Generations After The First Nuclear Test, Those Sickened Fight For Compensation
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2024
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The attack on Hiroshima marked the first time nuclear power was used in war, but the atomic bomb was actually tested a month earlier in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico.
At least hundreds of New Mexicans were harmed by the test's fallout. Radiation creeped into the grass their cows grazed, on the food they ate, and the water they drank.
A program compensating victims of government-caused nuclear contamination has been in place since 1990, but it never included downwinders in New Mexico, the site of the very first nuclear test.
This week, the Senate voted to broaden the bi-partisan legislation that could compensate people who have suffered health consequences of radiation testing. Now, the bill will go to a House vote.
Generations after the Trinity Nuclear Test, will downwinders in New Mexico finally get compensation?
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Email us at considerthis@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | On August 6, 1945, a stone-faced President Harry Truman appeared on TV screens across America. |
| 0:08.0 | A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. |
| 0:17.0 | That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. |
| 0:23.2 | It was the first time most Americans had heard such a thing existed. |
| 0:27.5 | It is an atomic bomb. |
| 0:29.9 | It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. |
| 0:34.0 | The force from which the sun draws its power |
| 0:36.2 | has been loosed against those who brought war |
| 0:40.0 | to the Far East. |
| 0:41.7 | The attack on Hiroshima marked the first time nuclear power was used in war. |
| 0:46.0 | But the atomic bomb was actually tested a month earlier in the Hornada del Huerto desert of New Mexico. |
| 0:52.0 | We knew the world would not be the same. in the Hornada del Merto desert of New Mexico. |
| 0:52.6 | We knew the world would not be the same. |
| 0:54.6 | That's J Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist of the project, |
| 0:58.0 | and subject of the film Oppenheimer, which is up for a number of Oscars. |
| 1:01.4 | Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. |
| 1:08.0 | I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. |
| 1:19.7 | But the movie Oppenheimer leaves out the story of the people who lived downwind of the Trinity test. |
| 1:25.5 | It was a top secret operation. |
| 1:27.5 | None of the locals knew what was coming. |
| 1:30.4 | A group of adolescent girls were at a summer dance camp about 40 miles away. |
| 1:34.8 | It was 10 young girls around 13, 14 years old. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.