C. S. Stephenson to Admiral McIntire on Health Hazards in the Navy Yards (1941)

A three-page memorandum of March 11, 1941, from Commander C. S. Stephenson, in charge of the U.S. Navy's Division of Preventive Medicine, to Admiral McIntire, with "Notes for consideration when you call on Assistant Secretary Bard." Stephenson reports that he had advised against letting the Labor Department or the U.S. Public Health Service survey health hazards in the Navy Yards, telling Bard "We saw no need of inviting the United States Public Health Service on its own invitation to do this job." He then lists the hazards he considered most serious, from silicosis in the foundries to asbestosis.

What it shows

Stephenson told Bard that the Navy's own medical officers in the yards had made sound recommendations, and that McIntire had said President Roosevelt thought outside surveys "might not be the best policy" because they "might cause disturbance in the labor element." His own list is frank. None of the Navy's foundries, he writes, "would pass the necessary inspection to obtain workmen's compensation insurance," and on asbestosis: "We are having a considerable amount of work done in asbestos and from my observations I am certain that we are not protecting the men as we should. This is a matter of official report from several of our Navy Yards." Nine months before Pearl Harbor, the officer in charge of the Navy's preventive medicine knew its asbestos workers were not being protected.