Soapbox Racer
How a Teenage Preacher’s Son From Wichita, Kansas, Became Emblematic of Thousands of Soldiers and Sailors Who Ultimately Died From the Effects of Radiation Exposure From Atomic Tests Conducted by the United States Government in the Early 1950s
Dennis H. Rees
School of History, Liberty University
HIST901: Doctoral Historical Research (B01)
DISCUSSION: WRITTEN “BLOG” EXPLAINING YOUR RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This dissertation will delve into one family’s Military, cultural, and social history from 1943 to 1951. The research will be conducted using an extensive trove of letters written by Harold and Daisy Rees in these years, government reports from the various departments dealing with Atomic Bomb development, veteran health, and environmental issues. It hopes to relay events in the lives of Harold Rees, his wife Daisy, and their budding family during and following World War II and the aftereffects of those war events on this family and others involved in the same events.
It will detail what Harold and Daisy were thinking and doing throughout this period by examining their writings, wherein they disclosed their innermost pressing thoughts. These writings take the form of hundreds of letters shared back and forth. These letters will be archived, cataloged, abstracted, and published during this research. Once done, this work will be juxtaposed with the deck logs of the ships Harold served on and the general war calendar. This will be done to provide clarity and context for the larger story of what happened to one family due to the government’s actions to create, test, and use the atomic bomb.
Understanding this story through the lens of the letters written between lovers and family will illuminate the acts of a government intent on bringing WW II to a close and creating a power gap between the US and all other nations, thus initiating the Cold War. Families like Harold and Daisy became unwitting and unwilling casualties of the larger US government’s nuclear war strategy. These injuries played out over the next five decades, resulting in the death not only of Harold Rees but tens of thousands just like him. An examination of government records and reports regarding actions, mortality, and morbidity of radiation-exposed veterans will be included in the research to allow an assignment of government responsibility and subsequent remediation efforts.
The title Soapbox Racer humanizes the boy who won the local soapbox derby, a preacher’s son from Wichita, Kansas, and a patriot who left high school to join the Navy upon reaching his 17th birthday. Harold earned certificates in diesel mechanics from two schools, one civilian and one Navy. He was assigned to a new ship, the USS Haverfield, where he spent the rest of WW II as part of the Navy’s most successful submarine hunter-killer group, the USS Bogue Escort Carrier Group.
Within a week of separation from the Navy after WW II, Harold married Daisy, the girl he had met on leave in New York City two years earlier. The two had corresponded multiple times weekly since they met. Harold spent every minute of his various leave opportunities during the war visiting Daisy and her family in New York. As soon as they were wed, Harold made plans to reunite Daisy with her family by bringing everyone to Wichita from New York City.
Harold and Daisy started their lives in Wichita, and to supplement their income by a few dollars per month, Harold joined the Navy Reserve. In 1946 and 1947, Harold completed his high school equivalency diploma by passing the General Education Development test. Donna Sue was born to the Rees family in December 1946. Donna was followed 16 months later by Bonnie Marie on May 8, 1948. By this time, the construction of the new house at 523 N Meridian in Wichita had started. Daisy’s widowed mother, widowed sister Dot, and Dot’s three children had been successfully transplanted to Wichita as well.
In 1948, with his family’s and extended family’s growth, Harold was under self-imposed pressure to make more money. His response was to start a business. He became an independent bread and bakery goods wholesaler to grocery stores. This involved acquiring a bread truck and working out an arrangement with a bakery willing to sell him goods at a wholesaler’s price so that a margin would exist between his price and the price of the grocery store. He began to market his services to various grocery stores and markets to build up his ‘route.’ He began to be successful and, by 1949, had become established and built a stable book of business. His earnings peaked at about $500 monthly when the disaster fell; Harold was recalled to active duty through the reserves. This immediately reduced his monthly income to ‘Navy pay’ of about $125.00. Also, Harold was separated from his family, and they from their single source of support.
Harold immediately began the paperwork to request a hardship discharge because of the economic burden on his family due to his activation. This request was denied. Harold was assigned to the USS Cabildo. The Cabildo was a boat pool and boat transport ship capable of housing and launching various boats of various sizes for local and regional transportation. She also had repair facilities for such boats. Harold kept his rate as an Engineman 1c, the new rating of the old Moter Mechanic Mate classification. In this assignment, Harold was in charge of one of the boats transporting scientists and dignitaries to and from the observation sites for the test explosions. Harold was one of the few military personnel to be issued and to wear film badges to measure cumulative doses of radiation. Only around 250 out of 4500 military were issued such badges. Due to these film badges, Harold’s cumulative dose of ionizing radiation could be reconstructed from the records and assumptions made by the government. As it turns out, he had many times the lifetime recommended dose of radiation in the few months of Operation Greenhouse.
Throughout the next several decades, a lot of radiation-exposed veterans tried to get information from the government regarding radiation exposure in various testing operations. Still, they were mostly thwarted because the information was “classified”. The rest is a story of what Harold and other veterans went through to prove that their many maladies and malignancies were service-connected in times of war. How and why did the government deny benefits and compensation to these veterans, and was there a conspiracy involving the government-military-industrial complex to hide the source of these veteran’s injuries?
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