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Enlarge this image Hank Bolden, shown here at The Hartt School, is an atomic veteran — one of thousands of soldiers present at secret U.S. nuclear weapons tests that took place during the Cold War. Ryan Caron King/Connecticut Public Radio Hank Bolden is an 83-year-old undergraduate at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. He is also an atomic vet — one of thousands of soldiers exposed to secret nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War. Bolden is one of only a few African-Americans still here to tell the story. In 1955, Bolden was in his late teens and stationed in California. One day he was told he'd been chosen to participate in a special military exercise. "I had no idea what I was selected for," he said. Bolden was flown to Desert Rock, Nev., where he joined hundreds of other soldiers from across the country. He didn't know anyone else there. A day later they were marched out to trenches. "In the trench that I was in, there was nothing but soldiers that looked like me. All black faces in my trench," he said. A countdown began. History Documenting The History Of Mob Violence Against African-American Veterans Documenting The History Of Mob Violence Against African-American Veterans Listen · 5:10 5:10 Toggle more options Download Embed Embed iframe src=" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player" Transcript "When it got down to zero, that's when the big flash went off. That big flash was the dropping of the atomic bomb for the testing," Bolden explained. "And they had us placed 2.8 miles from ground zero, not only in the path of the fallout, but in the predicted path of the fallout." Then came a wave of heat and dust. "And there weren't any goggles that we had to place over our eyes. Just had a helmet and our arms supposedly to protect your eyes," he said. "And you visibly see your bones. And you visibly see other folks' skeletons. That's what I saw." After the tests, Bolden and the other soldiers had to swear an oath of secrecy never to talk about what had happened — not to family, doctors or to each other. Violation of the oath was punishable by 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Bolden says for decades, he never talked. But as the years went on, he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, multiple myeloma and subcapsular cataracts. He began to worry that his health problems might be connected to what he'd seen. Alex Wellerstein is a historian of nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology, a private research university in New Jersey. He said there were hundreds of tests in this period. Early exercises were aimed at learning how the weapons worked. The goal of the Desert Rock exercises was to find out what happens to soldiers when they see a live nuclear weapon
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