'You basically could see your bones in your hand from the flash'
EUGENE, Ore. -- In 1958, Larry Wickizer deployed on a mission for the Navy so top secret, he didn't know his exact mission.
"I was going on temporary duty to the Marshall Islands," Wickizer recalled, "and that was it."
Wickizer found himself in the middle of nuclear weapons tests, in a job that left him out in the open and exposed to dangerous radiation.
"The bomb went off, the flash, and that," he recalled. "Look up and say, ooh those are bones, because you basically could see your bones in your hand from the flash."
On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted its first atomic bomb testing in Alamogordo, N.M., the first of more than a thousand nuclear tests before a limited test ban treaty was signed in 1963.
July 16 is now commemorated as Atomic Veterans Day, recognizing the thousands of veterans who were exposed to radiation from those nuclear weapons tests -- and allowing them to legally talk about the things they saw and did, things they were sworn to secrecy not to describe.
Wickizer, of Eugene, Ore., is one of those Atomic veterans. More than 50 years later, the memories have not faded.
The blasts he witnessed possessed "a whole bunch of raw power," he said.
"What is this going to do to a city?" Wickizer thought. "Thinking, what are these people thinking? Why? what are we doing here? Mass destruction, pure and simple."
For nearly 40 years, Wickizer didn't talk about those nuclear tests.
Then in 1996, Atomic veterans were released from their military oaths of secrecy and formally recognized, which made them eligible for Veteran Administration benefits.
Wickizer himself is healthy. Others might not be so lucky, he said.
"I don't know how many cancers that are attributed to it," he said. "Health problems by the bucketfulls."
Wickizer said the government help is needed not only by the veterans who were put in harms way but also by their kids and grandkids, who can also be affected by the radiation.
