SESSION | 31 of others, and that was to take advantage of possibly the only opportunity that [ shall ever nave to introduce a rear admiral, Bob Conard! FREMONT-SMITH: CONARD: That's very nice. Lovely. Thank you. When I finished medical schcol in 1942 I went into the Navy and spent several years ona cruiser in the South Pacific, and on my return went out on the Bikini operation and had the very pleasant and stimulating experience of working under Staff Warren and made some very valuable lifetime friendships with Frank Fremont-Smith, Wright Langham and Lauren Donaldson and many others. During the Bikini operation we realized, as Staff pointed out, that there were many aspects concerning radioactivity about which we were ignorant. Because of this we were ultraconservative., I remember very well the bundlesome types of respirators that we forced the men to wear in offloading ammunition andthe strict precautions to protect them. Later, in Hawaii when the target ships from the operation were returning, I was forced to order the sinking of many beautiful small boats such as Captain Gigs because radioactiv« contamination was considered too high. Later on, [ had an interesting experience when the Nevada, the target ship, was sunk by the Navy to test out some weaponry. I was asked to go along as the radiological safety officer and they insisted that I go on board with the two gunners mates to get these 1, 500-]b. bombs wired up, and I pretested saying I would like to see why a doctor really had to go aleon an operation like this. But they insisted anyway and [ had to hold the wires while they sturfed the pun cotton into these big sheiis and, of course, in the meantime the destroyer escort went off about thirty miles and stayed off until we finished the operation. And then later when I saw this ship blowup, I thanked rny lucky stars that [ had gotten off that safely. I participated in other atomic tests including Operation Greenhouse inthe Facific and the Nevada test. I spent several years as Project Officer at USNRDL and had a fruitful year doing radiobiolopical research with Harvey Patt and Austin Brues at Argonne, In 1954 the unfortunate fallout accident occurred in the Marshall Islands while I was stillin the Navy and [was a member of the original medical team under Dr. Cronkite along with Chuck. Dunham that carried out the original examination of these people.