By T. DOUGLAS REILLY
Los Alamos
Tomorrow, Thursday July 16, 2020 is the 75th anniversary of the Trinity Test of The Gadget in southern New Mexico.
This morning I heard on the radio of a ceremony in Santa Fe to highlight the cause of the Downwinders in the Tularosa Basin who believe strongly that their health and that of their parents and siblings was seriously damaged by the fallout from Trinity.
I know the group has produced a video that was premiered several months ago by the Santa Fe chapter of Global Zero.
Monday’s Report from Santa Fe, hosted by Lorene Mills, was an interview with Tina Cordova, the director of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.Our congressional delegation has voiced strong support for the Downwinders.
To be sure, the Downwinders could never be convinced that they weren’t affected by the test. I should add that the New Mexico Department of Health has said the rate of cancers in the basin is the same as that in similar parts of New Mexico.
Actually, the Downwinders were Not Downwind of the Trinity fallout. Los Alamos and the Army conducted extensive monitoring of the radiation and fallout from Trinity. This shows that the wind took the fallout cloud to the northeast, not south toward the Tularosa Basin. Should anyone be interested, there’s a declassified report sent to Gen. Groves detailing the results of these measurements.
Incidentally, I’ve always found the Spanish name of the test location very interesting, El Jornado de los Muertos, The Journey of Death. This was a short cut on the Camino Real; its lack of water meant many travelers died of thirst.
In a little over two weeks, we come to Aug. 6, 1945, the bombing of Hiroshima, and three days later, the bombing of Nagasaki with Fat Man, the same design as The Gadget. The morality of these acts has been argued ever since. I don’t believe President Truman had any other choice; as he said, “I never lost any sleep over that decision”.
Secretary of War Harold Stimson has said that the estimated loses if we had attacked mainland Japan, were one-half to one million USA and allied soldiers and 8 to 10 million Japanese. In other words, these two acts actually saved millions of lives both allied and Japanese.
As a docent at our History Museum, I’ve had several encounters with old soldiers who related stories like this: “I was on a troop ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the order to launch the assault. One day on deck, the Skipper came over the PA and said, ‘gentlemen, please go to the port side of the ship and watch our shadow as we turn 180o and head home. Some new bombs were dropped on Japan and it has surrendered. This terrible war is finally over.’” Then the man says, “I’ve always wanted to come to Los Alamos because some folks here may have helped save my life!”
War is Hell! The nature of the weapon that kills a person is really unimportant. As Gandhi once said, “the dying care not whether their killer comes from a democratic nation or from a despotic dictatorial one”. I believe in the same sense, they don’t feel happier that they’re dying by a so-called conventional weapon.