Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Husband of Gwynneth Beryl OLIVE, 10 Murdoch Street, Cremorne, NSW

A Sydney man under sentice of death from blood disease is believed to be a radiation victim of the Hiroshima atom bomb.

The man is Mr. Frank Austin Olive, 48, a former RAAF pilot living in the St. George District.  His condition has been discovered nearly 20 years after he last visited the atom-shattered Japanese city of Hiroshima.  Mr. Austin Olive has been stricken by myelomatosis, a rare disease of the blood-forming organs.  Formerly strong and active he now hobbles about on a walking stick.  He has suffered intense pain and is unable to work.   Doctors who have been treating him say his condition could have been caused by the Himoshima bomb.  The Repatriation Department has rejected Mr. Olive's claim for a pension, but he is appealing against the decision.

His case aroused medical interest.  It could mean that he - and possibly other Australians - have been unknowingly carrying the seeds of a deadly disease for the past 20 years.  This is the strange case of Mr. Olive, a married man, with one child.  He enlisted in the RAAF in 1940, was commissioned in 1942, and flew Pacific missions in Beauforts.  On August 6, 1945, a US plane dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 78,150 peole, injuring 37,425 and leaving another 13,083 missing.  In October 1945, Mr Olive, then a flight lieutneant in the Interim Air Force, flew a transport into Iwakuni and visited the bomb-torn Hiroshima.   Twice that month he climbed through the ruins of the city, unaware of the dangers of radiation.  He was back in Hiroshima nine or 10 times during 1956, the year before he was discharged A1 from the RAAF.  After various jobs he became a motel manager in Cooma and last August, while tobogganing in the Snowy Mountains, he jarred his spine.  This, Mr. Olvie believes triggered the radiation illness he got 20 years earlier in the ruins of Hiroshima. Until then he suffered no more than the illnesses of most men.  But, on being questioned by doctors he recalled scratches that turned septic instead of healing normally.  He was admitted to the Repatriation General Hospital, Concord, on November 24 for investiation and transferred to St. Vincent's on December 13.  While at Concord he was taken to St. Vincent's for special treatment.  He said the Repatriation Department claimed the condition was not due to war causes.  A doctor at Concord advised him to make a will 'straight away' and told him he would never work again.  Backing Mr. Olive in his claim for Repatriaton benefits are these two letters form doctors:  One, a radiologist says: 'I understand that in 1945 ye was in Hiroshima as a serving memeber of the RAAF approximately three months after the atomic explosion there.  In my opinion it is not beyond doubt that his present condition of myelomatosis may be a result of radiation received at Hiroshima....'  The other, a staff radio-therapist at St. Vincent's says 'As myelomatosis is a disease of the blood forming organs it is, in my opinion, not possible that such a condisiton could be the rsult of irradiation if such were received at that time'.

Mr. Olive, unemployed now, has no doubt that his illness comes from the bomb that helped end the war.

He waits, wonders - and hopes ......

Sunday Mirror, February 6, 1966.