60 Minutes - 04/28/2024: Children of War, Nvidia, Crisis at Pearl Harbor

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Correspondent Scott Pelley reports on America’s children of war, often overlooked, who live with disabled military veterans. Millions of American youth across the country navigate complex childhoods, witness the emotional and physical impact of service on wounded warriors, and help the veteran and their families through hard times. Pelley speaks with Senator Elizabeth Dole, who created a foundation to support military caregivers, and two families of U.S. veterans who have carried the burden of America’s post-9/11 wars. One of only five companies to ever surpass two trillion dollars in stock market value, computer chip maker Nvidia ushered in the artificial intelligence revolution with its groundbreaking software and graphics processing unit, a chip that enables AI by accelerating the processing power of computers. Correspondent Bill Whitaker meets Nvidia’s CEO and co-founder, Jensen Huang, to discuss the company’s innovations and the rapidly expanding range of AI applications, including drug development, weather pattern prediction, and more. Soon after a fuel spill occurred close to the Navy’s main drinking water system at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, base leadership assured thousands of families in military housing that their tap water was safe. Parents later learned the truth: the water they drank or used to bathe their children was contaminated with jet fuel. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi tours the once secret fuel storage site where the water crisis at Pearl Harbor began and meets military families who blame their health problems on the Navy’s response to the spill. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. It's a real privilege to be able to

travel and to see different places. Taking yourself out of comfortable positions and challenging yourself. No one builds a legacy by standing still. Start your journey at Remover.com. Over the years, we've reported on the more than half a million U.S. servicemen and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I couldn't even make sense of it, but… Tonight, you'll hear PTSD can be contagious. The worst of it was in seventh grade.

I kind of decided that my family would be better off without me here. NVIDIA has had a blistering ride to the top of the stock market. Bill, look at this. How does NVIDIA's technology make artificial intelligence possible? Who are you? I am Fiona,

a representation of Mother Nature. It does quadrillions of calculations a second. It's just insane numbers. And medical researchers and high-tech companies tell us this technology will affect our lives in ways we can only imagine. This is wild. Yeah. It's an incredible feat. Pearl Harbor's Redhill bulk fuel storage facility. Seven miles of tunnels cut through volcanic rock built to hold 250 million gallons of fuel.

So this is one of the tanks. Oh my gosh. And to give you kind of a reference point, the Statue of Liberty, not the base, but the statue itself, can fit in here with enough room. Tonight, you'll hear what happened at this once-secret site and how it's affected thousands of military families. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard

and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash viporter to learn more. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered

without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Two million Americans served in Afghanistan and Iraq,

and at least 600,000 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. For the most part, the U.S. is doing better, recognizing and treating these wounded warriors. But less well-known are millions more who are in need but remain hidden. They are the children living with injured veterans. In a profound sense, PTSD can be contagious. Many children have become caregivers confronting depression and fear, and you will hear tonight that the stress can be so great it can lead to attempts of suicide. You're about to meet two courageous families who spoke to us so that others can know that help is on the way for America's children of war.

In 2011, Chuck Rotenberry was a Marine on patrol in Afghanistan when an improvised landmine detonated a few feet away. Which sent me down a hill 20, 30 feet, knocked me out. Caused catastrophic injuries to the Marine behind me and the Marine behind him. It was Rotenberry's second combat tour after Iraq. What happened to the Marine behind you who had stepped on the IED? He lost both his legs above the knee. You and the medic put the tourniquets on him?

Yes, sir. You saved his life? I helped out, yeah. When Rodenberry came home from his seven-month deployment, his wife Liz was pregnant with their fourth child. Chuck was suffering with a brain injury from a concussion and PTSD. Chuck was struggling to just be in the house because he was dealing with so many emotions mentally and physically. He was hiding in, you know, back rooms and I'd find him crying and he

didn't understand why he was crying. I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Chuck kept a video diary as he dealt with self-isolation, anxiety, depression, and denial. One second I'm up super high, the next I'm not. Chuck, who was that man who came home? In my head, it was me. But I was very far from it, I think. At age seven, his son Christopher pitched in. Over the years, he tried to shield his dad from triggers that set him off and shield his sisters from the emotional trauma. I was just worried about a lot of different things. Things that kids, I guess, at that age,

should not be worried about. And it kind of evolved into kind of like a helplessness. He was becoming almost like my husband. There were times where he wouldn't be able to go to school because he was so stressed internally from everything happening, and I don't think he knew how to process it and understand it. I knew Christopher was starting to struggle with the weight of it all. The weight grew as Chris turned 12. The worst of it was in seventh grade.

I think I kind of decided that, you know, my family would be better off without me here. I remember looking back on those days. It was just chaos all the time. And I remember taking one of the dog's leashes upstairs and tied one into the bunk bed that we had, my little brother's bunk bed, and I tried hanging myself. It was working, and my mom walked in on me, kind of, and I think I was about to pass out. I was kind of, you know, losing consciousness. Walking in and seeing what was happening to him and what he was really struggling with, I knew everything else had to stop. Everything just had to stop, and my focus had to be Christopher.

Liz became the warrior, fighting for her family. Christopher went to intensive therapy. Then he and his sisters enrolled in a clinic for military children confronting PTSD. It's hard as a military family to own that when you're built with such pride and strength and you're seen as resilient as the word is in our community. But it's okay to not be resilient, and it's okay to ask for help. Therapy saved your family. It did. Little was known about families like the Rotenberries

until the wife of a wounded warrior spent 10 months at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Elizabeth Dole, former senator and transportation secretary, heard these families while caring for the late Senator Bob Dole. And I met all of these young spouses, mothers, dads who were caring for their wounded warriors. I don't think America is aware of what's happening. Most Americans have no idea what's happening in these military families. Less than 1% are serving in the military today. Less than 1% are protecting our freedom and our security. And it's so important for us to raise awareness of their challenges and their needs and provide them with the support.

Dole created a foundation that commissioned studies of military caregivers. The studies discovered that more than one million are caring for those injured during the war since 9-11. Nearly half said they were overwhelmed. You know, they felt guilty, really, that they were leaning on their children so much, needing their support, and that this was causing problems for the children. There are 2.3 million military children living in the homes of wounded warriors. One of them is Elizabeth Cornelius. And I just need to make sure everybody's okay,

because if my mom isn't okay, everything's going to just fall. Elizabeth has helped her mom, Ariel, as long as she can remember. Even before she was born, her dad brought terrifying memories home from a combat tour in Iraq. Ariel told us his first episode came with a pizza delivery. The delivery man came up to the door and knocked on the door. And, you know, my husband didn't expect it. And he had, you know, an immediate flashback and threw me to the floor and was yelling, get down, get down, get down, get down. Even with that, he deployed to Iraq again in 2007 and to Afghanistan in 2011. Ariel is a schoolteacher.

Her husband is completely disabled by PTSD. He can't work and wasn't up to speaking with us. Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth has become something of a co-parent to a brother and sister at home in Montana, shielding them, she told us, from episodes and arguments. I just tried to shield them as much as I can, as my mom did for me, and she did it for a very long time. A lot of it falls on myself, and then she goes out and helps pick up the pieces that I can't. Her husband's worst crisis came on the anniversary of an attack that killed several of his fellow Marines.

Oh, gosh. He was extremely suicidal because of all the memories that came back. He was barely hanging on. And it's just that regret. It's the flow of memories that come in. Extremely suicidal, but Ariel found beds for inpatient mental health care can be scarce. You know, Helena is an hour and a half, two hours away. Casper, Wyoming is eight-plus hours away.

And they didn't have a bed. We then looked away. And they didn't have a bed. We then looked at Idaho. They didn't have a bed. We looked at Oregon. They didn't have a bed. We still ended up having to wait three weeks before he could get the support he needed in Puget Sound, Washington. And, you know, that's 10 hours away. Three weeks during this time, you felt like he could commit suicide? At any point in time. And we couldn't get help. Chasing care in a crisis and navigating government health insurance raised stress for everyone. It's rough on her because she's been on the phone for hours and hours

reading pamphlets trying to find us help. In 2018, Elizabeth Dole watched President Trump sign a law that expanded VA benefits for caregivers of the severely disabled. It offers a stipend, access to health insurance, and counseling. The Dole Foundation's studies found that at least 100 other organizations are providing support, which now include the Dole Foundation itself. Steve Schwab is the CEO. How does the foundation help these children? One of the first things that we do is we offer emergency financial support to anybody who needs it. Second is peer support. We're building a first-of-its-kind peer support model that will link these

children with other children like them for the first time in their lives. We offer on-the-ground respite care, backup care in the home to provide a trained health care worker to come in and back up that mom or dad so that that family can take a break together. One Dole Foundation partner called Our Military Kids paid fees to help keep the Cornelius children in sports. Their mom, Ariel, says that even the little things help her husband. He is an amazing man and I can't wait for him to get past, and I know he'll never get past the PTSD, but for him to heal enough to enjoy life and to be able to enjoy the family dynamics and just being around.

You have hope for that. I sure do, yeah. Today, Liz Rotenberry leads a Dole Foundation initiative to train caregivers to be public advocates, for example, on Capitol Hill. Husband Chuck is recovering and works as a dog trainer for the Secret Service. And son Christopher recovered and has applied to follow his father into the military. After all the things that Chris did to help the family during your troubles, what would you like your son to know? First of all, everybody that's in my life now, I wouldn't be here without them.

I tell them I love them all the time. in my life now, I wouldn't be here without them. I tell him I love him all the time. And he replies. But I never really say why. Watching him grow, being aware of other people, there's plenty of proud dad moments for me. But I'm proud of you every day. All the time.

You owe me nothing. But to be happy. More than just about anything, these families told us they want the nation to simply see and know the children living with disabled vets who are, in a sense, still fighting America's post-911 wars. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade.

Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Only four companies in the world are worth more than $2 trillion. Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, parent company of Google, and computer chip maker Nvidia. The California-based company saw its stock market value soar from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in just eight months this past year, fueled by the insatiable demand for its cutting-edge technology, the hardware and software that make today's artificial intelligence possible.

We wondered how a company founded in 1993 to improve video game graphics turned into a titan of 21st century AI. So we went to Silicon Valley to meetIA's 61-year-old co-founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, who has no doubt AI is about to change everything. At NVIDIA's annual developers conference this past March, the mood wasn't just upbeat. It was downright giddy. More than 11,000 enthusiasts, software developers, tech moguls, and happy shareholders filed into San Jose's pro hockey arena to kick off a four-day AI extravaganza. They came to see this man, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA.

Welcome to GTC. What was that like for you to walk out on that stage and see that? You know, Bill, I'm an engineer, not a performer. When I walked out there and all of the people going crazy, it took the breath out of me. And so I was the scariest I've ever been. I'm still scared. You'd never know it. Clad in his signature cool black outfit, Jensen shared the stage with NVIDIA-powered robots. Let me finish up real quick. And shared his vision of an AI future. A new industrial revolution. It reminded us of the transformational moment when Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone.

Jensen Huang unveiled NVIDIA's latest graphics processing unit, or GPU. This is Blackwell. Designed in America, but made in Taiwan like most advanced semiconductors, Blackwell, he says, is the fastest chip ever. Google is gearing up for Blackwell. The whole industry is gearing up for Blackwell. NVIDIA ushered in the AI revolution with its game-changing GPU, a single chip able to process a myriad of calculations all at once, not sequentially like more standard chips.

The GPU is the engine of NVIDIA's AI computer, enabling it to rapidly absorb a firehose of information. It does quadrillions of calculations a second. It's just insane numbers. Is it doing things now that surprise you? We're hoping that it does things that surprise us. That's just insane numbers. Is it doing things now that surprise you? We're hoping that it does things that surprise us. That's the whole point. In some areas like drug discovery, designing better materials that are lighter, stronger. We need artificial intelligence to help us explore the universe in places that we could

have never done ourselves. Let me show you. Here, Bill, look at this. Jensen took us around the GTC convention hall to show us what AI has made possible in just the past few years. I'm making your drink now. Some creations were dazzling. This is a digital twin of the earth. Once it learns how to calculate weather, it can calculate and predict weather 3,000 times faster than a supercomputer and 1,000 times less energy. But NVIDIA's AI revolution extends far beyond this hall. Blue metallic spaceship. And let's generate something. Pinar Seyhan Demirda is originally from Istanbul, but co-founded Qubrick near Boston. Her AI application

uses NVIDIA's GPUs to instantly turn a simple text prompt into a virtual movie set for a fraction of the cost of today's backdrops. This isn't something that's already planned. No, we're doing it in real time. It's live. Is Hollywood knocking at your door? And we're getting a lot of love. Nearby at Generate Biomedicines, Dr. Alex Snyder, head of research and development, is using NVIDIA's technology to create protein-based drugs. She was surprised at first to see they showed promise in the lab. Initially, when I was told about the application of AI to drug development, I sort of rolled my eyes and said, yeah, you know, show me the data. And then I looked at the data, and it was very compelling.

Dr. Snyder's team asks its AI models to create new proteins to fight specific diseases like cancer and asthma. A new way to defeat the coronavirus is now in clinical trials. You're now working with proteins that do not exist in nature, that you're coming up with by way of AI? Yes. We are actually generating

what we call de novo, completely new structures that have not existed before. Do you trust it? As scientists, we can't trust. We have to test. We're not putting frankensteins into people. We're taking what's known, and we're really pushing the field. We're pushing the biology to make drugs that look like regular drugs, but function even better.

This is a technology that will only get better from here. Brett Adcock is CEO of Figure, a Silicon Valley startup with funding from NVIDIA. Look at his answer to labor shortages, an NVIDIA GPU-driven prototype called Figure One. I think what's been really extraordinary is the pace of progress we've made in 21 months. From zero to this in 21 months. Zero to this, yeah. We were walking this robot in under a year since I incorporated the company. Could you do this without Nvidia's technology?

We think they're arguably the best in the world at this. I don't know if this would be possible without them. I'm here to assist with tasks as requested. We were amazed that figure one is not just walking, but seemed to reason. Hand me something healthy. On it. Figure one was able to understand I wanted the orange, not the packaged snack. Thank you. It's not yet perfected. You're going to get it. But the early results are so promising, German automaker BMW plans to start testing the robot in its South Carolina factory this year.

I think there's an opportunity to ship billions of robots in the coming decades onto the planet. Billions. I would think that a lot of workers would look at that as, this robot is taking my job. I think over time, AI and robotics will start doing more and more of what humans can and better. But what about the worker? The workers work for companies. And so companies, when they become more productive, earnings increase. I've never seen one company that had earnings increase and not hire more people. There are some jobs that are going to become obsolete.

Well, let me offer it this way. I believe that you still want human in the loop, because we have good judgment, because there are circumstances that the machines are not just not going to understand. The futuristic NVIDIA Campus sits just down the road from its modest birthplace, this Denny's in San Jose. Good morning. Where 31 years ago, NVIDIA was just an idea. My goodness. When he was 15, Jensen Huang worked as a dishwasher at Denny's.

As a 30-year-old electrical engineer married with two children, he and two friends, NVIDIA co-founders Chris Malachowski and Curtis Preem, envisioned a whole new way of processing video game graphics. So we came here, right here to this Denny's, sat right back there, and the three of us decided to start the company. Frankly, I had no idea how to do it. And nor did they. None of us knew how to do anything. Their big idea? Accelerate the processing power of computers with a new graphics chip. Their initial attempt flopped and nearly bankrupted the company in 1996.

And the genius of the engineers and Chris and Curtis, we pivoted to the right way of doing things. And created their groundbreaking GPU. The chip took video games from this... to this today. Completely changed computer graphics, saved the company, launched us into the stratosphere. Just eight years after Denny's,

NVIDIA earned a spot in the S&P 500. Jensen then set his sights on developing the software and hardware for a revolutionary GPU-driven supercomputer, which would take the company far beyond video games. To Wall Street, it was a risky bet. To early developers of AI, it was a revelation. Was that luck or was that vision? That was luck founded by vision.

We invented this capability, and then one day, the researchers that were creating Deep Learning discovered this architecture, because this architecture turns out to have been perfect for them. Perfect for AI. Perfect for AI. This is the first one we've ever shipped. In 2016, Jensen delivered NVIDIA's AI supercomputer, the first of its kind, to Elon Musk, then

a board member of OpenAI, which used it to create the building blocks of ChatGPT. How are you? When AI took off, so did Jensen Huang's reputation. Can we get a picture? Yeah, yeah. He's now a Silicon Valley celebrity. He told us the boy who immigrated from Taiwan at age nine could never have conceived of this. It is the most extraordinary thing, Bill, that a normal dishwasher busboy could grow up to be this.

There's no magic. It's just 61 years of hard work every single day. I don't think there's anything more than that. We met a humble Jensen at Denny's. Back at NVIDIA's headquarters in Santa Clara, we saw he can be intense. Let me tell you what some of the people who you work with said about you. Demanding. Perfectionist. Not easy to work for.

All that sound right? Perfectly, yeah. It should be like that. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn't be easy. All right, guys, keep up the good work. NVIDIA has never done better. Investors are bullish.

But last year, more than 600 top AI scientists, ethicists, and others signed this statement urging caution, warning of AI's risk to humanity. When I talk to you and I hear you speak, part of me goes, gee whiz. And the other part of me goes, oh my God, what are we in for? Yeah. Yeah. Which one is it? It's both. It's both. Yeah. You're feeling all the right feelings. I feel both. You feel both? Sure, sure. Humanity will have the choice to see themselves inferior to machines or superior to machines. Pinar Seyhan Demirda is an AI optimist, though she named her company

Kubrick, an homage to Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001, A Space Odyssey. Hello, Hal, do you read me? In that film, Hal, the AI computer, goes rogue. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. I think that's what worries people about AI, that we will lose control of it. Just because a machine can do faster calculations, comparisons, and analytical solution creation,

that doesn't make you smarter than you. It simply computates faster. In my world, in my belief, smarts have to do with your capacity to love, create, expand, transcend. These are qualities that no machine can ever bear, that are reserved to only humans. There is something going on. Jensen Huang sees an AI future of progress and prosperity, not one with machines as our masters. We can only hope he's right. Thank you all for coming. Thank you. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side,

or B-side, or Bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. The U.S. military takes pride in protecting its own. That's why military families we met in Hawaii told us they feel so betrayed. Two years ago, there was a fuel spill close to the drinking

water system at the Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii. Navy leadership assured thousands of military families that the tap water was safe. But nearly two weeks after the spill, parents learned the truth. The water they drank or used to bathe their kids contained jet fuel. Tonight, you'll hear from some of the families who say the jet fuel tainted water made them sick. But first, we'll go to where the water crisis at Pearl Harbor began. From the air, the historic naval base is easy to spot. Eight miles from Honolulu, sparkling blue waters host battle gray ships and memorials to those killed by Japan's surprise attack in 1941. What you can't see is the once-secret storage

site that provided fuel for the Pacific Fleet and its planes for 80 years. It doesn't look like much from the outside. Wait till you get inside. Vice Admiral John Wade led us through the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, seven miles of tunnels cut through volcanic rock built to hold 250 million gallons of fuel. So this is one of the tanks. Oh my gosh. That black hole is a steel-lined fuel tank so deep it's hard to see the bottom 20 stories below.

To just show you how enormous this is, this tank holds 12.5 million gallons. And to give you kind of a reference point, the Statue of Liberty, not the base, but the statue itself, can fit in here with enough room. And this is just one of the 20 tanks hidden here. This is the Arizona, writhing in death agony. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, construction was already underway to protect the Navy's fuel reserves from an aerial attack. The decision was made to embark on a herculean task to build a bulk storage fuel facility inside a mountain in secrecy. And how long did that take to do? It was a little less than three years. At its peak, there are about 4,000 men working here. Watch your head. We're going to go this way. But this testament to American resolve became a

monumental liability after this. That's jet fuel spraying from a cracked pipe. The video was recorded by a worker inside Red Hill on November 20th of 2021. The fuel, 20,000 gallons of it, was trapped in a plastic pipe. The weight caused the pipe to sag. This trolley hit it and jet fuel spewed for 21 hours close to the well that supplied drinking water for 93,000 people on and around the base at Pearl Harbor. According to Navy investigators, the workers who responded didn't have the right tools to contain the spill. They also assumed there was no danger to the drinking water. They were wrong. At least 5,000 gallons of jet fuel drained into the tunnel floor and into the Navy water

system. The next day, the Navy issued a press release about the incident and told the 8,400 families living in military housing the water remained safe to drink, even though the Navy had not tested the water yet. A week later, residents began to notice a problem. When did you get the sense that there was something wrong with the water? My husband came into the kitchen and washed his hands and said, gosh, the water smells like I just did an oil change, like the water smells weird. Brittany Traeger lived on base, about two and a

half miles from Red Hill, with her daughter and husband, who is a Navy chief petty officer. Traeger says she began to feel sick a week after the spill. I had a cough. My tonsils were very swollen. I remember a very distinct moment where I was walking to the car and I had vertigo so bad that I had to hold on to the car. The smell was that overwhelming. In an email to residents nine days after the spill, the commanding officer of the base reassured residents, there are no immediate indications that the water is not safe. My staff and I are drinking the water. Did you stop using water? Did you stop taking baths? So I did, my daughter did. Just because you had a bad feeling not

because anybody told you to? Correct. They gave us an email address that we could send an email to if we wanted to have our water tested. So I emailed those people who then emailed me a phone number that I should call and I called that phone number for days and it was just busy. They were overwhelmed and inundated with reports. Ten days after the spill, there were more than 200 reports from six neighborhoods across the base of strong fuel odor coming from kitchen and bathroom faucets.

But the Navy said its initial tests did not detect fuel. It defied logic. You know, even though there was a leak, and even though our water smelled like jet fuel, and even though there was sheen on it, they continued to say the tests are coming back negative. After 12 days and four statements assuring residents the water was not contaminated with fuel, the Navy reversed course. On December 2, 2021, it announced more comprehensive tests conducted by the Navy had detected jet fuel in the water. Three weeks after the spill, tests from Hawaii's Department of Health revealed jet fuel levels 350 times higher than what the state considers safe. Rochelle Dietz lives on base with her husband, a Navy chief petty officer, and their two children. Jet fuel's not something that you would even think could happen to be in your water.

How were people reacting to the news? I was so sick to my stomach from that news that I actually threw up when I heard. Because why? Because my kids had just been poisoned. Within a month, the Navy set up medical tents for residents. Some complained of stomach problems, severe fatigue, and coughing. The military moved more than 4,000 families to hotels. Small studies of military personnel suggest jet fuel exposure can lead to neurological and breathing problems. But the long-term impact of ingesting jet fuel is unknown because it's so unlikely to ever happen.

Rochelle Dietz told us days after the spill, her daughter's tonsils became inflamed and her son started suffering from chronic headaches. I can hear people saying, tonsils, headaches, kids get that stuff. How do you know it's related? Because they never had it before November of 2021. It wasn't an issue. It's unclear how many got sick, but of 2,000 people who responded to a survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 850 sought medical care. The water system was flushed over three months and bottled water brought in. Brittany Traeger said her four-year-old now suffers respiratory problems, which require hour-long treatments at least two times a day. That includes a nebulizer and this vibrating vest to clear her lungs. Tell me about your daughter's health.

Thirteen days. After the contamination, after our water smelled like jet fuel, my daughter woke up in the hotel with a cough and it pretty much never went away. Three months passed before Pearl Harbor's drinking water was deemed safe again. The Navy's own investigation into the spill described, quote, cascading failures and revealed poor training, supervision, and ineffective leadership at Red Hill that fell unacceptably short of Navy standards. For the last 10 years, Hawaiians have raised concerns about the threat from smaller leaks

at Red Hill. The primary water supply for the city of Honolulu is 100 feet below the Navy complex. In March of 2022, the Secretary of Defense ordered Red Hill permanently closed. Vice Admiral John Wade was brought in to get the 104 million gallons of fuel out of the tanks and move it safely to sites around the Pacific. We've got it to fuel. That's the imminent threat. There's ongoing and will be continued long-term environmental remediation to restore the aquifer, the land and surrounding area, and then there's also a medical component for those that have been impacted. You view now this thing that was a lifeline for the fleet is a threat.

That's right. That's right. In six months, Wade's team in Hawaii successfully removed almost all of the fuel. But it took two years before the Navy issued disciplinary letters to 14 officers involved in the spill response, including five admirals. Was anyone fired because of this? At the time that the accountability came through, we had officers that had already retired, and so they had already separated from service. Meredith Berger is an assistant secretary of the Navy. We met her at the Pentagon in November.

She told us the Navy has been accountable. We're talking about 20,000 gallons of fuel leak, 90,000 people had their water contaminated. It looks like people retired or were reassigned, and no one was fired. How is that accountability? It's accountability within the system that we have established, and we have heard that this was too long and that maybe it

didn't go far enough. Two thousand military families agree the Navy didn't go far enough and are suing the government. The Traegers and Dietzes have joined the lawsuit, alleging they were harmed by negligence at Red Hill. Are you angry that it happened, or are you angry at what happened after? It's a little bit of anger, but it's also this feeling of betrayal. What do you mean, betrayal? So my husband has been in for almost 18 years.

We have moved our family cross-country, cross-oceans. We gave so much of our life to the Navy for them to ignore warnings, and then we were directly and blatantly lied to about it. Navy leadership has apologized for the spill, but has not said that the contaminated water is the cause of the ongoing illnesses. The Navy did set up a clinic on base to collect data and treat anyone who believes they have health issues related to the tainted water. What happens in 5 or 10 or 15 years? Will those services still be available to these families?

So that is part of why we are making sure that we're collecting that information to inform future actions and what the requirements are for those types of needs and care. That doesn't sound like a guarantee of care in the future. And I want to be careful because I don't do the health care part of things, and so I don't want to speak outside of where I have any authority or decision. So we followed up with the Defense Department, which told us it's reviewing the question of long-term health care for military families, including more than 3,100

children. Two years after the spill, some residents have reported water with a smell or sheen. The Navy is conducting daily tests at Pearl Harbor and says it is confident there is no fuel in the tap water. Rochelle Dietz is still using bottled water. The lawsuit she joined with Brittany Traeger and the other military families is scheduled to go to trial tomorrow. What is the remedy that you want? In our family, it's restoring my faith in our nation. That's a big thing to say. There's a body of government that failed. They contaminated our water. They lied to us. They did not protect us. And they did not intervene. And accountability looks like a lifelong care plan for me, my family, and the people affected. And that will restore my faith in my nation.

Now, the last minute of 60 Minutes. Tonight, an update of a story we reported this past December, chaos on campus. In the wake of Hamas's bloody attack on Israeli civilians on October 7th last year, and Israel's deadly bombardment and invasion of Gaza, some American college campuses erupted. Charges of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia divided students and faculties alike. We also found it didn't have to be that way. Dartmouth encouraged conversation between supporters of Israel and supporters of Palestinian rights. Creative faculty members found ways

to get the sides together, listen to each other, and foster empathy. This past week, angry campus demonstrations re-erupted across the country. Columbia, USC, Michigan, Emory. At the University of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott ordered state troopers in to quell protests. American education might benefit from a few more Dartmouths. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.