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'The ultimate oxymoron:' Downwinders and others congregate at church to remember impact of A-Bomb test
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“At first, I was thrilled. It was a vision. Then a few minutes afterward, I had gooseflesh all over me when I realized what this meant for the future of humanity”
— American physicist I.I. Rabi on the detonation of the world’s first nuclear device at the Trinity Site.
Tuesday marks the 79th anniversary of when the “Gadget” was detonated in the Jornada Del Muerto desert.
Scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer named the test Trinity, which has “got to be the ultimate oxymoron,” Archbishop of Santa Fe John Wester said during Sunday’s “From Reflection to Action: An Interfaith Remembrance of the Trinity Test” at St. John XXIII Catholic Community in Albuquerque Sunday.
“The trinity and nuclear bombs have nothing to do with each other,” Wester said. “The trinity represents life and community and love and tolerance and respect for one another, and atomic weapons are the exact opposite of that.
“So we got to do all we can to rid ourselves of this destructive power and that’s why people of faith are involved in this important matter.”
Northwestern University anthropology professor Hirokazu Miyazaki said people came from various places and cultures, “shaped by unique stories” and a “desire for peace” to “gather as one.”
About 100 people came to the church to remember the test and the impact it continues to have on New Mexico and elsewhere. Sunday’s program included a prayer service with people from several religions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hindu.
Tina Cordova, co-founder and executive director of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said what people have been telling her for years is that her family did not receive any warning about the atomic bomb test, and they “experienced what they thought was the end of the world.”
“They were knocked out of their beds,” she said. “Their windows were broken. Their walls were cracked ... essentially we’ve been dying ever since.”
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New Mexico was really a “guinea pig.” No one knew what would happen after the bomb was detonated or what would happen to those who worked in the uranium mines, event attendee Mary Neznek told the Journal.
Cordova said she is advocating for Congress to take up a measure that would allow a federal program to help former uranium miners and people living downwind of nuclear testing with medical costs.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) extension and expansion would have extended the existing federal program that gives money to people with certain types of cancer who worked in uranium mines or were downwind of U.S. nuclear tests. The existing program does not give benefits to descendants of downwinders, but the proposed expansion would.
This would include uranium mine workers from after 1971 and New Mexican downwinders for the first time. It would also increase the number of ailments that would qualify for compensation.
Cordova said she hopes people will contact Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about getting the bill put on the House’s agenda.
“We can no longer stand for this injustice,” she said.
