LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — In the summer of 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people as the destructive waves of energy wiped out two cities. It was a crucial step that helped end World War II. But survivors and subsequent generations have had to contend with illnesses caused by radiation exposure.
At the time, US President Harry Truman called it “the greatest scientific gamble in history” and said the rain of destruction from the air would usher in a new concept of force and power. What he failed to mention was that the federal government had already tested this new power on American soil.
Just weeks earlier, the sky in southern New Mexico had been lit up by an incredible flash of light. Windows shattered hundreds of miles away, and a trail of radioactive fallout stretched all the way to the East Coast.
Ash from the Trinity Test rained down for days. Children played in it, thinking it was snow. It covered fresh laundry hanging out to dry. It contaminated crops, scorched livestock and found its way into cisterns used to collect drinking water.
The story of New Mexico’s “downwinders” – the survivors of the world’s first nuclear explosion and those who helped mine the uranium needed for the country’s arsenal – is little known. But that’s changing, as the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” is winning awards at film festivals across the United States.
The film is currently screening as part of the Oppenheimer Film Festival in the northern New Mexico community of Los Alamos. For the once-secret town that has long celebrated the scientific discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the father of the atomic bomb – it is a rare opportunity to reflect on another, more painful part of the nation’s nuclear legacy.
Directed and produced by Lois Lipman, the film examines the displacement of Hispanic ranching families when the Manhattan Project took over the Pajarito Plateau in the early 1940s, the lives forever changed in the Tularosa Basin where the bomb was detonated, and the Native American miners who were never warned about the health risks of working in the uranium industry.
Their heartbreaking stories, interwoven with the testimony of professors and doctors, brought tears to eyes in Los Alamos as well as in Austin, Texas, Annapolis, Maryland, and every other city where the film was shown.
Andi Kron, a long-time resident of Los Alamos, was impressed by the camera work but also horrified when she learned more.
“It’s just unbelievable,” she said, pointing out that even people involved in researching various aspects of the Trinity test decades later were unaware of the plight of the downwinders.
Lipman and others hope to share the documentary with a wider audience as part of an awareness campaign as the Downwinders push to extend and expand the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include more people exposed to radiation through the federal government’s work with nuclear weapons.
For the past decade, Lipman has followed Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium co-founder Tina Cordova as she speaks before Congress, holds countless town hall meetings, and shares meals and prayers with community members.
Lipman expressed her frustration during the Los Alamos premiere, pointing out that despite testimony about the injustices that followed the Trinity test, the federal government has still not acknowledged its failure to acknowledge the harm done nearly 80 years ago.
As the film shows, about half a million people – mostly Hispanics and Native Americans – lived within 150 miles (241.4 kilometers) of the blast site. The area was neither remote nor uninhabited, although the government claims no one lived there and no one was harmed.
In the film, Cordova – herself a cancer survivor – tells community members that they will no longer be martyrs. Her family is one of many from Tularosa and Carrizozo whose mothers, fathers, siblings and children have died from cancer.
“They assumed we were uncultured, uneducated and unable to speak for ourselves. We are not those people anymore,” Cordova said. “I am not that person. You are not those people.”
The U.S. Senate passed a bill earlier this year that would finally recognize downwinders in New Mexico and several other states where nuclear defense work has resulted in contamination and radiation exposure. But the bipartisan bill stalled in the House due to cost concerns raised by some Republican lawmakers.
Cordova and others demonstrated in Las Cruces on Wednesday as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson visited New Mexico to campaign for Republican congressional candidate Yvette Herrell. The Downwinders have vowed to make the issue a campaign issue in the must-win district, as well as in the dozens of other Republican districts across the U.S. that would benefit from an expansion of RECA.
At the film festival, Cordova told the audience that people have been living separate lives for too long — a poignant statement, especially for Los Alamos, where science is sometimes pigeonholed as experts work to solve specific aspects of larger problems.
“There are no borders. We are not separate people. We all live together in this state and I would like to believe that is why we consider each other as neighbors, as friends and, to some of you, as relatives,” she said, thanking them for being there to hear another side of the story.
“We should stand together for what is right,” she said to applause.
The audience included employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory, county officials and a state senator.
Bernice Gutierrez, born in Carrizozo a few days before the bomb detonated, was at a loss for words to express how important she felt it was for the people of Los Alamos to learn about the Downwinders.
“I think a lot of people were surprised,” she said after the first screening. “They don’t know the story.”
The Trinity Site was on a short list of possible test sites for the bomb. The others included two sites in California, one in Texas and one in Colorado. The flat, dry nature of the White Sands Missile Range won out because scientists initially thought that predictable winds would limit the spread of radiation.
That ultimately wasn’t the case, as New Mexico’s summer rainy season is often accompanied by unstable weather. Aside from shifting winds, the rain the following night likely meant that fresh precipitation found its way into stormwater collected by residents’ cisterns, according to a 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also found that another route of exposure involved dairy cows and goats, which residents depended on for their livelihoods.
New models from a team of researchers led by Princeton University showed in 2023 that nuclear explosions conducted in New Mexico and Nevada between 1945 and 1962 resulted in widespread radioactive contamination. The team reported that the world’s first nuclear detonation contributed significantly to the contamination in New Mexico, eventually reaching 46 states as well as Canada and Mexico.
Cordova said the federal government did not warn the public before or after the detonation and downplayed it for decades because “we didn’t play a role, we were expendable.”
“There is no excuse for this,” she said.
