Commemorating the Trinity Test on July 16

July 5, 2022 email from Sofia Rose Wolman:

Greetings,

We’re writing to encourage your ongoing action, through marking Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Trinity Day this summer.

This particular email is about July 16: the date of the Trinity Test in 1945, when the first nuclear weapon was exploded in the USA state of New Mexico. Wherever you are in the U.S., we hope you’ll commemorate this important day in nuclear and national history. Please look out for another email in the coming days with some specific ideas for actions you can take to commemorate July 16, as well as a new feature on the website to report your actions and earned media.

Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, describes how, “The explosion produced more heat than the sun, and caused radioactive ash to fall for days – covering and contaminating crops, homes, bodies, and water supplies. We were innocent children, women, and men who were left to deal with the horrid consequences of being overexposed to radioactive fallout. Our families suffer from cancer, radiation-related illnesses, and early death. The people of New Mexico have been waiting over 77 years. We have never been acknowledged although we were the original Downwinders, the first people to be exposed to a nuclear bomb and nuclear fallout anyplace in the world. We have been casualties of the U.S. government’s quest for nuclear superiority. There is so much more to the history than what the U.S. government has been willing to share, and we were the human sacrifice.”

With the callousness that’s characteristic of nuclearism and all forms of systemic violence, the U.S. Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) – which was recently extended for two years – has never acknowledged those affected by the Trinity Test.

Given the emphasis of the TPNW on centering impacted communities, and ongoing struggles to enact and implement policies that truly attend to the widespread impacts and forms of radiation exposure, July 16 is a day to show solidarity with those who have lost their lives, and continue to suffer, as an effect of the Trinity Test.

[Below], please find this year’s flyer for the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium’s Town Hall and Candlelight Vigil (to memorialize the people we’ve lost to cancer (that we know of) – a beautiful but somber event) on July 16.

Thank you for your consideration, and for working for nuclear abolition, peace, and justice,

Sofia

TBDC flier: