Hayden Hoyle, left, Jim Staite and John Funk sit in the recreation room of an apartment building in Las Vegas, where they discussed their problems last month in seeking compensation for radiation-related illnesses under government programs. Photo by John Locher.

Jim Staite was an 18-year-old sailor fresh out of boot camp when he got a glimpse of the awesome power of a nuclear bomb.

Fifty years later, at age 69, the Las Vegas resident continues to fight the government over compensation for a health problem he alleges was caused by his Navy experience in the Marshall Islands.

In some ways, he said, he faces the same dilemma as former Nevada Test Site workers who accuse the government of foot dragging and unfairness in denying their compensation claims.

It was the early morning of July 8, 1956, when government scientists set off the nuclear test that Staite witnessed: the 1.85 megaton Apache shot from a barge in the Marshall Islands, near Enewetak atoll. The thermonuclear device was 123 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that the U.S. military dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

On the horizon with a view across open water, sailors in Staite's construction battalion stood arms-length apart on the Kwajalein airstrip.

"They woke us up at predawn and lined up 497 men single file ... and gave us a piece of purple plastic to protect our eyes," Staite said in an interview. He said he kept his eyes closed for at least a minute until his chief tapped him and said, "It's over."

As an added precaution, Staite had tilted his head back and pressed his thumbs against his eye sockets. "Even then, I said they were using us as guinea pigs," he said.

Records from the Department of Energy and the Defense Nuclear Agency show that the bomb exploded more than 400 miles from Kwajalein and that the fallout plume blew to the northwest, even farther away.

Nevertheless, Staite said he later felt the effects.

Photos from the government's archives on the Apache test show a black cloud over the explosion's bright orange mushroom shape.

While Staite was stationed at Kwajalein, from May 13, 1956, to July 13, 1956, there were 13 other nuclear tests around the Enewetak and Bikini atolls including the first airdrop of a U.S. thermonuclear weapon, the 3.8 megaton Cherokee shot, on May 20, 1956.

Staite said witnessing the Apache shot and being in the Marshall Islands for those other tests was just the beginning of 48 years of dealings with at least five government agencies that followed after his first attempt to seek compensation in 1958.

His military papers from the National Records and Archives Administration show that he shipped out to the Philippines from Kwajalein on July 13, 1956, five days after the Apache test.

Within three months, Staite's health started failing.

He eventually lost function of his thyroid, the gland that takes iodine from foods and converts it into hormones that regulate the body's metabolism and calcium balance.

He said his thyroid gland "shriveled up like a grape." At first he couldn't focus on things, mentally. Then he couldn't wake up in the morning.

"I went to sick bay. It deteriorated to the point I couldn't wake up, and they court-martialed me and put me on a boat back to Point Hueneme" in Southern California, he said.

In late 1956, he woke up one day in a San Diego hospital. A nurse asked him if he had been standing in front on an X-ray machine because his thyroid had been over-irradiated. "I said, 'No. It was an atomic bomb.'"

With that, a private physician in San Diego prescribed pills to keep his metabolism in check. At first he took pills made from animal thyroids. Now, every morning he swallows a tablet of levothyroxine, a synthetic compound, for his condition.

In the eyes of the Navy he was an "undesirable" sailor because of "unfitness," according to a 1957 Navy discharge document.

Nevertheless, he pursued a compensation claim with the Veterans Administration in 1958. The VA treated him as "dishonorable" despite his insistence that he "was made undesirable by the United States government."

After wranglings, the VA decided to send his case to the responsible agency, the Atomic Energy Commission.

"They would not even communicate with me until my case was transferred to the Department of Justice," he said.

For years his case was mired in the Justice Department, then transferred to the Labor Department in 2000 because the Justice Department has no appropriation power. Eventually, radiation cases were consolidated under the energy agency responsible for nuclear weapons.

Later, the U.S. government spent millions of dollars to compensate some of the islanders including setting up a $150 million trust fund in 1986 under a compact that prohibited them from seeking future legal remedies and dismissing all court cases.

In 2002, two years after the case was transferred from the Justice Department to the Labor Department's Office of Workers Compensation Programs in Seattle, Staite sought $150,000 that was being offered under a Department of Energy program for employees with illnesses linked to their work in the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

The claims by civilian energy workers and atomic veterans later were transferred to the Department of Labor because Congress determined the Energy Department couldn't handle the task.

"They've just been waltzing me around ever since," Staite said, noting that his case worker in Seattle told him he is the sole survivor of atomic veterans from Kwajalein.

Finally, in a letter he received Dec. 8, the Labor Department terminated his case. He sought an explanation from his case worker.

"She said you're not an energy worker. You need to go to the (Department of Veterans Affairs). That's where I started. They've got me going in a circle," he said.

Staite is one of thousands seeking compensation for medical conditions related to radiation exposure from the detonation, research, development, production and testing of nuclear weapons including 2,518 former Nevada Test Site workers and survivors. As of Jan. 5, 384 cases filed by former Nevada Test Site workers and survivors have been approved for benefits with another 70 cases recommended for approval, the Labor Department said.

Since the inception of the program in 2001 through last year, the Labor Department has spent $246 million to administer the part of the program that deals with radiation claims. The department has paid out $1.8 billion in compensation to 22,000 claimants nationwide in addition to paying out more than $125 million in medical benefits, said Labor Department spokeswoman Dolline Hatchett.

Hayden Hoyle is among those who have been rejected.

Hoyle, 85, is pursuing appeals for the claim he has been denied as a former Nevada Test Site worker.

The paperwork from various agencies that handled his case is confusing enough. In three letters he has received, two from the Department of Health and Human Services and one from Department of Labor, his name was changed from Hayden Hoyle to "Mr. Hayle," and "Hayden Doyle."

In a recent interview, Hoyle talked about his frustration that began in 2001 when he filed a cancer claim with the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

Five years later, on Dec. 14, he was notified that his claim had been denied after a government contractor tried to reconstruct the dose he received as a mechanical engineer logging radioactive bits of a nuclear reactor.

"They played their little game of figuring out the average amount of radiation it would take," said Hoyle, who underwent surgery and chemotherapy for prostate cancer in 1985.

"I plan to appeal," he said. "They should cut me a check for $150,000."

The reactor, a test for developing nuclear-powered rockets, was part of the Kiwi program in the early 1960s. It was blown up in the southwest portion of the test site on Jan. 12, 1965.

"I spent several hours with the scientist walking off and marking big pieces with consecutive numbers," Hoyle recalled about the effort to gather the larger bits of the blown-up reactor.

Wearing a dosimeter and equipped with devices to detect radioactive particles, Hoyle said he spent more than a half day in the radiation field.

"Within a few days later, I was informed I had burned out for a year, exceeding my limit" for radiation exposure, he said.

Program managers arranged for Army soldiers to clean up a square-mile area that had been saturated with radioactive debris.

"They were picking the stuff up by hand," he said. "They put them in a bag and drove off some place and buried them," he said.

John Funk, 66, of Las Vegas empathizes with the frustration of Staite and Hoyle.

In 2003, he was interviewed on three separate occasions by officials from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health about his work history at the Nevada Test Site.

"After the third interview, I received my final draft of my dose reconstruction, which had been condensed to 10 short sentences," Funk said. "They can't seem to get your statements down without editorializing."

Funk was a carpenter who installed bulkheads in tunnels where nuclear weapons effects tests were conducted. He worked in numerous areas at the test site other than tunnels.

Since working at the test site, he has been treated for skin cancer and two types of colon cancer. He still suffers from a type of bone cancer called myeloproliferative, a chronic disorder in which the bone marrow produces too many red blood cells, white blood cells or platelets.

He believes his illnesses are linked to exposure to radioactive materials, benzene or both.

After barely missing the mark for proving that his occupational exposure more than likely caused his cancers, Funk found a number of mistakes that were made in handling his case not the least of which was failure by evaluators to include bone cancer in their calculations.

In late December, an official for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health assured Funk in an e-mail that his dose reconstruction report and case file were complete despite Funk's assertion to the contrary.

The e-mail from Larry J. Elliott, director of compensation analysis and support for NIOSH, urged him to sign a form confirming that he has no more information to offer. Without Funk's signature within 60 days, his case for dose reconstruction will be closed.

Funk objected, telling Elliott in a Dec. 27 e-mail that his employment date was incorrect; that one of the areas he worked in at the Nevada Test Site was omitted from the report; that he had never been irradiated by a full body scan as evaluators had assumed; and that they failed to consider resuspension of radioactive materials from road building and grading in areas where he worked.

"You are working with a severely flawed document ... You do not have my complete records," Funk wrote to Elliott.

Also, a panel that oversees the compensation program found flaws last year with the so-called "site profile" for the Nevada Test Site, which weighs heavily in determining exposures of former workers.

Reached Jan. 5 at his office in Cincinnati, Elliott said he cannot talk about specific claims but said in general that errors and questions about employment are the responsibility of the Labor Department.

"They need to go to the Department of Labor about any documentation they have that shows their employment history in a claim file. That kind of allegation of an error goes to DOL not to us," he said.

As for flaws in the test site's profile, Hatchett, the Labor Department spokeswoman, said NIOSH "is responsible for the site profiles, and if changes are made to the site profile that would affect the dose reconstruction, DOL would send the case back to NIOSH for a new dose reconstruction."

A NIOSH spokeswoman in Cincinnati, Amanda Harney, said a site profile is not needed to complete all dose reconstructions.

"Not all facilities covered under our program have a site profile completed for the facility," she said.

Congressional investigators for a subcommittee led by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., also found memos indicating that Bush administration officials discussed procedures to contain growth in the cost of benefits under the compensation program.

Shelby Hallmark, the Labor Department's director of workers' compensation programs has denied that any ideas on curbing the cost of benefits was pursued. Instead, the emphasis has been to be fair and consistent in handling claims, Hallmark said.

Elliott said that claimants can appeal whatever information they feel is unfair or incorrect.

Funk said based on his experience, fairness and consistency is virtually nonexistent in the program.

"I'm on my fifth try, and I really don't know what they're going to do," he said.

"They don't have an accurate record. They don't have my employee evaluation report cards, which will tell what I did out there. It took me four years to convince them that we did other things besides build boxes and saw horses."