“They didn’t want to see us”

New Mexican downwinders, receiving financial compensation for the first time, reckon with the ongoing tragedy of the Trinity bomb detonation — and fight to ensure remembrance

by Aviva Nathan

At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the U.S. government detonated the first atomic bomb at the White Sands Missile Range in Socorro County, New Mexico. At homes and farms as close as 12 miles away, many people were still asleep. Others had started on morning chores. After the blast, radioactive ash fell from the sky for five days — onto water sources, kitchen countertops, clothes hung up to dry, grass grazed by cattle and vegetables still in the ground. Children played in flakes that they thought were from a miraculous summertime snowfall.

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