“Baby Heaven: The Buried Stories of Camp Lejeune” aired on NBC News NOW on Thursday, May 9

Anna Lazarus Caplan | May 9, 2024 | This article was originally published in People

For years, those who lived at Camp Lejeune were told that there was nothing wrong with the water. But in the NBC News special Baby Heaven: The Buried Stories of Camp Lejeune, five mothers share their devastating stories about how that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“All the wives in the squadron, they all had either birth defects of their children or they lost their babies,” one mother says in PEOPLE’s exclusive first look at the special, which airs Thursday, May 9, and highlights reporter Cynthia McFadden’s nearly year-long investigation into the North Carolina training facility.

At another point in the clip, she revisits the moment she was told the words no mom wants to hear.
“The doctor said to me, ‘Your baby’s dead. And remember this wasn’t our fault,’ ” she recalls being told.

Another mother recalls a nurse telling her, “I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve never seen a case like this.”

In fact, so many families lost children that funeral directors near the North Carolina base collectively purchased a section of a cemetery — which was referred to as “Baby Heaven” — so that they could donate burial plots, per the one-hour documentary.

Despite dealing with “brown” water that “smelled like diesel fuel” in their barracks, Camp Lejeune residents say they were continually told not to be concerned.

Even after a chemist alerted senior officials that the water was contaminated with cancer-causing dry cleaning fluid, it wasn’t until 1984 that further tests prompted the removal of 10 contaminated wells, the documentary says.

But “the obfuscations, the half-truths and the total lies” continued to mount, another individual featured in the special tells McFadden.

Earlier this year, a long-awaited study by the CDC showed that military personnel stationed at the base from 1975-1985 had at least a 20% higher risk for cancer, compared to those stationed elsewhere, according to the Associated Press.

In late 2023, more than a year after a federal law was enacted that provides compensation to victims at Camp Lejeune, the U.S. government began compensating those affected, Reuters reported.

Yet as one mother reveals in Baby Heaven, the contaminated water and the military’s inaction is forever a tragic shared history for thousands who lived at the base.

“For the past 39 years, I’ve blamed myself,” she says.

Baby Heaven: The Buried Stories of Camp Lejeune premiered Thursday, May 9 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC News NOW.