The USS Ronald Reagan maneuvered in the blue off the tense Korean Peninsula, preparing for long-planned military exercises. A nuclear-powered “supercarrier” – one of the newest and most technically sophisticated in the fleet – she required a crew of 5,500 to sustain her. The Navy boasted that she was “the most effective and versatile fighting vessel in the world.”

At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 quake hammered the earth’s crust northeast of Tokyo, unleashing walls of water 30 feet high. They smashed into the coast of Japan, devouring buildings, severing escape routes and sweeping thousands away to their deaths.

The tsunami also flooded the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, cutting off electrical power and disabling backup generators.

The Reagan’s mission swiftly changed. She bolted for Japan as part of Operation Tomodachi – “friends” in Japanese – to provide emergency aid to the stricken population. She was stationed off Sendai and used as, among other things, a floating refueling station for Japanese helicopters flying relief missions.

“(B)efore the USS Ronald Reagan and Carrier Strike Group 7 arrived 2 miles off the coast, Fukushima Unit 1 blew up,” says a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the sailors. “Then Unit 3 exploded, releasing plumes of hydrogen gases migrating through a shared vent, which destroyed the containment building at Unit 4, exposing the spent fuel pool to the air. Unit 2 followed suit.”

Sailors on the flight deck said they felt a warm gust of air, followed by a sudden snow storm: radioactive steam. Freezing in the cold Pacific air. Blanketing their ship.

And there they remained for two days, until “precautionary measurements of three helicopter aircrews returning to USS Ronald Reagan after conducting disaster relief missions near Sendai identified (measurable) levels of radioactivity on 17 air crew members,” and the Navy ordered the carrier to reposition much farther away from the Fukushima fallout.

By then, the lawsuit contends, the crew had already suffered massive doses of radiation.

Photos taken by Navy personnel aboard the ship show the crew decontaminating the flight deck with brooms and foamy cleanser – clad in fatigues, hoodies and ski caps, many with their faces exposed.

In the three years since, dozens have developed cancers, at least one has borne a child with birth defects, and all “must now endure a lifetime of radiation poisoning and suffering which could have and should have been avoided,” the lawsuit says.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which ran Fukushima, lied through its teeth, knowing all along the plant was in full-scale meltdown, the suit contends.

“(TEPCO) announced that most of the fuel in Units 1, 2, and 3 were intact. They were not intact,” the suit says. “The true facts were that the fuels in Units 1, 2, and 3 had fused into a molten mass and were oozing through the bottom of their destroyed reactors. TEPCO likewise hid, covered up, and negligently concealed these facts and falsely represented the true facts to the U.S. Navy. Plaintiffs suffered harms, damage, and suffered, and continue to suffer, life-threatening injuries as a result of TEPCO’s negligence.”

The class-action suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego on behalf of 79 crew members and their loved ones, seeks $1 billion from TEPCO, as well as damages and attorneys’ fees.

“Honesty and fair-dealing is a basic and most precious resource, as well as a fundamental commodity of incalculable value. The plaintiffs and the U.S. Navy had the right to know the actual conditions they would confront during ‘Operation Tomodachi.’ … TEPCO rendered the plaintiffs infirm and poisoned their bodies.”

CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS

This is the second time that the Reagan sailors have tried to file this suit. It’s a highly problematic legal maneuver, asking the U.S. federal court to poke its nose into the decision-making of the U.S. military, and raising very strange and disturbing questions:

Could the Reagan – one of the most advanced nuclear aircraft carriers in the U.S. fleet – really not know that it was being showered with massive doses of radiation?

“It is wholly implausible – absent some additional facts that the (complaint) does not (and cannot) allege – to posit that military commanders in charge of thousands of personnel and armed with some of the world’s most sophisticated equipment, relied instead only on the press releases and public statements of a foreign electric utility company,” said TEPCO in its response last week.

The sailors’ first attempt at suing TEPCO, alleging that the Japanese government was in on the deception, was tossed late last year by federal Judge Janis S. Sammartino. It’s beyond her court’s authority to determine whether the Japanese government had perpetrated a fraud on the American government, she said – but she left the door open for the sailors to try again. The amended suit drops allegations of conspiracy with the Japanese government.

But that’s not enough, TEPCO says. The suit should be tossed permanently.

The Navy investigated radiation exposure among Operation Tomodachi participants, and concluded that “the reported radiation doses to the fleet-based individuals are at least one order of magnitude less than any dose associated with adverse health effects,” TEPCO’s lawyers told the court.

Furthermore, the sailors’ claims are all barred by the “firefighters’ rule,” TEPCO said, “which generally prohibits first responders from suing for dangers associated with the type of emergency to which they responded.”

And if there were any claims to pursue, they should be pursued in Japanese courts, where TEPCO is based, not in American courts, it argued.

NAVY SAYS EXPOSURE WAS ‘LOW LEVEL’

Some critics on the ecological front say the Reagan, now stationed in San Diego, is still so radioactive that it needs to be sunk. It floated around the Pacific for many weeks after the Fukushima humanitarian mission ended, as no Pacific Rim country would give it permission to dock.

The Navy insists that the radiation exposure was not extreme. As proof, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency produced a 197-page probe titled “Radiation Dose Assessments for Fleet-Based Individuals in Operation Tomodachi,”which is available for public inspection.

“All assets that supported Operation Tomodachi were closely monitored for radiation and kept an appropriate distance from Fukushima to limit radioactive contamination and ensure their safety,” said a statement from Navy spokesman Lt. Greg D. Raelson.

“U.S. Navy ships and aircraft that participated in Operation Tomodachi were equipped to reduce, eliminate and control radioactive contamination,” he continued. “Ship’s company used sensitive instruments to identify areas containing radioactivity, took action to control the spread of the radioactivity, and washed and cleaned areas of the ship that contained radioactivity. There is no indication that any U.S. personnel supporting Operation Tomodachi experienced radiation exposure at levels associated with the occurrence of long-term health effects.

“Low levels of radioactive contamination did enter ventilation systems, which have numerous inaccessible areas difficult to perform radiological surveys and decontamination. However, ship’s company took action to control the spread and there is no indication that any remaining minimal levels of radiation pose any adverse health concern. Radiological controls are in place to survey, control and remove remaining contamination in ventilation systems during maintenance operations and availabilities,” Raelson said.

The sailors, of course, will argue. The U.S. military has not always been forthcoming about the risks it has subjected people to, from the explosion of nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll as ships and crews looked on, to the poorly handled cleanup of San Francisco’s Treasure Island, where an inspector in 2008 reported finding radium pieces that emitted enough radiation for a person at close range to receive, in an hour, five times the maximum radiation a nuclear worker is allowed to absorb in a year.

Crew members cannot, however, sue the U.S. government over the incident. That’s generally verboten for members of the military, who are expected to land in harm’s way.

We’ll keep you posted on how the judge rules on the new suit and TEPCO’s motion to dismiss. The Reagan, for its part, is slated to move to a new home port this year. In Japan.

Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com or Twitter: @ocwatchdog