Downwinder's story has a happy ending

WASHINGTON — Isaac Nelson of Cedar City finally found that after decades of suffering, injustice and frustration, a happy ending may still come.

For years, I used Nelson as the best example I could find about big problems in a program to apologize to and compensate downwind cancer victims of atomic bomb tests.

Nelson's story began 48 years ago on May 19, 1953 — a day that will forever haunt him. A neighbor called him outside to watch a huge, pinkish fallout cloud from an atomic bomb test now called "Dirty Harry" (because of massive fallout dust it created).

Nelson's first wife, Oleta, walked out, too, in a short-sleeved dress and bobby socks. Neighbors chatted and marveled as the cloud passed. They didn't worry about safety. After all, the government told Utahns that the fallout was harmless.

It knew better. In fact, it only conducted atomic bomb tests in Nevada when the wind was blowing toward Utah and not more heavily populated areas like Las Vegas or California.

That night, Oleta suffered nausea and diarrhea. A headache struck that would pound for six months. Her doctor said she acted as if she had a bad case of sunburn — even though her olive skin rarely burned and she hadn't been in the sun much that day.

A few weeks later, Oleta "let out the most ungodly scream I've ever heard," Isaac said the first time I met him. "Half of her hair slipped off her scalp, just like off the front of a cue ball. . . . It never grew back. When she went out, she always had on a hat or bandanna."

Oleta died of brain cancer 12 long painful years later. When I first met Isaac, he said — with anger sparking cursing in his otherwise clean speech as a Mormon high priest — that "I will go to my grave believing those damned atomic tests caused it."

However, until very recently the government refused to acknowledge it.

Nelson joined early lawsuits seeking compensation from the government. After years of winding through courts, judges ruled that the government was immune from such suits because its actions had been in behalf of national defense.

After that, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and former Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, fought in Congress for a program to compensate downwinders. After long battles, it finally passed in 1990 — offering $50,000 to them.