"First We Bombed New Mexico"

[sl8]

https://www.voanews.com/a/downwinders-from-world-s-1st-atomic-test-are-on-a-mission-to-tell-their-story/7756527.html

Downwinders from world's 1st atomic test are on a mission to tell their story

August 25, 2024 6:45 PM
By Associated Press



New Mexico Sen. Leo Jaramillo walks into a theater for the first screening of "First We Bombed New Mexico" during the Oppenheimer Film Festival in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Aug. 17, 2024.

[...]

Ash from the Trinity Test rained down for days. Children played in it, thinking it was snow. It covered fresh laundry that was hanging out to dry. It contaminated crops, singed livestock and found its way into cisterns used for drinking water.

The story of New Mexico's downwinders — the survivors of the world's first atomic blast and those who helped mine the uranium needed for the nation's arsenal — is little known. But that's changing as the documentary "First We Bombed New Mexico" racks up awards from film festivals across the United States.

It's now screening in the northern New Mexico community of Los Alamos as part of the Oppenheimer Film Festival. It marks a rare chance for the once secret city that has long celebrated the scientific discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer — the father of the atomic bomb — to contemplate another more painful piece of the nation's nuclear legacy.

The film, directed and produced by Lois Lipman, highlights the displacement of Hispanic ranching families when the Manhattan Project took over the Pajarito Plateau in the early 1940s, the lives forever altered 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.

[...]

[3Hotdogs]

1. I worked with a guy. He was in the army, maybe mid - '50's when the government was conducting bomb test in the desert.

I think he said it was Utah. Trenches were dug and soldiers were placed in the trenches and given googles.

You know the rest of that story. I don't believe he suffered any aftereffects from being there. But like Tuskegee Project, nobody gave a shit about the health of the subjects."

[jmowreader]

2. Those tests were held in Nevada

What the Army did to Utah was chemical and biological weapons work, at Dugway Proving Grounds. Those we didn’t test on people - we already knew, thanks to the German Army in World War I, that those would totally screw you up. The goat population of the country, however, was not so lucky. The Army seems to have always had an especial case of the ass against goats.

[3Hotdogs]

3. Sorry. When ya get old, memory don't work too good. What I remember most, - his description of the light from the bomb.

He said his entire body lit up, like from the inside. He couldn't come up with words to adequately describe it.

[mlartist59]

7. Dad stationed in Nevada

My Dad was in the Navy in the 50's stationed in Nevada, Mom always told stories of him watching the blasts, said that he could see his buddies skeletons through their skin. I never thought why, if he was in the Navy .. he was stationed in the Nevada, the 4 of us kids were all born afterwards. I had his tenure and activity verified 4 years ago by the Justice Department as part of a compensation claim. He died at 50 years old colon cancer. my oldest sister died at 67, my older brother dead at 60 from cancer. I have had 2 cancers at 58, (but recovery is great). So still the legacy goes on.

[OAITW r.2.0]

8. Welcome on board!

Thanks for your post.

[Scruffy1]

9. Welcome to DU.

It seems that the US military has too much of a history of exposing members to health hazards. In my lifetime alone nuclear tests, agent orange, burn pits, leaky fuel tanks and more. When I was growing up in Iowa one of my parents best friends had a brother visit who was an Army veterinarian . He worked in a lab in Virginia. About a year later he died. The cause of death was listed as suicide. My father believed something got loose in the biological lab he worked in. The body was shipped home in a sealed casket so we are not sure if there was even a body in it. My father was a veterinarian and a veteran of two wars. He died of cancer at 59. There is no evidence it had anything with his service, but I always wondered if it was somehow connected. The military was banned from doing biological warfare research and production in the 60's but they still did it.

[Joinfortmill]

4. WTHH?

[Old Crank]

5. also in NevaDa there was a lot of underground testing.

Utah also has down winder claims.
The Nevada testing wss one reason the state didn't want the nuclear suppository that was going to be shoved into the Nevada test site. Waste from power plants that they got no electric from .

[NonPC]

6. Lots of Books From WA State Downwinders

Hanford released huge amounts of radioactive wastes into the air and soil too.