Wesley Burris was fast asleep in bed when the world’s first atomic bomb exploded just 25 miles from his doorstep.
Blinding light filled the New Mexico desert home before the impossible force of the explosion shattered the windows, showering the four-year-old and her brother with glass.
“It was so bright I couldn’t see,” Burris recalls.
“I remember asking, ‘Dad, what happened? Did the sun explode?'” he says.
The events that occurred at 5:30 am on July 16, 1945 are now best known to millions of people for their dramatic reenactment in the film “Oppenheimer”, nominated for 13 Oscars.
But they loom large in the real memory of Burris, who is now 83 years old and still lives just a few miles from the secret location where scientists and military leaders gathered on that historic morning.
Because although the film presents the Trinity test site as a vast, empty desert, Burris and his family were among thousands who lived within a 50-mile radius.
And like all their neighbors, the family had no idea what was happening – or why a giant mushroom cloud was spreading across the horizon.
“We weren’t afraid of it. Because it didn’t kill us right there,” he told France-Presse (AFP). “We had no idea what it was.”
Fast forward eight decades, Burris knows very well the true lethality of that explosion, which launched radioactive material 15,000 meters into the air.
The test took place during a thunderstorm, despite warnings from scientists, in the race to have the bomb ready for a key World War II summit with the Soviets.
Torrential rains brought toxic debris back down, where it contaminated desert dust, water supplies and the food chain.
Wesley Burris
” data-title=”Ignored by “Oppenheimer”, victims of atomic tests in the USA tell their stories – SAPO Mag”> Wesley Burris
Burris lost his brother to cancer. His sister had it too, as did her daughter.
And he himself has skin cancer, which he tries to treat with traditional Native American medicine.
Despite all this, no New Mexican affected by radiation from the Trinity test has received a penny of compensation.
“We were guinea pigs,” said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor who runs the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which is calling for justice.
“But they come back to see the guinea pigs. Nobody ever came back to see how we were,” he highlighted.
“Oppenheimer”
For activists like Cordova, Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” at least introduced the concept of the Trinity Experience to millions of people around the world.
“But it didn’t go far enough,” he told AFP.
The production is the big favorite to win several Oscars on March 10, including Best Film.
“It wouldn’t be notable if, during the Oscars, one of them said, ‘I want to recognize the sacrifice and suffering of the people of New Mexico,’” Cordova said.
Tina Cordova and Louisa Lopez
” data-title=”Ignored by “Oppenheimer”, victims of atomic tests in the USA tell their stories – SAPO Mag”> Tina Cordova and Louisa Lopez
“They knew about us when they made the film – they just chose to ignore us again.”
Cordova – one of five generations of her family diagnosed with cancer since 1945 – hopes that such recognition may finally pressure the US Congress to extend compensation to her state.
Time is passing.
The current Radiation Exposure Compensation Act supports those who lived near sites where nuclear tests were later conducted in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. But even that expires in June.
And an attempt to broaden its scope to include those exposed to the first atomic explosion, which was approved by the US Senate last year, was dropped from a massive defense bill in December by the House of Representatives due to concerns about the its cost.
“This shouldn’t be how we live. We hold bake sales, garage sales and enchilada dinners so we can raise money to help these families,” Cordova said.
“Maybe the Pentagon should have a bake sale every week to meet its budgetary demands, just like we do.”
De acordo com “First We Bombed New Mexico” [“Primeiro bombardeámos o Novo México”, em tradução literal]a new documentary that follows Cordova’s campaign, the families affected by radiation are “mostly Hispanic and Native.”
‘A bunch of lies’
“Oppenheimer”
” data-title=”Ignored by “Oppenheimer”, victims of atomic tests in the USA tell their stories – SAPO Mag”> “Oppenheimer”
Burris was not impressed with the recent film “Oppenheimer.”
“Yes, I saw it, but this film is a pack of lies,” he said.
“How many people died here? They never said anything about it.”
But he has long since resigned himself to being left aside by History.
In July 1945, his family was finally informed that an ammunition explosion had occurred.
To compound the mystery, two strange men with binoculars were seen watching the explosion from trucks parked near their garden.
“They didn’t tell us anything,” he remembers.
A few years later, another group of men appeared near the house, wearing white suits and masks.
His brother approached them, asking why they were digging a hole in the ground and collecting samples.
“They said, ‘You need to get out of here. This is going to kill you,'” Burris recalled.
“And he said, ‘Where am I going? We live right here in this house.'”