Robert Oppenheimer: the forgotten victims of the first atomic bomb

The first atomic bomb of history, detonated in 1945 in the desert of New Mexico, had no fatalities. Or if? “In my family we do not wonder if we will have cancer, but when we will have it”says activist Tina Cordova on a field trip to Trinity proving ground, south of Los Alamos.

Cordova is the co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, a group whose mission is to get recognition for the harm caused to the families who lived in and around Trinity when that first nuclear device was detonated, and who have never received any compensation for the medical problems they still suffer today.

Facing the vast expanse of desert and volcanic rock that surrounds the place, with her gaze fixed on the mountains beyond, she is incredulous and hurt.

He doesn’t understand how the US government can’t even admit that his family, like the dozens of families who lived next to Trinity at the time of the explosion, was affected by radiation – especially when it is affected in other places where nuclear tests were also carried out.

Since 1990, a law known as RECA (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act) provides financial support to downwinders -people who lived upwind of the nuclear test fields- in the states of Nevada, Utah and Oklahoma, but it leaves out the families of New Mexico, despite the fact that it was there where the first test was carried out.

According to Cordova, the reasons are simple: “From the beginning we have been a majority minority state”explains the activist, referring to the large Hispanic and native population that inhabits the territory.

Also, remember, New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the United States. This reality generated the perfect breeding ground to turn the territory into the center of the American atomic universe, surrounded from the beginning by taboos and secrecy.

Even today, its two nuclear research laboratories, Sandia and Los Alamos, are the area’s main economic engine, receiving billions of dollars in public investment.

According to Cordova, the importance of the laboratories in the state economy prevents the politicians who represent New Mexico in Washington from getting wet and embracing the fight of the downwinders. But that’s not why she’s going to stop trying.

The activist highlights the case of congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández: thanks in part to the activism of the downwindersintroduced in 2021 a proposal to expand RECA to New Mexico families affected by the Trinity explosion, although the text did not reach a vote.

Another problem facing the group is that there are very few studies that prove the effects of that first nuclear explosion.

Even today, it is very difficult to find scientific literature on the relationship between that first explosion and the countless cases of cancer that Cordova and his colleagues have been finding.

Given the lack of data, the organization decided to collect their own testimonies. Through more than 1,200 medical surveys, they found abnormally high levels of radiation-associated thyroid cancer and other rare cancers, they detailed in a 2017 report with recommendations for RECA expansion.

His conclusions reflect the personal experience of Cordova, who lost his father after a hard battle with cancer, and who has seen cases of rare diseases accumulate in each generation of his family. She herself had to undergo an operation to remove her thyroid gland because of the risk of developing cancer.

His case is not a rarity. Bernice Gutiérrez, who is part of the downwinders from Tularosa, was born eight days before the Trinity test, in the town of Carrizozo, near where the explosion took place.

His mother survived thyroid cancer, one of the skin and one of the breast. One of her brothers had thyroid cancer, as did her daughter. Another brother, from the pancreas, and another, from the uterus.

In the case of Mary Martínez White, it was the number of funerals for friends and acquaintances that she attended that made her realize that something in her hometown of Socorro, also close to the proving ground, was not normal.

The three collaborate with Cordova by conducting medical surveys, investigating and organizing demonstrations at the gate of Trinity Camp, which the US government opens to tourists twice a year.

The three women hope Christopher Nolan’s film about atomic bomb inventor J. Robert Oppenheimer will help spark new interest in Trinity’s legacy.

“I would pit my father against Oppenheimer in any discipline except physics,” Cordova says fighting back tears. “And if my father had had the benefit of an education I would have faced him on that as well. I will never forgive the Government for what he has done to us.”

Source: EFE