GUNLOCK, Washington County — Author Eddie "Mac" Jones gets right down to it when asked why he wrote his self-published book, "You Are A Downwinder."
"Here's the whole point of the book," Jones said while visiting with St. George News recently.
"People either don't know that they were exposed, or they've forgotten that they were exposed or they don't care," he added. "Sad to say, there's those who don't care."
Jones was talking about exposure to radiation from nuclear bomb testing in Nevada in the mid-20th century.
"But they had cancer, or they have cancer, or they will have cancer," Jones said. "Twenty more years of people that were exposed to those A-bombs that are over (age) 62, before they're all gone."
Jones is 87 years old. He said he's lost a kidney due to the radiation, his nose has been rebuilt three times, he lost a brother to pancreatic cancer and his sister has had three operations for breast cancer.
As previously reported in St. George News, Jones self-published another book, "The Gunlock Chronicles," about growing up in Washington County in the 1940s.
"You Are A Downwinder" takes a different tone and approach to a far more serious topic.
"These are more of my stories. And they're stories about me, and my family, and about people that I know," Jones said. "The only difference that I can see is the fact that I felt like it was necessary to write these stories."
Jones was an eyewitness to several of the atomic bomb detonations that occurred in Nevada because he worked at Area 12 of what is now called the Nevada National Security Site.
