Testing testing ...
The 91-year-old man recalled diving into the ocean just minutes after an atomic bomb detonated as if he were speaking about diving into a pool on a hot summer day.
Even now — 73 years later — nothing about swimming through radioactive water while picking up debris, seaweed, fish and whatever he could find for scientists to test following the explosion seems out of the ordinary to John Twerdok.
The Butler man is a U.S. Navy veteran who served from 1946 to 1947 and worked on the atomic bomb task force for bomb testing at Bikini Atoll.
Before he was a veteran, he was a first-generation American. Twerdok's parents emigrated from the Ukraine to the United States, where they had 10 children and a farm. Twerdok said he grew up “just down the hill” from where he lives now on Old Plank Road.
“Where we're sitting right now was our cow pasture,” he joked in his living room.
Things changed for Twerdok when he turned 17 and realized he would be sent to the Army for World War II.
It was then that he chose to volunteer for the Navy instead, explaining that he liked ships and that, in part, influenced his decision.
“I didn't want to be fighting the war with ground troops,” he said. “If I was going to go, I was going to dive into the water before I dive into trouble.”
The war was almost over by the time he joined the military, Twerdok added.
Despite the decades that have passed, Twerdok said he still vividly remembers July 1, 1946, when he was told with the rest of his crew to lie down and cover his eyes until the second bell went off, signaling that the bombing was complete.
If they failed to do this, they would have been blinded by the light from the explosion, even though they were somewhere between seven and 12 miles away from the bomb site.
This was just under 11 months to the day after the U.S. dropped its first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing somewhere between 90,000 to 146,000 people.While the first test when he was there was dropped from an airplane, the second, conducted July 25, 1946, was detonated 90 feet underwater.Each time a bomb was deployed, Twerdok said, he and his crew were sent to fish whatever they could out of the water for radioactivity tests.“Anything in that water, we were supposed to bring it up and give it to the scientists,” he said. “They took all kinds of samples and everything of what we'd come up with and see what radiation did to everything.”Every morning afterward, they stood in a lineup to be screened and have a health check to monitor the effects of radiation. Twerdok said they were never told the results of those screenings.At the time, he explained, they didn't understand what the exposure would do to them. “We didn't know for sure,” he said.Another part of Twerdok's job at Bikini Atoll was building towers for the cameras that would take the transformative pictures of the first successful atomic bomb tests.
Twerdok's time in the service ended in October 1947, after which he went home to Butler and attended classes to finish his high school education. It was here that he sat behind his future wife, Jean, and got to know her. He married her in 1950, and they had three children — Polly, John and Patty — while he worked at Armco Steel for 42 years.Every year after they got out of the Navy, Twerdok said, his crew of about 50 people had reunions.“Those were great times,” he said. “That was the good part.”The crew stayed in touch and tried to see each other annually until they couldn't any longer due to distance or other complications. Now, he said he only knows of one other person from his original crew who is still alive.“Every so often, I say, 'Boy, I was lucky,'” he said. “I served my time there, and I enjoyed every bit of it.”Twerdok likes to say he's “still going,” and looks back fondly on his Navy friends.
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