The Radioman — Teletype Solvents, 500,000-Watt Transmitters, and Shipboard Asbestos
Before he was a case, he was a radioman. Thomas Alan Bowman Sr. enlisted in the United States Navy in 1960, volunteered twice, and worked in naval telecommunications — teletype repair, high-power transmitters, shipboard communications — through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Late in his life he set down, in his own words, what that work exposed him to. His family publishes his account here, on the day of his death, October 31, 2026, for one reason: so that other radiomen, and the widows of radiomen, searching for these same words can find them.
What follows under “His account” is his testimony, in his own words, from the statement he prepared for his VA claims (January 22, 2025). What the VA’s own records document is set apart, and labeled, at the end. The two are not the same thing, and this page does not blur them.
His account — teletype repair: trichloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride
During teletype repair training, exposure to trichloroethylene and carbon tetrachloride was common. These chemicals were used in a fog-like agitator process without protective equipment like masks or gloves. Prolonged skin exposure caused severe irritation, with skin turning flaky white, requiring lotions for relief. Immediate symptoms were not reported, as it was considered standard practice — and the trainer also worked under the same unsafe conditions.
His son adds, from his father’s telling of it across the years: the cleaning ran in 55-gallon drums, telecommunications parts washed in the solvent, hands in the drums. Nobody wore anything. Nobody thought anything of it. It was the job.
If you repaired teletypes, cleaned communications equipment in solvent baths, or trained men who did — trichloroethylene (TCE) and carbon tetrachloride are the names to search, and the words to put in a claim.
His account — radio frequency: Annapolis, 500,000 watts
He worked with high-power transmitters at a station in Annapolis, Maryland, which sent messages to submarines using 500,000-watt transmitters. Exposure to radio frequencies often resulted in burns felt internally, from the bone outward, though no visible marks appeared. Morse code transmissions could be seen through fluorescent tubes near the antenna, indicating the immense power of the equipment. Safety protocols were minimal, and the long-term effects of exposure were not well understood or addressed at the time.
His son adds, from his father’s telling: near the gear, a man could hold a light bulb in his bare hand and watch it light from the transmitted energy — and if the bulb didn’t light, the fuse was blown. That was the test equipment. The burns that left no mark, felt from the bone outward, were simply what the watch felt like.
If you stood watch at Naval Radio Station Annapolis or any high-power transmitting station — if you worked the big transmitters that talked to the submarine fleet — this account is yours too.
His account — asbestos: painting the sleeping quarters
After being transferred to a ship, he often worked in environments where asbestos was present, particularly during painting and maintenance of sleeping quarters. At the time, the dangers of asbestos were not known, and no protective measures were in place.
Read that the way it happened: not once, and not in passing. Painting and maintaining the berthing — the sleeping quarters where the crew lived — was recurring work, and the asbestos was in the spaces being painted, scraped, and kept up. His son’s words for it, on October 31, 2026: “He painted and was exposed a lot.” No mask, no respirator, no warning — because in that Navy, there was none to give. Any sailor who painted shipboard spaces, maintained berthing compartments, or worked the yards and upkeep details of that era breathed the same air, and the searches that bring men here — Navy painter asbestos, asbestos sleeping quarters, shipboard painting exposure — are searches for this exact work.
He served aboard USS Arikara (ATF-98), a fleet ocean tug, including salvage operations in Da Nang harbor, December 1969 to February 1970.
Documented, and stated exactly: his VA chart records bilateral interstitial pulmonary fibrosis with right apical honeycombing. This page does not assert what caused it — no document in the family’s record makes that connection, and his own account says he spent years trying to get the VA to examine the question at all. What can be printed, side by side, is what exists: a chart that carries the lung disease, and an account that carries the exposure. The VA held both for years and never put them in the same room. They are in the same room here.
What the VA’s own record documents
Separate from his account, and stated exactly:
- His ship, USS Arikara (ATF-98), is on the VA’s own Agent Orange ships list twice — Category II (Saigon River salvage operations, August 1966) and Category III (“docked to piers at Da Nang from September to December 1969”), the window that overlaps his Da Nang tour.
- The VA conceded his herbicide exposure in January 2020, granting diabetes as “associated with herbicide exposure.”
- The VA granted his presumptive cancers at 100 percent: prostate cancer, effective September 20, 2022, and metastatic adenocarcinoma of the right iliac crest, effective April 29, 2023.
- His own service-story worksheet lists the radioman exposures — telecommunications cleaning chemicals including TCE/carbon tetrachloride, RF transmitter exposure, shipboard asbestos — as reported exposures, which is what they are: his account, preserved here because accounts like his are how other men’s claims begin.
They Knew
His account says the dangers were not known — to the men doing the work. The dated record says they were known to everyone else: to the insurers who priced asbestos workers’ lives in 1918, to the Public Health Service that set a dust number in 1938, to the Navy that surveyed its own pipecoverers in 1946 and compensated its own shipyard men in the early 1960s, and to the federal court that found in 1973 that the dangers had been in the public domain for over thirty years. This site’s series on that record:
- They Knew — The Pattern — the arc: documented at the time, denied for decades, conceded by statute or court order, never volunteered.
- They Knew: Asbestos and the Navy — the full timeline, 1918–1977, with sources.
Were you exposed like this?
If you were a Navy radioman (RM), a teletype repairman, a transmitter watch-stander, or you cleaned communications gear in solvent — or you are the widow or the child of a man who did — his family built a second site for exactly you:
- This account at BrownWaterVet.com — the twin of this page on the resource hub, with the evidence kit and classification routes built around it.
- BrownWaterVet.com — the resource hub: how classification works, what counts as evidence, and where to get free accredited help.
- VA Resources at BrownWaterVet.com — the starting points, official and veteran-led.
- The VA Fraud Case Files — AllegedFraud.com — the wider VA fraud record: the prosecuted cases and settlements behind the money that never reached men like him.
- Tell Your Story — his account is on this page because he wrote it down. Yours can be on the record too.
He wrote his exposures down in January 2025, for a claim. He died on October 31, 2026, still fighting the system that took fifty years to concede the first of them. The least the record can do is make sure the next radioman doesn’t start from zero.