Wesley Burris He was fast asleep in his bed when the world's first atomic bomb It exploded about 40 kilometers from his house.
A blinding light flooded their home in the desert of New Mexicobefore the devastating power of the explosion destroyed his windows, scattering glass over him and his younger brother.
Load content
{{title}}
{{/main}}
“It was so bright I couldn't see,” he recalls. “I remember asking, 'What happened, Dad? Did the sun explode?'”
What happened on July 16, 1945 at 5:30 in the morning is now known to millions of people thanks to the dramatic recreation of the Oscar-nominated “Oppenheimer.”
But they are fundamental events in the memory of Burris, now 83 years old, who still lives a few kilometers from the secret location where scientists and soldiers met that historic morning.
Although the film depicts the Trinity test site as a vast, uninhabited desert, Burris and his family were among the thousands living within a 50-mile radius.
And, like their neighbors, the family didn't know what was happening, much less why a giant mushroom cloud was expanding on their horizon.
“We weren't scared because he didn't kill us right away,” he told AFP. “We had no idea what it was.”
Eight decades later, Burris knows very well what the explosion that sent radioactive material to a height of up to 15,000 meters was about.
The test took place amid thunderstorms, 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 waste back to the desert, where it also irradiated water reserves and the food chain.
Burris's brother died of cancer, illness that his sister and daughter also suffered.
He suffers from skin cancer, which he treats with traditional indigenous medicine.
Despite all this, no New Mexico residents affected by radiation from the Trinity test received financial compensation.
“We were the guinea pigs,” said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor who coordinates the Tularosa Basin Descendants Consortium, seeking justice. “But they come back and check on the guinea pigs. Nobody ever came back to check on us.”
“Oppenheimer”
For activists like Cordova, Christopher Nolan's “Oppenheimer” at least introduced the concept of testing to millions of people around the world.
“But he didn't do much else,” he told AFP.
The movie “Oppenheimer” With 13 nominations, it is the big favorite to sweep the Oscars on March 10.
“Wouldn't it be extraordinary if during the Academy Awards, one of them said, 'I want to recognize the sacrifice and suffering of the people of New Mexico?'” Cordova said.
“They knew about us when they filmed the movie. They just decided to ignore us again.”
Cordova, one of five generations in her family diagnosed with cancer since 1945, hopes this recognition will pressure the U.S. Congress to compensate them.
Time keeps passing.
The current Radiation Exposure Compensation law supports those who lived near nuclear test sites in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. But it expired in June.
And a proposal to expand its scope to people exposed to the first atomic explosion, which had passed the US Senate last year, was removed from a mammoth defense bill in December by the House of Representatives. , worried about its cost.
“We shouldn't live like this. We host bake sales, garage sales, and enchilada dinners to raise money to help these families,” Cordova said.
“Maybe the Pentagon should have a bake sale every week to fill their budget demands the same way we do.”
According to “First We Bombed New Mexico,” a recent documentary following Cordova's struggle, the families affected by radiation were “mostly Hispanic and indigenous.”
“Bunch of lies”
“Oppenheimer” did not impress Burris. “Yes, I saw it, but that movie is a bunch of lies,” she said.
“How many people died here? They didn't say anything about it.” But the man resigned himself long ago to being left aside by history.
His family was informed in 1945 that it was an ammunition explosion.
To add to the mystery, two strange men with binoculars were seen observing the explosion in some trucks parked near their garden. “They didn't tell us anything,” he recalls.
Years later, another group of men appeared near his house wearing white suits and masks.
His brother approached them and asked them why they were taking soil samples.
“They said, 'You have to get out of here. This will kill you,'” Burris recalls.
“And he said, 'Where am I going? We live here in this house.'”
Join our WhatsApp Channel and receive more Celebrity News
#39Oppenheimer39 #victims #nuclear #test #version