The only enemy the Army sergeant found in the miles of rubble pulverized by America's atomic attack was the one he couldn't see - radiation. Brenan managed to beat the disease, but then came the follow-up battle - filing a disability claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The obliviousness is starkly represented in one photo of him standing in Hiroshima's ruins, eagerly drinking from a Japanese vase filled with water he'd just pulled from a nearby well. There's little doubt the water was contaminated with radiation from the bomb that had just killed more than 80,000 people in the Oakland-sized city. When Brenan first filed for disability, in 1986 while being treated, he wasn't eligible for payments because the VA didn't cover radiation-caused colon cancer in World War II veterans. [...] he didn't know about that change until after his daughter, Jill Pell, moved in to take care of him, and she read a notice about it that came in the mail from a veterans group.
Reported by SFGate 3 days ago.
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