New Mexico Residents Affected by First Nuclear Bomb Test in 1945 May Get Compensation

The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project was the first detonation of a nuclear device. Public Domain

New Mexico residents who were exposed to radiation from the world’s first atomic bomb test and Navajo miners who later mined uranium during the Cold War may get compensation after decades of complaints.

The exposure to radiation has allegedly left generations of local residents with serious health problems.

The U.S. Senate voted on July 27 to expand coverage to New Mexico and Navajo residents in the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a federal law that is expected to expire next year, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The original 1990 act was passed by Congress to award financial compensation to those affected by the radiation downwind from the Nevada Test Site.

Uranium miners in other states were later added to the list, but New Mexico and Navajo residents were excluded until now.

Government officials have long said that Congress would have to amend the act to expand payouts to residents of New Mexico and Idaho who were affected by radiation.

Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) reintroduced the amendment in July with bipartisan support to include residents of those two states in RECA before its scheduled expiration in 2024, reported Axios.

Both congressional houses are working on compromise legislation to add the extension to the competing NDAA bills, but so far the House version doesn’t include the RECA expansion.

Affected by Atomic Bomb Tests

The recent movie “Oppenheimer,” which is about the life and career of Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, has led to increased awareness and support for the families affected by the radiation resulting from atomic bomb testing.

The U.S. government seized land from local residents in northern New Mexico during World War II to build the lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The team of scientists working on the Manhattan Project detonated the first atomic bomb near the mostly Hispanic village of Tularosa and the Mescalero Apache Reservation on July 16, 1945, in what is known as the Trinity Test.

The New Mexican residents only learned about the bomb test after the U.S. military dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, right before the end of World War II.

Residents in 1945 reported black rain and burned cows that passed on radiation poisoning through milk to unsuspecting residents.

Government officials never informed residents about the site’s hazards, and families continued to hold picnics there and even took radioactive artifacts, such as the glassy residue known as “trinitite” that formed on the desert floor as a result of the explosion.

The radiation from the Trinity Test eventually caused rare forms of cancer for many of the 30,000 local residents and their descendants.

Families Ignored for Years

Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which advocates for families affected by the radiation, told Axios that no one from Universal Pictures ever contacted them about the tests.

“We’ve done everything to reach out to the filmmakers from the time that they were filming until today,” Ms. Cordova said.

“Just include a panel, a message at the end of the film that acknowledges the sacrifice and suffering of the people of New Mexico,” she said.

During the Cold War, in the race to produce nuclear weapons, the government accelerated uranium mining on the lands of the Navajo Nation.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2006 that the birth rate of sheep in the area dramatically dropped over the years and that surviving lambs were born with severe deformities.

Navajo uranium miners, who were employed by the government, also developed cancer and were saddled with massive health care bills.

A 2017 report from the Salt Lake Tribune found that the Trinity Test caused generations of families in southern New Mexico to suffer from cancer and economic loss.

Ms. Cordova told Axios that over the decades, many local families were forced to pay for expensive cancer treatments with the proceeds from bake sales.

“The federal government did this without our consent, then forgot about us,” she said, and she blamed the lack of compensation from RECA on racism.

Families and their supporters have held protests, vigils, and letter-writing campaigns for years to demand reparations after being used as unwilling guinea pigs for radiation treatment after the test.

“Nearly eight decades after the Trinity Test in New Mexico, many New Mexicans are still left out of the original RECA program. This is unacceptable,” Mr. Luján wrote in a statement before the expansion of the act.

“With renewed interest in the Trinity Test, we cannot forget the people who got sick and died from radiation exposure. Justice is long overdue,” the senator told Axios.