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“At the age of 11… I heard a very large blast and saw a very big flash of light. I got so scared, I thought, ‘the world is coming to an end.’ Then I saw what looked like a large, big, black, giant ball of smoke. It was huge and moving, going higher and higher…” - Henry Herrera, witness to the first nuclear blast
The Trinity Test:
The Trinity Test at Alamogordo was the first nuclear weapon explosion. Like those that followed, it caused irreversible damage to the environment and surrounding communities. Manhattan Project scientists designed the bomb and the test, but had no guarantee it would work. They speculated it would not detonate or, in their most anxious moments, that it might “ignite the atmosphere.”
After the test, Los Alamos Lab director Robert Oppenheimer wrote, “After the first flash, white as scalding milk, / blanched eyes dim in their sockets & grope toward / mortal sight, mere fire roiling in charred air. / Wind fists & lifts a cloak of desert dust / in billows & folds shrugged over scarlet / shoulders of flame. A botched shape slowly stands…‘I am become Death, / destroyer of worlds’…”
Years later, many expressed regret at the terrible scope of their invention. They had not foreseen its many implications and this is most obvious at the Trinity Test. The device was tested with no regard for the environment or surrounding communities, and they still suffer today.
Bernice and Jeanne Gutierrez: Intergenerational Effects
Bernice Gutierrez was born eight days after the Trinity nuclear test explosion. Her daughter Jeanne grew up around the test site.
Listen to their stories about the intergenerational impacts of nuclear weapons and their advocacy.
Life in the fallout zone of the first ever nuclear weapons test:
The communities of the Trinity fallout zone are the ‘Tularosa Basin Downwinders’ because radiation was carried downwind from the nuclear explosion to their homes. When the July 16, 1945 test was being prepared the fallout zone was dramatically underestimated, the effects were barely studied, and no one was evacuated. Residents were not told about the test even as fallout ‘snowed’ over their farms, homes, and wells. The damage became clear almost immediately. In the months following (Aug, Sept, and Oct of 1945) infant mortality in New Mexico increased by 56%, many as a result of rare birth defects. Ionizing radiation is particularly damaging to rapidly developing and dividing cells—infants, children, and pregnant women. But when authorities were alerted, nothing happened.
The rates of cancer began to climb in the Tularosa Basin. One resident, Gloria Herrera, can list 285 people she knows who have died of cancer since the test. The effects are so long-lasting because ionizing radiation results in chromosomal abnormalities that make cancer more likely and can be passed on to the next generation. Downwinders born long after the test still experience high rates of cancer.
The fight for recognition :
Children saw the blast and thought the world was ending. Babies died without explanation. Downwinders have long lists of loved ones with cancers, sometimes the majority of their family. But none of these consequences are recognized by the U.S. government and Tularosa is not included in caretaking agreements for those exposed to nuclear weapons explosions- specifically RECA (the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act). Like the residents of the Marshall Islands and the downwinders of the Nevada Test Site, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders have been forced into a grueling fight to expose the truth about America’s first nuclear weapons and to receive the healthcare they need.
Henry Herrera and two of his sisters are cancer survivors. His brother, niece, and nephew were all lost to cancer. Tularosa Basin knows the human cost of America’s nuclear weapons because they were the first to pay it. Their fight for healthcare and recognition continues through activism and research so that future generations of Downwinders will not suffer the same consequences.