Soon after, the girl was so exhausted, she'd come home after school and go directly to bed. She'd get up for dinner then sleep again until morning. This went on for weeks.

Back on June 26, 1964, when Dr. L.V. Broadbent first saw the pale, lethargic 11-year-old in his Cedar City offices, the community had a different awareness of all things toxic: Pesticides, it seems, were poisonous. Fallout from nuclear tests were not.

A medical report about Sybil's condition illustrates the irony profoundly.

In his evaluation, Broadbent notes Sybil's general lack of energy, her blood counts, the abnormal amounts of lymphocytes, thrombocytopenia and anemia.

But the girl had ingested only penicillin and medications for a respiratory infection. She took vitamins once a week. She lives in Cedar City, he wrote, drinks city water and has a healthy pet. The fruit trees at the family home were sprayed in May, but Sybil was not exposed, nor has she had exposure to cleaning solvents or insecticides, the report states.

"She has had no toxic exposure."

Name of deceased: SYBIL DESERET JOHNSON

Date of death: May 15, 1965

Death was caused by: Acute leukemia

Age: 12

Usual Occupation: Student

Blaine and Loa Johnson say now they were slow to understand the relationship between illnesses in the community and the fallout.

In the early 1970s, Loa Johnson got involved with former Gov. Scott Matheson's Committee of Survivors. "The first thing I knew, my phone was ringing off the hook," she said. She kept a tablet by her phone back then, and she still has the faded pages nearly 30 years later. "It really is amazing," she says, looking at the names before her:

Edith Pryor's son, cancer of the reproductive system; pharmacist Mel Cowley, cancer; John Crabtree, leukemia; hairdresser Melva Parker, cancer.

Marva Stone. Alice Batt. Neddy Baldwin. Iris Adams . . .

"Were people mad? After a while, they were very angry," said Loa Johnson. "Part of what made them angry was that the tests were centered so close to people who no one thought mattered."

"Now I go back and watch those newsreels and I hear them say, 'This is no big deal for southern Utah.' 'It's routine.' 'It's part of their lives,' as if they are trying to minimize and make it OK. Perhaps they didn't know, but I think they did. They knew what the bomb had done to the Japanese." — Blaine H. Johnson, 51, a retired orthopedic surgeon who was a child living in Cedar City at the time of the nuclear tests.