Iowa County’s atomic veteran reflects on years of silence

Bob Mowry, Williamsburg, spent much of his four-year Naval enlistment stationed in the desert.

“I always felt funny, telling my kids I served in the Navy and never went aboard a ship,” the 89-year-old vet says.

In fact, he couldn’t tell them much about his service at all.

It wasn’t until 40 years after he left the military that he was free to reveal he’d spent nearly the entirety of his service to this country working on atomic bombs.

Bob is one of the previously unrecognized atomic veterans — men and women who were exposed to ionizing radiation while present at the site of one or more nuclear explosions while on active duty.

Many of these vets later developed health conditions due to radiation exposure but since they were bound by oath not to discuss the nature of their service, they were unable to seek medical care or disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs for their illnesses. It wasn’t until 1996 that the U.S. Congress repealed the Nuclear Radiation and Secrecy Agreements Act, allowing atomic veterans to tell their stories and file for benefits. By then, thousands of these veterans had already died without their families ever knowing the true extent of their service.

In 2021, President Biden proclaimed July 16 as National Atomic Veterans Day. The date was chosen to commemorate July 16, 1945, when the U.S. detonated the world’s first nuclear device in Alamogordo, N.M. Known by its code name, “Trinity,” the successful test of this first atomic bomb pushed the world into a new age of science and warfare.

Bob’s atomic journey

Bob graduated from Tipton High School in 1952 and set out to find a job. Since he’d worked as a meat cutter while in high school, he went to Rath Packing Company in Waterloo and applied for work. The Korean War had just begun.

“Back then, if you weren’t married or in college, you’d be drafted within a year,” he recalls. “They told me to come back after I’d done my military service.”

Bob joined the Navy since his father served in that branch during World War II. After completing boot camp in January of 1953, he was one of five seamen from his company selected for the Navy Special Weapons Unit.

“I had no idea what that was,” he recalls. “None of us did.”

He traveled to Sandia Base at Albuquerque, N.M., and after receiving top security clearance, began training to work on atomic bombs.

“We took them apart, inspected them and put them back together,” he says. “We were sworn to secrecy. We couldn’t tell anyone anything.”

The Cold War was ramping up, with the U.S. and Soviet Union starting a buildup of nuclear weapons. In June of 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were hanged for treason. The Rosenburgs, members of the Communist Party, were convicted of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in 1945.

“That put the fear of God into us. We kept our mouths shut,” Bob says.

After 10 months at Sandia, he was transferred to Yorktown, Va., where he worked at a storage site for atomic weapons.

Bikini Atoll

In the spring of 1956, Bob was assigned to HQ Joint Task Force 7, made up of leaders from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission, in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. There, he served on Enewetak Island and was assigned to the admiral’s barge when atomic weapons tests were conducted.

In all, Bob witnessed 17 atomic bomb tests on the Bikini Atoll.

“When one went off, it was bright as noon,” he recalls. “The explosions, the brightness, the mushroom cloud, they were pretty spectacular. They told us to cover our eyes with our arms when the bombs detonated.”

Bob estimates he was within seven miles of each explosion.

“Ionized radiation didn’t mean much to us back then,” he adds. He lived with other men in wood frame tents on the island and swam in the lagoon. While the men were given film badges to measure the cumulative radiation dose their bodies received from ionizing radiation, no particular effort was made to shield them from it.

Following the first aboveground nuclear test in 1945, testing continued through 1962. For years, the government denied any connection between ionized radiation from these tests and cancer. Although the Agent Orange Act was passed by Congress in 1991, recognizing the defoliant used in the Vietnam War was directly tied to certain diseases in vets, it would take five more years before health issues related to atomic exposure were recognized. Only after Nuclear Radiation and Secrecy Agreements Act was repealed in 1996 could veterans talk about their military involvement in testing to establish valid service-connected disability claims.

“We all joked the government’s motto was ‘Delay and deny until they all die’,” Bob says.

At age 89, he’s had some health issues and is legally blind but feels he dodged a bullet when it comes to cancers related to his radiation exposure.

“I haven’t had any of the cancers associated with that,” he says.

While he estimates there may be upward of 100,000 atomic veterans left in the U.S., there are only a handful in Iowa. He is the only one he is aware of in Iowa County.

Through his memberships in the National Association of Atomic Veterans and Navy Nuclear Weapons Association, he has only met two other veterans who witnessed an above ground test.

“To be able to tell people you witnessed 17 tests is almost unheard of,” he recalls. “I’ve seen enough that it’s my desire no one ever see another one go off. I’m afraid World War III would be the end of the world,” he says.

Bob never did know why he was selected for this service. Most of his boot camp company was assigned shipboard duties or sent on for additional training.

“Not me,” he says. “I was in the Navy in the middle of the desert.”

Civilian life

When he left the service, Bob returned to Iowa. He went to college, first at the University of Iowa, then the University of Northern Iowa. He met his first wife, Betty, and they married in August of 1959. They had five children, one son and four daughters. The couple were married 51 years before her death.

Bob worked as a salesman for a grocery company in Waterloo before inheriting, and subsequently operating, the meat locker plant in Lowden. After that he worked as a production supervisor for Oscar Meyer in Davenport, retiring in 1996. When Betty passed away in 2010, he moved to Marion.

At a local dance, he met Elaine Hanson from Parnell, who had been married 44 years before losing her husband, Arnie, in 2006.

“We hit it off. We danced well together,” he says. When Bob and Elaine married in 2012, Bob remembers the priest joking, “There’s no advice I can give the two of you.”

Through the years, Bob has enjoyed community involvement no matter where he lived. He has served as a torch bearer for the Olympic torch run and also volunteered at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games, working in the press center very near the park where the bombing took place. He and Elaine have enjoyed traveling and cruises and he is also a lifetime member of the American Legion.

Comments: Melinda.Wichmann@southeastiowaunion.com