'Baby Heaven: The Buried Stories of Camp Lejeune'

Just outside Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine base in North Carolina, sits a quiet cemetery dubbed “Baby Heaven” by those who lived and served there. Row upon row of small headstones mark the graves of newborns who died in stillbirth or from other complications, many linked directly to their mothers’ exposure to one of the largest water contamination cases in U.S. history. ‎ While the federal government has acknowledged that Marines and others living and working on the base were exposed to dangerously contaminated water between 1953 and 1987, most of the attention has been on the men struggling with cancer and other resulting diseases. Women’s stories have largely been forgotten. Until now. ‎ Cynthia McFadden and her team at the NBC News Investigative Unit spent months finding women who were exposed to these dangerous chemicals. They discovered mothers who not only lost their babies, but felt abandoned by the Marine Corps. This is the story of their battle to hold the Marines accountable.May 9, 2024