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80 years later, victims of ‘first atom bomb' will soon be eligible for reparations
More Americans are now eligible for compensation for health problems linked to radiation exposure from the atomic weapons program.
A bright, blinding light flashed above New Mexico's Jornada del Muerto desert at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945.
The thunderous roar that followed jolted 14-year-old Jess Gililland awake on the porch of his family's ranch 27 miles away. Gililland didn't know it yet, but the U.S. Army had just detonated the world's first-ever nuclear weapon.
In the hours and days after the blast, radioactive dust would begin to coat roofs, clotheslines, crops, animals and the ground near Gililland's family home. As the years passed, almost all his family members and neighbors became sick, often with rare forms of cancer.
The federal government never warned them about the bomb test, never evacuated them after the blast, or advised them about the potential health consequences of nuclear fallout. Those who lived downwind of the atom bomb say they've never received much recognition – until now.
Eight decades after the Manhattan Project's Trinity Test, generations of New Mexicans' who've suffered health problems from the nuclear fallout will soon be eligible to receive compensation.
A measure in the recently enacted Republican tax bill expands the pool of Americans eligible for a program that compensates people who have health problems linked to radiation exposure from the atomic weapons program, including uranium miners and downwinders.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, first passed in 1990, previously only applied to people in certain parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, but didn't include those who were potentially impacted by the Trinity Test in New Mexico, or living on Navajo lands in Arizona, among other areas.
For people in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin, the money will make a world of difference, Gililland's 71-year-old daughter, Edna Kay Hinkle, said.
'The people around here, a lot of them are really poor. They couldn't afford gas to go to Las Cruces or Albuquerque (to get treatment),' said Hinkle, who has also battled multiple types of cancer. 'There's people that it means millions, multi-millions, to them.'
The Trinity Test's secret fallout
Scientists chose to conduct the Trinity Test at the Alamogordo Bombing Range for the area's relative seclusion and predictable winds, which they believed would limit the spread of radiation over populated areas, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage.
Army officers pinpointed where thousands of people lived within the 40-mile radius of the test site and prepared emergency evacuation plans. But they never used them.
After the test, the military described the giant blast people saw as an accident involving ammunition and pyrotechnics. The federal government didn't reveal the real cause, even to those in the area who had watched the mushroom cloud, until a month later, when the nation dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
By then, those living near the test site had already ingested the radiated material.
In a 2015 letter, a man named Henry Herrera, who was 11 years old at the time of Trinity, recounted watching a cloud of black ash fall across his town, including on the clothing his mother had hung outside to dry in the hours after the explosion.
'This filth landed all over our town (and) covered our village with radiation,' wrote Herrera, who passed away in 2022 at age 87. 'Our water was contaminated because all we had was rainwater from the cistern and ditch water. … Everything we consumed was filled with radiation.'
The government publicly downplayed the potential consequences of the nuclear bomb test for people living in the Tularosa Basin, despite internal concerns.
Five days after Trinity, physicist Stafford Warren wrote a letter to Army Gen. Leslie Groves explaining that high levels of radiation were found 'near a lot of houses.' Warren suggested future tests be conducted 150 miles away from any populated area. Hundreds of thousands of people lived within the 150-mile radius of Trinity.
Years later, a health care provider named Kathryn Behnke wrote to Warren from Roswell, New Mexico, explaining that there were 'about 35 infant deaths' in the city in the month after the atomic test.
Warren's medical assistant denied that there might be a connection to the testing in his response back to Behnke. But unpublished data from the New Mexico Health Department showed that infant deaths increased by 38% in 1945, compared with 1946, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Radioactive fallout from the test had landed in high densities across New Mexico and Nevada. Fallout from the more than 100 other nuclear tests the government conducted in the years after reached 46 of the 48 contiguous states, along with Mexico and Canada, according to a 2023 study published by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Thousands eligible for compensation
The exact number of people eligible for nuclear-weapons-related radiation compensation across the nation remains unknown. But Tina Cordova, who cofounded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said she estimates upward of 10,000 people have had health impacts related to the Trinity Test.
The village of Tularosa alone could generate 'thousands of claims out of a town that has consistently had a population of around 3,000,' Cordova said, noting that generations of people who've moved away still have lingering health problems.
Thousands more across other states could be eligible, too.
Between 1951 and 1958, the United States conducted 188 nuclear tests out West. At the military's Nevada Test Site, 65 miles north of Las Vegas, dozens of nuclear tests were conducted underground each year between 1963 and 1992, according to the Department of Defense.
During roughly the same time frame, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from Navajo Nation lands to build nuclear weapons. An estimated 4,000 Navajo labored in more than 1,000 mines, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said. Others lived in close proximity.
Today, hundreds of abandoned uranium mines remain on the tribe's land and may still be polluting water sources and exposing residents to harmful radiation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Nygren called the expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act a 'victory' for the Navajo. Much like Trinity downwinders, those living on tribe lands were for decades not eligible for compensation. The original act only included people in specific counties across Arizona, Nevada, and Utah who were present when the atomic testing took place and who developed specific types of cancer.
The expansion passed in the Republican tax bill extends benefits to include all downwinders in Utah, New Mexico and Idaho, and more living in Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska. Uranium miners in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Washington, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas will also be covered.
Bernice Gutierrez, a downwinder who was born in Carrizozo, New Mexico, eight days before the Trinity Test, believes money from the program could be an 'economic boom' for communities that have long suffered from radiation-related health impacts.
But she and other downwinders have said there is still more work to be done. The RECA reauthorization leaves out people in some parts of Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, Guam, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington state.
The extension is also set to expire in two years, leaving concern that some won't be able to apply in time, Gutierrez said.
'Can you imagine 80 years worth of illness and death in New Mexico?' And we have a two-year time frame in which to gather all these applications?' said Gutierrez, who has more than 40 family members who've experienced what they believe to be radiation-related sicknesses.
'It just doesn't end for us'
Downwinders are only eligible for compensation if they lived in one of the affected areas when tests were being conducted between 1945 and 1962. Otherwise, if an eligible person has already passed away, their families may be able to file a claim to receive up to $25,000.
The National Cancer Institute in 2020 said it found no evidence transgenerational health effects occurred as a result of the test. The study also said there remain 'great uncertainty in the estimates of radiation doses and number of cancer cases possibly attributable to the test.'
But Cordova and other downwinders believe the radiation from the blast mutated their ancestors' DNA, making their children and grandchildren more susceptible to cancers and other diseases.
Five generations of Cordova's family have had cancer, dating back to 1955. Her 24-year-old niece was the latest to be diagnosed this year.
'It just doesn't end for us.' Cordova said. 'I always say we bury somebody, and someone else is diagnosed. And that is true and has been true in my family forever.'
One of her cousins was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor several decades ago, and traveled around the country to find treatment. He died in October of compounding health problems. Two months later, Cordova said her brother was diagnosed with cancer.
'This is a legacy that we will carry forever. Our bodies bear the remnants of the Trinity bomb.'
