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U.S. Vets Break Silence on Nuclear Strike Ordered in 1962

U.S. veterans reveal 1962 nuclear close call dodged in Okinawa

Kyodo News

By Masakatsu Ota

TOKYO, March 27, 2015

At the final moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the U.S. nuclear missile men in Okinawa received a launch order which was later found to have been mistakenly issued, according to testimonies by former U.S. veterans given to Kyodo News.

In the fall of 1962, the Soviet Union introduced nuclear missiles into Cuba from where Moscow could target the mainland of the United States. U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his top advisers then seriously considered military options as a countermeasure, and the two superpowers were on the brink of nuclear exchanges.

The testimonies by the veterans, who gazed into the "abyss" of a nuclear war, shed new historical light on a nuclear close call which could have triggered the use of nuclear weapons, highlighting the potential risk of an accidental nuclear launch.

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