Writings - A-bomb Anniversary
Human Guinea Pig Defends Bombing
Sunday, August 6, 1995
TRAVERSE CITY - As one of few people who have witnessed an atomic bomb's effects in person, John Wambold has strong feelings about the use of one at Hiroshima.
He believes the U.S. government made the right decision in dropping the bomb.
Wambold, now 67 and living in Traverse City, was used as a human guinea pig in a US Army test on the effects of atomic blasts. He and his company were placed in foxholes in a Nevada military testing site in 1952, he said, while an atomic device similar to the uranium-fueled bomb dropped on Hiroshima was exploded nearby.
The test followed one involving sheep in the same foxholes, Wambold said.
The soldiers, wearing steel helmets and fatigues, were advised to look down when the bomb was detonated. Wambold remembers that part of his arm was exposed when he saw the flash.
"They told us before that we were going to see the greatest X-ray machine in the world," he recalled. "When that bomb went off, I'm not lying to you, you could see every bone in your wrist, that's how bright it was."
Wambold stood up with the other soldiers and watched the mushroom cloud grow, and seconds later they were struck by a blast of air and sand. A short while later, they felt the air rushing back. "If you're ever in Lake Erie in a storm, that's the way the ground shook," he said. Following the exercise, Wambold said, Army personnel ran Geiger counters up and down the soldiers' bodies to check for excess radiation.
Wambold got a phone call a year later from a reporter researching a story on the testing. Two fellow soldiers who had taken part in the exercises had already died from cancer.
"He wanted to know how I felt," Wambold said. "Really what he wanted to know is how many guys' addresses I could give them to find out how many more may have died.
"But I feel good, and I can't complain."
Despite sitting through an atomic explosion himself, Wambold believes the US government was right to use the atomic bombs on Japan. The attacks ended the war, he said, and prevented the loss of more American and Japanese lives.
The bombing may also have kept him out of the Japan, he said. "If the war wouldn't have ended when it did, I would have been prime material, because I had two brothers that were in uniform at the time," he said.
"I hate to say this, but these kids that like to light candles on all these anniversaries, some of those kids might not be around today because their dads and grandfathers wouldn't have lived to come back."