LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — In the summer of 1945, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, wiping out two cities and killing thousands of people with a wave of devastating energy. It was a decisive act that led to an end to World War II, but left survivors and generations 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 that the destruction raining from the sky would usher in a new power: what he failed to mention was that the federal government had already been testing this new power on American soil.
Just a few weeks ago, the early morning sky in southern New Mexico exploded with an incredible flash that shook windows hundreds of miles away and sent a trail of radioactive fallout all the way up to the East Coast.
Ash from the Trinity test continued to fall for days. Children played in the ash, thinking it was snow. It covered laundry that was hung out to dry. It contaminated crops, scorched livestock, and even flowed into drinking water tanks.
The story of New Mexico's downwinders — the survivors of the world's first atomic bomb and the people who mined uranium for the country's arsenal — remains little known. But that's changing as the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” wins awards at film festivals across the country.
The film is currently screening in the northern New Mexico city of Los Alamos as part of the Oppenheimer Film Festival, offering a rare opportunity for the once-secret town that has long celebrated the scientific discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, to reckon with another, more painful part of the country's nuclear legacy.
Directed and produced by Lois Lippman, the film focuses on the Hispanic ranching families displaced when the Manhattan Project occupied the Pajarito Plateau in the early 1940s, the lives forever changed in the Tularosa Basin when the atomic bomb exploded, and the Native American miners who were never warned about the health risks of working in the uranium industry.
Their heartbreaking story, interwoven with testimonies from 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 screened.
Andy Cron, a longtime Los Alamos resident, was awed by the filming technology, but also horrified as he learned more.
“It's just unbelievable,” she said, noting that even decades later, those who have studied various aspects of the Trinity nuclear test are unaware of the plight of downwind residents.
As downwinders seek to reauthorize and expand the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to cover more people exposed to federal nuclear weapons work, Lippman and others hope to distribute the documentary more widely as part of an awareness campaign.
For the past decade, Lippman has followed Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, as she attended council meetings, held countless town hall meetings and shared meals and prayers with community members.
During the Los Alamos premiere, Lippman expressed frustration that despite testimony about misconduct following the Trinity test, the federal government has yet to acknowledge its failure to recognize the damage done nearly 80 years ago.
As the film points out, about 500,000 people, mostly Hispanic and Native American, lived within a 150-mile (241.4 km) radius of the explosion, and while the government claims no one lived there and there was no damage, the area was not remote or uninhabited.
In the film, Córdoba, a cancer survivor, tells her community that she will no longer be a martyr – her family is among the many in Tularosa and Carrizozo who have lost mothers, fathers, siblings and children to cancer.
“They expected us to be simple, uneducated, unable to speak our minds. We're not those people anymore,” Cordova said. “I'm not that person. You're not that person.”
The U.S. Senate passed a bill earlier this year that would finally provide recognition to downwind residents of New Mexico and several other states affected by contamination and exposure from nuclear defense work, but the bipartisan bill has stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives because some Republicans were concerned about the cost.
Cordova and others demonstrated in Las Cruces on Wednesday as House Speaker Mike Johnson visited New Mexico to campaign for Republican congressional candidate Yvette Herrell. These downwinders have vowed to make RECA an issue in their must-win districts, as well as the dozens of Republican districts across the country that would benefit from it.
At the festival, Cordova told the audience that for too long, people have lived separate lives — a particularly poignant statement for Los Alamos, where science can sometimes become compartmentalized as experts work to solve specific aspects of larger problems.
“There are no boundaries. We are not separate people. We all live together in this state. That's why we consider each other neighbors, friends, and with some of you, relatives,” she said, thanking those who came to hear another side of the story.
“We should come together for what's right,” she said, drawing applause.
The audience included Los Alamos National Laboratory staff, county officials and state senators.
Bernice Gutierrez was born in Carrizozo just days before the bomb went off, and she couldn't express how important it was for people in Los Alamos to know about the downwinders.
“I think a lot of people were surprised,” she said after the premiere. “They don't know the history.”
Trinity Test Site was on a short list of possible sites for the bomb test; other candidates included two in California, one in Texas, and one in Colorado. Scientists initially chose the flat, dry nature of White Sands Missile Range, as they thought predictable winds would limit the spread of radiation.
But that didn't turn out to be the case, as New Mexico's rainy summer months are often volatile. Shifting winds, plus rain the following night, likely mixed new fallout into rainwater that had accumulated in residents' water tanks, according to a 2010 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also pointed to dairy cows and goats that residents relied on for food as another route for fallout.
A new model used by a research team led by Princeton University showed in 2023 that nuclear explosions in New Mexico and Nevada between 1945 and 1962 led to widespread radioactive contamination. The team reported that the world's first atomic explosion contributed significantly to the exposure in New Mexico, which ultimately reached 46 states, Canada, and Mexico.
Cordova said the federal government didn't warn residents before or after the explosion and continued to downplay the blast for decades because “we were unimportant and disposable.”
“There's no excuse,” she said.
