Metal is a piece of H-bomb artwork

That was a good story on Kenneth Ford helping build the H-bomb (H-bomb physicist’s book irks government, Las Vegas Sun, March 29). That weapon had some power.

I walked on what was left of Atoll Flora in 1968 after a big storm hit the Marshall Islands. The waves had washed a small path on the westside, and I saw what looked like a piece of metal sticking out of the sand. I pulled up about an 18-by-12-inch metal object that had a piece of wire, a nail and a piece of coral fused to it. I took it over to Eniwetok about three months later and asked a worker who had been there a long time if many people had been on Flora. He said he was not sure if anyone had been on Flora since 1962. I did not say I had been there.

Fast forward four years. I was back in the states, and a doctor friend came to my house to pick up a couple of tennis rackets. He saw the object and asked what it was. I told him my story and about three days later, he asked me if I would show it to a friend of his who was an engineer and a radioactive ophthalmologist. I said sure, and she came over with a couple of instruments. After looking it over, she said, “I believe this could only be from the H-bomb blast. It had to be hit so hard and fast, buried in the wet sand and water, and got only a small dusting from the blast or it would have been like the 70 tons of man-made material that never made it.” She said the piece is safe, even if it’s a piece of H-bomb artwork.