ery, very sad. In July 1945, a group of 13-year-old girls went camping in America. They swam in a river in Ruidoso, New Mexico. The girl in front of the photo is named Barbara Kent. What none of the girls knew was that nearby, the U.S. military was testing a nuclear bomb as part of the Manhattan Project.
Barbara later spoke about what happened that day:
“We were all just shocked… then suddenly, there was a big cloud above us and strange lights in the sky,” she remembered. “It even hurt our eyes to look up. The whole sky looked strange, like the sun came out all at once, but really bright.”
A few hours later, white flakes started to fall from the sky. The girls were excited. They thought it was snow. They put on their swimsuits and went back to the river to play. “We grabbed the white stuff and put it on our faces,” Barbara said. “But instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. We just thought it was hot because it was summer. We were only 13.”
But those flakes were radioactive dust—fallout from the nuclear bomb test. It had exploded at 5:29 a.m. on top of a 100-foot tower, about 40 miles away in the Jornada del Muerto valley. The site had been chosen because people thought it was far from where anyone lived. But thousands of people actually lived nearby—some only 12 miles away. No one warned them. No one was told to leave before or after the test, even though the fallout kept falling for days.
Every single girl in that photo got cancer. All of them died before they turned 30, except Barbara. She lived longer, but she also had cancer more than once. People often remember the horrible effect of the bombs dropped on Japan, but many forget what it cost those living near the first tests in the U.S.
One man, Dapo Michaels, was fascinated by science and worked on the project. He didn’t understand the full impact at the time. But once he did, it haunted him. He felt deep guilt and couldn’t forgive himself. He became mentally unwell and had to live in a hospital. He died there a few years later.
The same thing happened in Maralinga, Australia. Many Aboriginal people likely died from cancer caused by nuclear tests, but no one kept track, and we may never know how many.
Fallout from the Trinity nuclear test in 1945 impacted a broad swath of eastern New Mexico with hundreds of thousands of people exposed to radioactivity. The most-at-risk counties had a population of about 65,000. The priority of the U.S. government was to develop a bomb that could be used to end World War II. The scientists and the military conducting the test had limited insight and paid little attention to the impact of radioactive fallout on the health of local residents. Radioactive fallout was heaviest 20 miles (32 km) to the northeast of the bomb test and in one location at that distance fallout was measured at levels likely to cause serious illness. Not many locations were monitored.
According to studies undertaken decades after the bomb test, cancers attributable to fallout probably numbered several hundred. Anecdotal evidence cites many deaths, especially a high incidence of death among infants born shortly after the test. Compensation by the U. S. to people impacted by later nuclear tests in Nevada did not include New Mexicans impacted by the Trinity nuclear test.
Trinity
The Trinity nuclear test took place on the morning of July 16, 1945 on what is now the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The bomb was detonated on top of a 100 ft (30 m) tower. The bomb contained 13 lb (5.9 kg) of plutonium, but only about three pounds was necessary to create a critical mass of fissionable material for a bomb.[1] The remaining 10 pounds of plutonium was dispersed in the fireball and cloud that followed the blast and climbed to an altitude of an estimated 60,000 ft (18,000 m) into the atmosphere, much higher than the scientists predicted. The explosion also swept up into the fireball hundreds of tons of dirt from below the tower which became highly radioactive.[2][3] The distribution far and wide of the excess plutonium plus the radioactive dirt gave the Trinity test the characteristics of what would later be called a dirty bomb.[4]
The test was conducted with a maximum of secrecy, but the fireball and the emblematic mushroom cloud were seen as far away as 160 miles (260 km) in Albuquerque and El Paso.[1] The radioactive cloud broke into three parts. One part drifted east, a second west and northwest, and the third and largest to the northeast where it covered an area 100 miles (160 km) long and 30 miles (48 km) wide.[3] The cloud from the blast was visible to near Vaughn, 96 miles (154 km) from the Trinity site.[5]
A cover story distributed to newspapers explained what was seen by New Mexicans after the blast. “A remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded. There was no loss of life or injury to anyone, and the property damage outside of the explosive magazine itself was negligible. Weather conditions affecting the content of the gas shells exploded by the blast may make it desirable for the Army to temporarily evacuate a few citizens from their homes.”[6]
