas McCants, who joined the 7th Fleet as a gunner's mate right after the Japanese mission of mercy.

Like his identical twin, McCants says he'd always been the picture of health; an athletic teenager who competed in varsity sports and loved the Navy.  "I wanted nothing more than to travel the world and get to see it for myself and serve my country."  But McCants says after just a few months aboard the Germantown he grew sicker and sicker.  He says he had no appetite and battled constant fatigue.  He went to his superior, "and I broke down into tears and I said, 'Senior Chief, I'm sick.  I need help.  Something's wrong.' "

But McCants says rather than sending him to a doctor or doing any medical tests, the Navy sent him to a psychologist and then offered an honorable discharge, which he took.  "I felt like a total failure," McCants said.

But McCants' symptoms continued to worsen, and after a civilian doctor took blood tests, he had a diagnosis: chronic myeloid leukemia or CML.  McCants says the doctor's first question was if he'd ever been exposed to massive amounts of radiation.    His answer?  "The only time that I have ever had a chance of being exposed to radiation in my entire life is from Japan."

The American Cancer Society says exposure to high dose radiation, such as in a nuclear reactor accident, is the only known environmental risk factor for CML.  McCants points to his identical twin, who is still healthy and who is now three inches taller and 50 pounds heavier.  "The interesting fact about my story is I got to the ship after Tomodachi and I still got sick with a cancer that's only caused by radiation."

The Department of Defense is not a party to the lawsuit.  But in a report to Congress last summer it confirmed that, "the Ronald Reagan encountered the radioactive plume from Fukushima...on March 13."   It also put together radiation dose estimates for every ship in the 7th Fleet and adds, "we believe it is implausible that these low-level doses are the cause of the health effects reported by the ....sailors."  

Attorney Bonner says the Navy is just wrong.  "The fallacy of that is that low levels of radiation are just as dangerous as high levels."

Navy photos at the time show radiation crews decontaminating filters and scanning personnel.  They also show sailors decontaminating the flight deck with wash downs, though the only protective gear seen is gloves and booties.  But the DOD report also admits it is still finding and removing radiation.  And Bonner says that is how sailors like McCants got sick even after Operation Tomadachi.  "They literally were marinating in a toxic stew inside of these closed compartments."

McCants faces a lifetime of chemotherapy or the risk of a bone marrow transplant in hopes of a cure.  He's speaking out now to support other sailors who he says may be even sicker and in hopes of forcing TEPCO to take responsibility.  "We all became wounded warriors without even knowing it and it was strictly because they told us it was safe and it wasn't."

In an email response to our request for information TEPCO said it is thankful to the United States for coming to Japan's aid; but regarding any sailors' illnesses the company referred us to the conclusions in the DOD report.

 

Source

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Fukushima-fallout-Whats-next-for-sailors-who-were-exposed-291704401.html

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Der Spiegel

 

February 5, 2015

'Uncertain Radiological Threat':

US Navy Sailors Search for Justice after Fukushima Mission

On March 11, 2011, the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan received orders to change course and head for the east coast of Japan, which had just been devastated by a tsunami.

 

The Ronald Reagan had been on its way to South Korea when the order reached it and Captain Thom Burke, who was in charge of the ship along with its crew of 4,500 men and women, duly redirected his vessel. The Americans reached the Japanese coastline on March 12, just north of Sendai and remained in the region for several weeks. The mission was named Tomodachi.

The word tomodachi means "friends." In hindsight, the choice seems like a delicate one.

Three-and-a-half years later, Master Chief Petty Officer Leticia Morales is sitting in a café in a rundown department store north of Seattle and trying to remember the name of the doctor who removed her thyroid gland 10 months ago. Her partner Tiffany is sitting next to her fishing pills out of a large box and pushing them over to Morales.

 

"It was something like Erikson," Morales says. "Or maybe his first name was Eric, or Rick. Oh, I don't know.  Too many doctors." In the last year-and-a-half, she has seen oncologists, radiologists, cardiologists, blood specialists, kidney specialists, gastrointestinal specialists, lymph node experts and metabolic specialists. "I'm now spending half the month in doctors' offices," she says. "This year, I've had more than 20 MRTs. I've simply lost track."

 

She swallows one of the pills, takes a sip of water and smiles wryly.

 

It was the endocrinologist who asked her if she had been on the Ronald Reagan. During Tomodachi? Yes, Morales told her. Why?

 

The doctor answered that he had removed six thyroid glands in recent months from sailors who had been on that ship, Morales relates. Only then did Morales make the connection between the worst accident in the history of civilian atomic power and her own fate.

 

The USS Reagan

 

The Fukushima catastrophe changed the world. Nuclear reactors melted down on live television and twice as much radioactive material was released as during the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

 

The disaster drove 150,000 people from their towns and villages, poisoned entire landscapes for centuries and killed hundreds of thousands of farm animals. It also led countries around the world to rethink their usage of nuclear energy. Fukushima is more than just a place-name, it is an historical event -- and it would seem to have changed the life of Leticia Morales as well.

 

It has been a painful experience, and not just because of the poor state of her health. It has also put her into conflict with her deepest convictions. The military she serves has told her that her mission on the coast of Japan was not dangerous to her health, but she is sick all the same.

 

Morales joined the Navy when she was 19-years-old to give her life structure and a purpose, as she says. She spent a significant chunk of her youth in homes and at foster families because her mother was not able to care for her and her siblings. She only got to know her father as a grown woman. After joining, she went to basic training in the Nevada desert and then headed out onto the water.

Nice to Be Needed

 

Since 2008, she has been responsible for the flight deck on board the Ronald Reagan and about 100 sailors. The ship is a floating city, one with room for 100 planes below its decks. Its home port is San Diego, California, but Morales is stationed not far from Seattle in the state of Washington. She has spent a significant portion of her life on the world's oceans and has sailed past the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, China and Malaysia.

 

Usually, the crew only learns where they are headed once the ship has already cast off and headed out to sea. But the destination doesn't often change the routine on board, one focused primarily on training exercises and ship maintenance. Indeed, the missions are primarily intended to show the world that they are there, drawing US borders through the high seas. As such, says Morales, it is particularly nice to actually be needed from time to time.

 

The Ronald Reagan left San Diego on Feb. 2, 2011, heading for Busan, South Korea for a scheduled stop. It was still early in the vessel's semi-annual trip around the globe when Captain Thom Burke broke the news over the ship's PA system that a tsunami had struck Japan. He said the ship was heading for the Japanese coast to provide humanitarian assistance.

 

Morales hadn't felt anything, of course, with the open seas gliding smoothly under the ship. Furthermore, she had participated in a similar humanitarian mission after a deadly typhoon had struck the Philippines in 2008, so the diversion to Japan was nothing new for her. "It's what we do. We help," she says.

 

At first, she knew nothing about the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power facility, but says that, during the journey up the coast, she experienced a metallic taste in her mouth. Others noticed it too and Morales says the sailors even exchanged concerned glances. People exposed to radiation often complain of such a metallic taste and Morales now believes that this was the moment when they sailed through the cloud of nuclear radiation that Fukushima sent out over the Pacific.

 

Nothing to Regret

 

On the morning of March 13, the USS Ronald Reagan reached the Japanese coast and saw the unimaginable devastation for the first time, with houses, cars and debris floating in the water. There were also dead bodies.

 

Morales gets tears in her eyes when she remembers the suffering she saw. But it also serves to remind her that the mission was worth it, that she and her fellow soldiers did what they could to help and that she has nothing to regret.

 

Not long after their arrival, they learned of the explosions at Fukushima, but Captain Burke assured them that they weren't in danger. People back home, though, were more concerned and Morales began receiving worried emails from her father. He had spent years working at a nuclear power facility and had conducted radiation experiments with dogs -- beagles, she says. Her father warned her not to go up on deck, to drink only bottled water and to take potassium iodide tablets.

 

Still, when volunteers were being sought to help load goods onto an aid helicopter bound for the mainland, Morales joined in, as did the others in her unit. That's what they do. They help.

 

They did their best not to worry about the invisible danger, but there were occasions when it couldn't be avoided. After they had been stationed off the coast for a few days, for instance, they were suddenly told over the PA system to stop drinking tap water and stop showering.

 

Morales also learned that her partner, who was stationed in southern Japan at the time of the tsunami, had been evacuated with her unit to Guam, an island in the middle of the Pacific located a very long way from the destroyed reactor. But the Ronald Reagan remained and the captain gave the all-clear the next day, saying that tests had come back negative.

 

Morales continued working with her unit on deck and they forgot their concerns. "I don't think that Captain Burke would knowingly put us in danger," she says. "The Navy would never do such a thing. They didn't know any better either."

 

In the Defense Department report submitted later to Congress, it says that the ship had never been closer than 100 nautical miles to the coast. But that's nonsense, Morales says.

 

She trusts her recollections and says that they had actually operated quite close to the coastline. Only in April did they leave Japan's east coast for Sasebo in the far southwest of the country before heading to Thailand and then to Bahrain. On July 10, 2011, they arrived home once again; it was Morales' 32nd birthday. Two weeks later, she was promoted and her salary jumped by $400 per month.

 

It was summer in Washington when she arrived home and she would have largely forgotten about the mission in Japan if it hadn't been for the pesky forms she had to fill out: How long were you outside? Where were you exactly?

She wrote: I was always on the flight deck. The whole time.

 

Decontaminating heavy radiation with soap and water. (Photo Melissa Russell)

 

'Uncertain Radiological Threat'

 

The last message she got from her ship's captain came via Facebook. He thanked his crew for the great mission, particularly for the Japan segment.

 

 "We have the pride that comes with superbly conducting one of the most complex humanitarian relief operations in history. Not only did we work through debris fields, cold and icing conditions, but we did not waver amidst an uncertain radiological threat. (...) We overcame our fear and we did our job superbly. Tomodachi was the highlight," he wrote. The message was posted on Sept. 8, 2011.

 

In May 2013, Leticia Morales suddenly began suffering dizzy spells. Her arm swelled up, her right hand looked like a baseball mitt and she had tunnel vision, she says. Doctors made computer scans of her brain and took numerous blood tests. Her general practitioner told her that there was something serious going on, but they weren't sure what it was.

 

The kidney pains began around Thanksgiving, 2013. Again, the doctors didn't know what was causing it, but they found a tumor in her liver. In January 2014, a doctor told her that the problem was focused on her spine and in February, they found a malignant growth in her thyroid gland.

 

Morales began doing some research and found that many of the symptoms she had been suffering matched up with those experienced by people exposed to radiation. "Some of the doctors I visited confirmed as much," she says. "But they couldn't confirm that I had become exposed while on board the Reagan. They couldn't, or didn't want to. What do I know?"

 

In the summer of 2014, she began experiencing cardiac arrhythmia and that autumn, they found metastases in her breast.

 

In the meantime, the Defense Department had presented Congress with the results of a study focusing on the Navy's part of Operation Tomodachi. The study concluded that even those sailors who had spent the whole time on USS Ronald Reagan's flight deck had not been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

 

The report also found that their exposure to contaminated water during the mission did not exceed the total radiation experienced by passengers on cross-country airline flights. Furthermore, the report found, cancer caused by radioactivity develops much slower than that experienced by the ill sailors.

 

A Pentagon representative thanked Congress for its interest in the health of military personnel and said they had checked everything but found nothing suspicious.

 

Letitia Morales, meanwhile, was left with an endocrinologist whose name she couldn't remember, her thick medical files and the stories of a couple of other comrades on the flight deck who had also fallen ill.

 

A Serious Case of Hepatitis

 

But she also learned of a class-action lawsuit being prepared by two attorneys in California. They hoped to sue Tepco, the company that operated the nuclear facility at Fukushima, in the name of the 70,000 US soldiers and sailors who had spent time near the site of the accident.

 

Morales contacted the lawyers, but it was important to her that the lawsuit was not aimed at the Navy. She is a soldier, after all, and wanted to remain loyal. She may have lost her health, but she hadn't lost her purpose in life.

 

The attorneys explained to her that it wasn't even possible to sue the military in America due to the Feres Doctrine, a Supreme Court ruling from the 1950s. It stipulates that soldiers cannot hold the state responsible for injuries or death resulting from military service. Reassured, Morales added her name to the class-action suit.

 

Those from her unit who had also become ill joined as well. Some of them live not far away from her in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, a region where Leticia and Tiffany feel comfortable as a lesbian couple.

 

Last year, they bought themselves a brand new house in a neighborhood where the streets are named after US presidents and trees. Washington is a healthy, liberal state, a place where residents can legally buy marijuana just as they can Bud Light.

 

Brett Bingham, one of Morales' petty officers, lives in a brand new house of his own nearby. He has the neck of a football player, a smile like Channing Tatum, young children, several dogs and a three-car garage. The fourth is parked on the street. He donates blood twice a year.

 

Last year, though, shortly after making a regular donation, he received a letter from the blood bank telling him to call them immediately. They told him that he had a serious case of hepatitis and asked him if he takes drugs or otherwise might have used a contaminated needle.

 

Bingham said no and consulted a doctor, who told him that he might be suffering from so-called "radiation hepatitis," a radiation-induced affliction of the liver that comes and goes. They performed a second examination and then a third before declaring him healthy. Still, he was no longer allowed to donate blood.

 

Ron Wright, a 24-year-old who joined the Navy in 2010, lives a few streets away. The voyage to Japan was his first mission abroad on an aircraft carrier and, the way things currently look, likely his last. He remembers standing with Morales' crew on the flight deck, the cold and the snow. But he also remembers the protective clothing they received after a few days: pants, jackets and booties to cover up their normal boots.

 

When they went down below decks following their shift, they would be scanned and they had to turn in the things that were deemed to be contaminated which were then burned and, Wright believes, dumped into the sea. Once, he even had to turn in his pants and, he still recalls, walk through the ship in his underwear. Everyone laughed, as did he. It seemed like a joke at the time. "They always told us that we were safe," Wright says.

 

Constant Companions

 

One month later, his testicles swelled up to the size of tennis balls, as he describes it, and the pain was unbearable. They were still in the Sea of Japan and a doctor on board recommended that the young sailor be flown out, partially because he didn't know what Wright was actually suffering from. Instead, he was given pain killers. And the treatment still hasn't changed: Neurontin and Percocet are his constant companions.

 

"When I asked if it might have something to do with the radiation from Fukushima, a doctor told me pretty gruffly no," Wright says. "He showed me some inquiry report from the Defense Department, but the pain didn't stop. I have been operated on seven times, always in military hospitals. Nothing has helped. There has been no diagnosis, just the pills."

 

Wright was unable to return to active service before the four years he had committed to expired. Now, he simply sits at home waiting for his next doctor's appointment. Mostly, he spends his time sitting in the kitchen, where he can look out the window at the forest, his dog at his feet. During a recent visit, his girlfriend was sitting on the sofa in the living room staring at her smartphone.

 

"What are you guys talking about?" she calls over at some point.

 

"About my balls," Wright says.

 

"Ah, okay," she says, without looking up from her phone.

 

The only sailor from Morales' unit who received a clear diagnosis is Theodore Holcomb. He had cancer of the parathyroid gland and it killed him in April of 2014. He is the first casualty of the aid mission Tomodachi.

 

Morales only learned from Holcomb's ex-wife how sick her fellow soldier was after he was too sick to talk on the phone. Holcomb never did talk much, particularly not about his problems, Morales says, but he was one of her most reliable seamen. He lived a long way away in North Carolina with his wife and then, later, with a friend in Reno, Nevada where he died.

 

"I think he was pretty messed up at the end," Morales says, "and I don't just mean his health."

 

They all only know each other from the ship. They live together for half a year and then they go their separate ways, to the furthest flung corners of the US. Most of them had to deal with their health problems all by themselves.

 

Left Without a Job

 

Theodore Holcomb died in the arms of his best friend Manuel Leslie. The two knew each other since the sixth grade and joined the Navy together. When Leslie got married, Holcomb was his best man and when Holcomb got married, Leslie returned the favor. Neither one of the marriages was destined to last. The Navy kills relationships, Leslie said, the women have to be alone so long.

 

In January 2013, Theodore Holcomb turned up at Leslie's house on the outskirts of Reno with a suitcase. The Navy hadn't extended his enlistment -- Holcomb had served for 14 years, but a pension only kicks in after 15. He was thus left without a job and his wife and daughter lived thousands of miles away. He had no idea what to do next. Leslie, who had left the Navy in 2006, could only imagine what his friend was going through.

 

Holcomb moved into the guest bedroom and the two unemployed veterans lived like school boys in a never ending summer vacation. Or like retirees. They spent a lot of their time outside, often going hunting together. Slowly, Holcomb left his life on the water behind and became used to his new reality. It took at least a year before his friend began to accept that it wasn't his fault he had been discharged, Leslie says.

 

And then, Holcomb got sick.

 

Shortly before Christmas of 2013, he suddenly had trouble breathing and the doctors told him in January that he had thymus cancer. The thymus is a gland located behind the breast bone and thymoma, as cancer of the gland is called, is extremely rare. One of the risk groups for this sort of cancer, however, includes those who have been exposed to radiation.

 

Holcomb was 35 when he was diagnosed with cancer and chemotherapy began immediately. He lost over 10 kilograms (22 pounds) in a single month, Leslie says. Normally, thymus tumors grow slowly, but in Holcomb's body, the cancer spread extremely quickly.

 

Manuel Leslie drove back and forth to the hospital and organized a spot in a palliative care center once the end was near -- a nice place with a rose garden where the two ex-soldiers in their 30s could sit waiting for death. Just before he passed away, Holcomb forgave his wife, but he still didn't want her or his daughter to visit, preferring that they remember him as a strong man rather than, as Leslie says, the scarecrow he had become. Still, he wanted the opportunity to wish his daughter a happy fifth birthday. Leslie held the phone for him.

 

The girl said: But my birthday isn't for another five days, daddy.

 

I know, Holcomb replied.

 

He died that night. Manuel Leslie was sitting next to his bed.

 

Day in Court

 

He was cremated and his ashes were divvied up. His ex-wife in North Carolina received a third of them, as did his parents in California. His friend in Reno got the remaining third and he keeps the urn, a box made of cherry wood, on the mantel of his fireplace.

 

Leslie is sitting in the cafeteria of a department store in the desert 10 miles outside Reno. He is a short, stocky man who visited 26 countries while in the Navy, but now he is taking care of his parents, who are also suffering from cancer. The department store is dedicated to hunting and behind him are gun safes and mounted animals: antelopes, wolves and grizzly bears, but also elephants, lions and rhinos. Men and their children are standing in front of glass display cases and ogling machine guns worth $15,000.

 

Manuel Leslie hates the Navy, but he also loves it. It destroys lives, but it also saves them. It is both the meaning and the curse of his existence. His best friend became terminally ill because of his participation in a mission to help Japan. His grandfather was stationed on Hawaii with the Navy at age 16 when the Japanese attacked. He himself spent the best year of his life in Tokyo.

 

Leslie is now the executor of his friend's will, though there are really only two things that he has to do. One is keeping in touch with Holcomb's daughter. The other is ensuring that his friend gets his day in court. Leslie is representing his friend in the class-action lawsuit against Tepco, Toshiba, Hitachi, Ebasco and General Electric, all of which had a hand in operating or constructing the reactors at Fukushima.

 

The suit is being led by Paul Garner, an attorney who has already spent much of his life going after the companies for the damage they have done to the environment, for their violations of human rights or for making people sick. He is in his late 60s, is overweight and wears a sweaty red shirt. From the few hairs on his head, he has managed to create a thin braid. And he arrives to our meeting over one hour late.

 

He says that his old Mercedes wouldn't start, so he had his brother Bob -- a small, jumpy man in a Hawaiian shirt -- give him a lift. When the brothers walk into the deserted restaurant on the outskirts of Palm Springs, they don't look like two men preparing to file a billion-dollar liability suit.

But they were the first.

 

Screwing People Who Screw People

 

Bob Garner, who was part of Robert Kennedy's campaign team in the 1960s and who has been working on a great American book of poetry since then, met the father of Lindsey Cooper two years ago at a gas station in the desert.

 

Cooper had been on board the USS Ronald Reagan during its voyage to Japan and the father told Garner that his daughter had come down with a thyroid complaint and that he knew of other sailors who had likewise become sick. Bob told his brother Paul about the meeting who then told his partner Charles Bonner, who runs a small legal practice in Sausalito.

 

The two know each other from the civil rights scene: Garner is a Jew from New York and Bonner is a black man from Alabama. In their free time, the two old men sit on Bonner's dock on a lake in the Californian mountains drinking wine and singing Pete Seeger songs. In their professional lives, the have sued companies like Chevron, Exxon and Shell. They were unimpressed by the report compiled on the Ronald Reagan by the Defense Department. Their motto is: We screw people who screw people.

 

Paul Garner sets a thick, greasy file folder on the table. After looking into the case, they contacted over 500 sailors who had become ill after the mission in Japan. Two-hundred-fifty of them answered and their stories form the backbone of the case they hope to argue before the court.

 

Garner orders a soup and a sandwich and quotes from the dramatic stories told in his binder: The woman sailor who gave birth to a sick baby; the seaman who was told by the doctors that he had a genetic defect although his twin brother, a civilian, is completely healthy; the seaman who went completely blind after returning from Japan. There is another story of a seaman who was stationed in Japan with his family and became ill with leukemia. There is the Navy airplane mechanic who is suffering from an unexplained loss of muscle mass.

 

Garner runs down the list of illnesses and symptoms, a variety of different forms of cancer, internal bleeding, abscesses, tumors, removed thyroid glands, gall bladders extractions and birth defects. His brother Bob interrupts: "All that suffering, the pain. Those pigs."

 

As Bob Garner holds forth on the fates of the sick sailors, he quotes Martin Luther King and Marx; he talks about how Hillary Clinton was ensnared in the military-industrial complex during her term as secretary of state. He compares Vietnam with Afghanistan.

 

"The ship is named Reagan. Reagan himself was a spokesperson for General Electric in the 1950s. You just have to add one to one," Bob Garner says. Will you finally shut up, his brother Paul interjects.

 

Moral Support

 

Paul Garner too wants to unmask capitalism. He too wants justice and compensation for the sailors who were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. He wants to show just how strong the global atomic energy lobby is. He wants the trial to become a stage on which Bonner and Garner can show just how recklessly we are treating our planet.

 

It will be difficult to prove that their clients received unhealthy doses of radiation during the mission and became ill as a result. It may even be impossible. Lots of money will be at stake, but first of all, they have to convince a district court in San Diego that they can proceed with the lawsuit in the first place. Their first attempt was denied. 

 

Paul Garner had asked the sick sailors to come to San Diego for an August hearing as moral support. Most, though, didn't dare show up, not even those who live in the city. Lindsey Cooper, for example. The woman who started the whole thing was torn apart on a CNN program by atomic energy experts and was later mocked on conservative radio shows. She doesn't want to relive the experience.

 

Kristian William, a helicopter pilot from Texas who flew aid goods from the Ronald Reagan to the Japanese mainland, suffers from cancer of the parathyroid gland, a rare form of cancer that is usually triggered by a high dosage of radiation. But he still doesn't want to go public with his suffering, he says on the telephone, because he is more afraid of being misrepresented in the media than he is of the cancer itself.

 

Even Leticia Morales, the chief of the Ronald Reagan flight deck who encouraged her fellow soldiers to join the class-action suit, stayed away from the San Diego court. She didn't want to be photographed, she said. She is, after all, a soldier.

 

Coverage of the USS Ronald Reagan has been astoundingly limited. Here and there, the fate of an individual seaman makes it into the local news, but then it's gone again without anyone connecting the various cases. The Navy says it doesn't want to comment on an ongoing case. The Defense Department refers to the report compiled for Congress.

 

The sailors themselves don't want to be both ill and humiliated. They don't want to stand up to the Navy, their Navy, their country. The United States is a country that values its military, but it is also a country of lawyers. The soldiers have become trapped between these two fronts.

 

Nobody's Left Behind

 

Paul Garner told them that it took 20 years before the military recognized that Agent Orange, which was used liberally in Vietnam, was harmful to health and even life threatening. Twenty years is a long time.

 

In the end, only a single sailor from the USS Ronald Reagan appeared before the court in San Diego: Steve Simmons. A lieutenant in the Navy, Simmons is now confined to a wheelchair. A sticker on his wheelchair reads: Nobody's left behind.

 

At the beginning of June, 2014, Simmons was honorably discharged from the Navy for medical reasons at the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC. He wore his white dress uniform for the occasion and thanked the Navy for 17 great years, adding that he would have liked to remain in service for 30.

 

Few people attended the event -- just one other wheelchair-bound serviceman who Simmons had met in the hospital and Nancy, his wife, who he had met over a dating-website belonging to his church. After his discharge, he moved with her and her four children to Utah, not far from Salt Lake City. The climate there is better for him than damp Washington DC, where he used to live. They built a ramp into their new house to make it wheelchair accessible.

 

Simmons got up at 4 a.m. so as to be on time for the court hearing that day, flying from Salt Lake City to San Diego via Los Angeles before driving to the courthouse in a rental car. After the hearing, he was to fly back home -- a round trip that cost him and his wife $700. But it is important for him. He finally wants some certainty.

 

Simmons' complaints began one year after he returned from Japan. His muscles began to fail and his hair started falling out by the handful. He got migraines, experienced bloody discharges, became incontinent and his fingers turned yellow, even brown on some days. His feet are now dark red in color and he experiences whole-body spasms; his liver test results are comparable to those of an alcoholic. Four years ago, he competed in triathlons and hiked in the mountains. Now, he can no longer walk -- and nobody can tell him why.

 

On his darkest days, Simmons finds himself leaning toward conspiracy theories -- toward the notion that a diagnosis has not been provided because it would require an admission that his suffering is caused by exposure to radioactivity. That, though, would mean that the Defense Department reports were intentionally inaccurate.

 

He says there was one doctor who told him it was better that he didn't know what was making him ill. Early on, he was in a military hospital in Washington DC together with three other men who had similar symptoms, he says. They had served on nuclear-powered submarines, but they disappeared from one day to the next, and when he asked what happened to them, everyone acted as though they had never been there in the first place.

 

Ship of Ghosts

 

Simmons doesn't believe that the Navy is behind it, nor does he doubt the stated motives of their mission to Japan. He has participated in two tsunami-related aid missions and says he would join a third as well, were he able to. He says he frequently met Captain Burke at senior officer meetings during the critical period of their mission off the coast of Japan and says that he seemed concerned, but not heedless.

 

What bothers him, he says, is how quiet Burke has now become. Simmons believes his former captain is staying silent so as not to jeopardize his career. He is now in the Pentagon and would like to become an admiral, Simmons says.

 

"Personal, diplomatic and economic interests are all at stake," Simons says. "They're leaving us alone. They're closing their eyes, keeping quiet and waiting for it to blow over. There are sick soldiers everywhere, many in the hospital in San Diego, or in the medical center in Hawaii.

 

They are ordinary folks who are poorly insured, with family and kids. Loyal and scattered. Most of them don't know how to react. Those who raise their voices are denounced in the Internet for being unpatriotic. You have to put up with a lot," Simmons says.

 

That is why he wanted to go to the court proceedings in San Diego. He sees himself as their representative.

 

When he rolled into the courtroom, he saw the lawyers from a large Los Angeles firm on one side of the room together with their teams of researchers. On the other side, he saw Paul Garner and Charles Bonner, the two civil rights veterans. In front, the judge seemed to eye Garner's shirt and hair-do with skepticism. Simmons says he'll never forget the self-satisfied smirks of the Tepco lawyers in their $3,000 suits.

 

The judge didn't ask Simmons a single question, so he remained silent. But Paul Garner built him into his speech, using Lieutenant Simmons as the face of suffering and speaking of him as an American hero and a pioneer. With Simmons' help, Paul Garner was able, during the 90 minutes available to him, to erase the grins from the faces of the industry lawyers from Los Angeles.

 

The court decision came in the mail a few weeks later. The class-action lawsuit, the court ruled on Oct. 28, may proceed. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin on Feb. 26.

 

The complaint is 100 pages long and contains the names of 247 sick sailors along with details pertaining to reactor construction, water samples taken, Navy tactics and Japanese politics.

 

It assails company greed just as it does the negligence of those who built the Fukushima reactors -- and goes on to censure global politics and the cynicism of humankind. A kind of Old Testament fury infuses the text, and the complaint is so sweeping that it almost loses track of its true target. The USS Ronald Reagan appears therein as humanity's last ship. An aircraft carrier. A ship of ghosts.

 

Source

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/navy-sailors-possibly-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-fight-for-justice-a-1016482.html

 

  

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