StoryCorps 529: Where the Giant Mushrooms Grow

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Michael Garofalo (MG): On a summer day in 1945, the world first learned what nuclear warfare looked like.

Kaleria Palchikoff Drago (KPD): There was a city, and then there was no city. And right after that, black rain, and wind. And that’s when the fire started.

MG: Between sixty and eighty thousand people were killed instantly in Hiroshima, when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb there Three days later, nearly forty-thousand were killed in Nagasaki. And thousands more continued to die from the effects of radiation.

Devastation on that scale was unimaginable before, but in the following decades the constant threat of nuclear war became part of everyday life.

John Conmy (JC): I knew that if an attack came that there would be about fifteen minutes before the fallout would come, and I had actually timed myself how long it would take to run home from school, all the way home.

MG: For a time it seemed like we had left that anxiety behind, but today, because of rising tensions with North Korea, the Iran nuclear deal in question, and the U.S. government announcing plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons, that old fear is creeping back again.

Are we really ready for a return to the Atomic Age?

It’s the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. In this episode, stories about The Bomb. We’ll hear stories from people who saw what it could do with their own eyes.

Joel Healy (JH): I thought, if there is a hell on earth, it’s gotta be that.

MG: I’m Michael Garofalo, and we’ll be right back after a short break.

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MG: Welcome back. It’s been more than twenty-five years since the end of the Cold War. Long enough for an entire generation to have grown up in a world without the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union, or the looming threat of The Bomb.

And if you didn’t grow up with duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters, it might be difficult to imagine just how real the fear of an all-out nuclear war was, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

So, we thought we’d start off this episode with memories of what that was like – from a child’s point of view.

John Conmy’s father was a career officer in the United States Army. He eventually rose to the rank of Colonel. In the early 1960s, the Conmy family had settled just outside Washington, D.C.

John was just a kid then, but in this StoryCorps conversation with his own children, he remembered making a startling discovery in his father’s office.

John Conmy (JC): The time when I really became conscious of the Cold War was in eighth grade. My dad was in the military, and he had an office at home. We weren’t supposed to be going in the office, and I was looking for an eraser or some stupid thing like that. And on his desk was a classified document. It was a series of maps that folded out of this book, and he had them unfolded. And I don’t know, I was very curious and I started looking at it. And it was maps of where the military had determined the Soviets, if they bombed us, the targets they were going to hit. And then it showed what the United States would look like twenty-four hours later, and then a week later, and beyond. And essentially what it really was showing was the fallout patterns from the nuclear hits.

Mary Anne Conmy (MAC): How did that make you feel, knowing what you knew?

JC: Well I felt a responsibility for my brothers and sisters and my mom. And I knew my dad was gonna be off, and doing whatever one does to defend the country. So I had pretty well decided that, you know, I had no control over what would happen to him, but I did feel a responsibility for family and their safety. I knew that if an attack came, and it would hit Washington D.C., that there’d be about fifteen minutes before the first fallout would come. And I had actually timed myself how long it would take to run from school, all the way home. And knew that I would draw water into bathtubs, go and try and organize food in a place that we would have shelter.

MAC: Why didn’t you ever ask, or bring this up to your parents?

JC: I didn’t want them to know that I was afraid. And not until I was grown and had been in the military myself and out, did I feel comfortable talking about the fear that I experienced growing up with the Cold War. And that was legitimate. People don’t understand how close we came, and had war broken out it would have been catastrophic. I mean we were at true risk of mankind as a species being annihilated.

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MG: That was John Conmy, speaking with his children: Mary Anne, David, and Erin, in Richmond, Virginia. They recorded that in 2007.

Imagining what the aftermath of a nuclear explosion might be like is hard enough, but now we’re going to hear from two people who didn’t need to imagine it; they witnessed it firsthand.

The bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. The U.S. saw the bombing as shortening the war and saving lives, but to many people, especially in Japan, it was hard to see that kind of destruction as a humanitarian alternative to conventional war.

After the war ended a U.S. government committee known as the United States Strategic Bombing Survey started collecting eyewitness accounts of the bombings and recording them. Only one was conducted in English. The young woman on the recording was a Russian immigrant who was brought to Japan by her parents in 1921.  

In 1945 she was in her early twenties, and was identified on the recording only as “Miss Palchikoff.”

We’re going to listen to that recording now, but just a warning, she described what she saw in graphic detail.

Kaleria Palchikoff Drago (KPD) (ARCHIVAL): People started coming out, some bruised, some wounded, and some burned. We started up the road, towards the mountain, and we saw Negroes. They weren’t Japanese, they were Negroes. I asked them, “What happened to you? What’s the matter with you?” And they said, “We saw the flash, and this is the color we turned.” So anyway finally we reached the hospital, a military hospital. I stayed there for two days, and there were people wounded, very badly wounded.

Interviewer (ARCHIVAL): Could you describe the nature of those burns? I think the doctor here would be very much interested to hear that.

KPD (ARCHIVAL): Yes sir, alright. The skin just peeled off. Some of them you could see the bones. The eyes were closed, the nose bled, the lips swelled. And the whole head started swelling. And as soon as they gave water to them, they’d vomit it all out, and they’d keep on vomiting until they’d die. Blood would rush out and that was the end of them.

On the second day, the wounds became yellow in color, and they’d go deeper and deeper. No matter how much you tried to take off the yellow, rotten flesh, well it’d just go deeper and deeper. And I don’t think it pained them very much.

So we spent two days there, and then we proceeded until the fifteenth, when the Emperor gave his decision about surrendering, and then we were taken to the countryside in the mountains, from where I’ve come now…

KPD (2005): Oh yes, that’s me. My name is Kaleria Palchikoff Drago. I’m 84 years old. I lived in Japan for 23 years, and I was living in Ushita, it’s a suburb of Hiroshima. The bomb dropped the sixth, and everything went down…

Interviewer (ARCHIVAL): …did you feel anything at all when the light struck you?

KPD (ARCHIVAL): Yes, I felt it was very hot…

KPD (2005): There was a city, and then there was no city. You could see the ocean. And right after that, then black rain and wind. And that’s when the fires started.

Interviewer (ARCHIVAL): …how did they bury the people?

KPD (ARCHIVAL): They just dug a big big hole in front of the…

KPD (2005): …When that interview was done it was very fresh in my mind. My dad told us, he said “Now you’ve got to forget all of this. It’s gonna make you very sad, and the experience must be extinguished from your mind.” I very rarely ever tell anyone that I went through the atomic bomb. Ever. I don’t tell — my friends, they don’t know. And maybe, and maybe it’s the fact that I don’t want to remember it. You accept it and you go on.

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MG: That was Kaleria Palchikoff Drago, first interviewed in Tokyo in 1945, and later in 2005, when she was 84 years old. After the war, Kaleria married an American soldier, moved to the United States, and raised three children. She died in California in 2014, at the age of 93.

This story was produced by Piya Kochhar for Sound Portraits Productions – that’s Dave Isay’s documentary company that preceded StoryCorps. When it ran on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2005, it was the first time that recording was ever broadcast in the United States.

If I were to ask you how many nuclear bombs have been detonated since 1945, what number would you guess? Well, we’ve heard about two already – one at Hiroshima and another at Nagasaki. So what do you think? Five? 100? 500?

The number is actually well over two thousand – and more than one thousand of those were on U.S. soil.

We’re going to hear now about one of the largest test series ever conducted in the U.S. – it was called Operation Plumbbob, and it took place at Camp Desert Rock, near Las Vegas, in 1957.

Joel Healy was there. He was just seventeen when he joined the Army to help pay for college. And he never imagined that he’d end up in the Nevada desert witnessing the detonation of more than twenty nuclear bombs.

He spoke with his daughter, Kelli Salazar.

Joel Healy (JH): My name is Joel Healy. I was in the U.S. Army and I witnessed Operation Plumbbob in 1957.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: Nevada, U-S-A. This is the valley where the giant mushrooms grow. More atomic bombs have been exploded on these few hundred square miles of desert than on any other spot on the globe.

Kelli Healy Salazar (KHS): Can you describe what it was like to witness your first nuclear explosion?

JH: Well, I was 17 years old and I thought, If there is a hell on earth, it’s gotta be that.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: (Explosion)

JH: You felt the shockwave of the thing going off and then the heat. And the biggest one that was set off in the desert when I was there was a seventy-four kiloton – almost twice the amount what was used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: Little bombs…big bombs (Explosions)

JH: In one of the explosions, I could see the bones in my hands.

KHS: When it did go off, where were you, physically?

JH: In some cases we were in a trench; other times we were just standing up out there.

KHS: What were you told about safety?

JH: Don’t worry. You will not be in harm’s way.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: Five military observers stood directly beneath the burst, indicating the safety to personnel on the ground below.

JH: The army had their own film teams out there to show these are our boys whistling’ Dixie going into a nuclear device. You know…

KHS: Oh goodness.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: My only regrets right now are that everybody couldn’t have been out here at ground zero with us.

JH: They had a motto then, Atoms for Peace. And uh, you know, I’m seventeen years old and I buy into it…

KHS: Of course…

JH: Because I’m thinking, they spent a lot of money training me to be a soldier. They wouldn’t intentionally put me in harm’s way.

ARCHIVAL AUDIO: (explosion)

JH: And this is 1957… We dropped those bombs on Japan in 1945. So they’ve known for 12 years… Troops going into battle know that there is a very inherent risk that they may not be coming out.

KHS: Right.

JH: Unless it’s in a black bag. In this instance, they never said a word. And they knew it… It’s just a disgrace. I don’t really like to talk about it. A lot of good men died. That’s all I have to say…

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MG: Joel Healy, speaking with his daughter Kelli Salazar about the Operation Plumbbob nuclear tests in 1957.

It’s hard to determine just how many veterans became ill from being at these tests. But Healy – and thousands of others – have received compensation from the U.S. Government as part of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990.

Before we go, I want to nod to the fact that this has been a pretty bleak episode. If you felt that way listening, trust us, it felt that way making it, too. But then on the very morning we’re sending this podcast out to you, one of the top headlines is about the possibility of nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula. The leaders of North and South Korea met yesterday – it was actually the first time that a leader of the North had set foot in the South – and they issued a joint resolution stating that they would work together to officially end the Korean war and to rid both North and South Korea entirely of nuclear weapons. So, maybe, as we close this episode, there’s some room for optimism – maybe even hope.

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MG: That’s all for this episode.

These stories were produced by me, David Herman, and Piya Kochhar. This episode of the podcast was produced by David Herman and edited by me. Find out what music we used on our website, StoryCorps.org. If there’s ever someone you hear on this show and you want to leave a message for them, the number to call is (301) 744 “TALK” that’s (301) 744 T-A-L-K.

And please keep those ratings and reviews coming – we really do read them all.

Until next time, I’m Michael Garofalo. Thanks for listening.