On July 1st and 22nd, 1946, following the atom bombing of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that purportedly ended the Second World War, the United States military showcased the wonders of atomic power by dropping two megaton test bombs on Marshall Island's Bikini atoll. After all four bombings, warships saturated with radioactivity sailed back to its two San Francisco-based Naval stations. Docking at Treasure Island and Bayview-Hunters Point, these vessels showered the air, infiltrated the water, and infused into the soil radioactive toxins.

San Francisco's limited space and sky-high rents made the radioactive Treasure Island Naval station a desirable location for low-income market rate renters and a repository for poor and black and brown families at risk of homelessness. Similarly, the City targeted Bayview Hunters Point Superfund site for expansion. Following years of radiation exposure, some believe that African-American homeowners were driven out of Bayview Hunters Point to make way for market rate housing.

All this planned relocation, gives a suspicious racist-classist taint to the Navy's ad nauseam minimizations, denials, and public reassurances to Treasure Island's and Hunters Point's largely poor, black and brown populations that no current dangerous radiation levels exist.

Treasure Islanders and their BVHP neighbors report the same asthma, hair loss, and cancers. Both populations present with radiation sickness symptoms displayed in Bikini atoll dwellers --- itchiness, sore skin, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, burning eyes and extremity swelling. One Treasure Island mother described her 13-year-old daughter's systemic lupus erythematosus as intermittent leg-swelling “like two legs put together.”

Treasure Island troops practiced shooting. On the Navy's mock ship, the Pandemonium, sailors were trained to handle radioactive material. As a result, chemical contaminants from shot and dangerous radionuclides are found everywhere under and around current Treasure Island residences and in the Bay at Clipper Cove.

Across the water at Bayview-Hunter's Point, the atom bomb 'Little Boy' was built. Preparatory to housing construction. the Navy continues a 'toxic cleanup' of radioactive materials and chemicals. Lennar Corporation's constant grading and earthmoving, however, sends airborne asthma-causing particulate matter and radioactive remnants.

Radioactive Burn Pit Found Near Treasure Island Home

In 2004, Erik and Kathryn Lundgren moved their family into their Bayside Drive home. By 2011, they grew to suspect that Kathryn's mother's mysterious death, Erik's cardiac event, and their children's strange maladies could be associated with at least 14 radioactive elements, a minimum of 26 chemical contaminants, along with asbestos, lead, and mold accumulations exposed during the U.S Navy's clean-up of dangerous pollutants it deposited on its training base during World War II.

Since the early '90s the Navy has found and 'remediated' Treasure Island radioactive hot spots. On Feb. 12, 2014, a neighbor sent Kathryn a red-lined document he unearthed from the California Department of Public Health's website indicating the presence of a buried burn pit on Site 12 near the Lundgren home. Navy officials never revealed the presence of this burn pit in any monthly Restoration Advisory Board or community meeting of which Kathryn was aware.

“The burn pit is where they would incinerate pretty much everything – paint, plastics, metals --- radioactive material, chemical pollutants, coated electrical wire, plumbing fixtures,” she said.

Chemical hazards could have been posed by Dioxin, DDT, VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) PCBs, benzine, and more --- all carcinogenic.

Kathryn worries that, over time, normal alluvial soil motion and grading during construction could have moved radioactive objects, chemical contaminants, and assorted trash outward from the burn pit toward her building, perhaps directly underneath the house, her lawn, and the sidewalk where her toddlers played. The recent discovery of a radioactive object in her front yard intensifies her concern.

Storage and ammunition bunkers had been built on the site before the Navy dug the burn pit at the Northern end of Kathryn's townhouse. Kathryn notes that ammunition, like burned trash, contains dangerous chemical properties.

Radioactive Object Found In Lundgren's Front Yard

Before planned construction on Treasure Island's high rises, the Navy must test the soil for 'hot' or 'radioactive spots' and 'hot commodities,' radioactive objects the Navy left behind during World War II.

In October-November 2013, technicians from Gilbane, a Navy-subcontracted real estate development and construction company, used a 'towed array' device to detect a radioactive 'hot spot' outside Erik and Kathryn Lundgren's home. A 'towed array' is a geiger counter pulled behind a mini-tractor bearing a GPS locator. On the video clip accompanying this article, technicians are pictured sitting on this tractor entering data into a computer.

On the same clip, Danielle Janda, Treasure Island Naval Station Remedial Project Manager, explains to residents present at the Feb. 12, 2014, Restoration Advisory Board meeting, that this towed array location device and computer allowed the team to create 'data points' to find specific hot spots later.

Prior to Kathryn Lundgren's Feb. 12th discovery of the nearby 'burn pit,' Gilbane technicians had detected an area of elevated radiation, or a “hot spot” beneath the sidewalk running past the Lundgren's modest bungalow.

On January 29, 2014, Gilbane technicians arrived again, this time unannounced, outside Kathryn Lundgren's home with hand-held geiger counters. As Kathryn videoed the extraction process, they located the earlier-identified hot spot discovered in the October-November towed array visitation and removed an oxidized, rusty quarter-sized coin-shaped metal disc --- a 'hot commodity' --- buried about a foot down in the radioactive dirt below Kathryn's sidewalk. She speculated the disc could have been a World War II Navy ship dial painted with glow-in-the-dark, radium-emitting material. Such iridescent dials have been ubiquitous in BayView Hunters Point Superfund site.

The Gilbane technicians showed Kathryn that holding the Ludlum geiger counter near the disc forced the needle into a far right, dangerously high reading.

They noted that a piece of glass also carrying Gamma radiation may have been fixed to the disc.

Radiating earth movement and soil grading prior to home construction --- along with large areas of soil routinely spread around the island --- could explain the presence of the radioactive disc their geiger counter located in toxic soil beneath her sidewalk.

Kathryn asked the men how the high radiation levels their equipment was measuring reached so far into surrounding soil. They speculated that, over time, the glass could have cracked off the disc, and ground motion spread it outward or radioactive rust chipped off in the dirt.

The presence of the “hot spot,' and 'hot object' worries Kathryn whose children played in her yard directly over this site risking radiation burns from contact or long-term low-level radioactive bio-accumulation. Walking that sidewalk daily, they experience mysterious, severe health effects possibly linked to protracted radiation exposure as infants, toddlers, pre-teens and now teens.

Kathryn's two young daughters stored in a 'treasure chest' precious objects they found in island soil.

Lundgren Family's Deteriorating Health

Erik Lundgren

San Francisco Bay winds surging over waves and across the island carry dirt grains that layer in the Lundgren's window tracks, furniture and rugs. Erik laid astro turf in their back yard attempting to damp down swirling dust causing his family's constant respiratory and congestion problems. When his body bloated with edema, he was rushed to the Emergency Room in heart failure. He survived this one-time event.

Grandmother Yvonne

Kathryn describes the time “my mother drowned.” During a visit to the Treasure Island townhouse, Yvonne, a vivacious elder, became nauseous and disoriented and was returned to her Oakland home. Despite Kathryn's sister's CPR after finding her mother submerged in the bathtub, neurological damage caused speech loss. In a year, Yvonne was dead.

Mason, 18

Kathryn considers her stocky, jovial son, Mason, a “mellow, laid-back,” high school senior. Sitting at his mother's desk two years ago, Mason's face and tongue became numb, his speech inarticulate. Shaky, cold and breathless, he almost passed out. In the Emergency Room, his blood pressure was high. Though this episode resembled a panic attack, Mason's respiratory problems subsided on removing the dust-catching front room carpet.

Rash patches appear intermittently on Mason's and his youngest sister, Praise's skin. Observing Praise's ovarian cyst development, Mason worries about testicular cancer. Both teens planned to have families.

Quinn, 16

Dignified elder sister, Quinn, also experiences difficulty breathing, chronic congestion, headaches and panic attacks, suspected to be triggered by dust.

“Blinding confusion” accompanies these episodes, reported Kathryn. Bussing to school, Quinn phoned saying, “Mom, I'm on the street, and I don't know where I am. My legs went numb.”

In the Emergency Room, her blood pressure was “super low.”

Recently, Quinn's body became anesthetized from hips to feet. These recurrent symptoms last from four to 24 hours. “Sometimes it's just one leg; sometimes both. Sometimes it's just a tingling as if the leg is about to go numb.”

Doctors are observing Quinn's panic attacks, ADHD-like symptoms, and numbness for a final diagnosis.

Quinn's symptoms damage her grades. Some days, exhaustion keeps her home. Agitation, rapid breathing and leg numbness force her to leave class to relieve stress and walk the feeling back into her legs.

Recently, her hair thinned and fell out leaving visible scalp. Labs showed no vitamin deficiencies. The precautionary Quinn was already vegan, chemical and vaccine-free, but, when she amped up vitamin B and supplements, her hair started growing back. Quinn's conscientious health efforts don't keep her ahead of apparent radioactive and chemical toxin bombardment.

Praise, 13

In January 2011, cherubic youngest daughter, Praise, then 11, doubled over, immobilized, flushed and crying, then “turned grey.”

Ovarian Cysts

In one side of Praise's distended abdomen, UCSF doctors found several ovarian cysts. If the largest, “the size of a golf ball,” ruptured, Praise could lose an ovary.

Observing her overnight, doctors told this active pre-teen to go home and stay quiet. A ruptured cyst or ovary torsion could cut off circulation causing infertility. The cyst shrank and disappeared, but more developed.

Cysts are a cancer precursor watched for excessive enlargement. The possibility of not being a Mom greatly upsets Praise.

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) - rashes / knee swelling

Kathryn reported, “[Praise] started getting these weird rashes on her legs, stomach, cheeks,” nose, elbows, neck, and back.

“Her knees [and] all her joints were swollen. It's like two legs put together.

“She could barely move or walk.

“At night, she was in so much pain I moved downstairs with her,” so she wouldn't wake Quinn.

Doctors identified autoimmune systemic lupus erythematosus [SLE], characterized by positive ANA, vitamin D deficiency, distinctive physical markers like nasal butterfly rash, lethargy, and gastrointestinal complications --- bloody stools and kidney dysfunction.

Physicians warned that untreated sudden onset rapidly deteriorating lupus could blind Praise by age 18.

Last year, Praise was diagnosed with asthma.

Despite family closeness, Mason, Quinn and Praise stay in the City with friends because home feels unsafe. Erik and Kathryn would sacrifice anything to protect their children and are considering housing them off-island.