Refuse to forget! 76 years ago, the "Snow" in the desert - the victims of the first nuclear test in

Original title: refuse to forget! 76 years ago, the "Snow" in the desert - the victims of the first nuclear test in the United States struggled to seek justice
In the early morning of July 16, 1945, Barbara Kent, who was attending a desert summer camp near the village of Ruidoso in the southwestern state of New Mexico, was awakened by a violent vibration caused by a suspected explosion.
"We were all shocked... Then a big cloud suddenly appeared overhead and there was light in the air," Kent recalled. "When we looked up, our eyes hurt. The whole sky became strange, as if the sun had come out."
A few hours later, white "snowflakes" fell from the sky.
Kent, 13, and other girls put on swimsuits and went to the river to play "Snow".
"We grabbed that white thing, thought it was snow, and painted our faces with it. That strange thing was not as cold as snow, but hot. We thought it was because of summer."
The girls did not know that the white "snowflake" was the radioactive fallout from the explosion of the world's first atomic bomb.
[news fed]
On July 16, 1945, the world's first atomic bomb "thin man" successfully exploded in the hornada del mueto desert, New Mexico, with a power equivalent to 20000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosive.
The test explosion, called the "Trinity nuclear test", belongs to the "Manhattan Project" of the United States to develop an atomic bomb.
National Geographic reported on September 22 that thousands of people lived within 64 kilometers of the explosion site, and some were only 19 kilometers away from the explosion site.
However, people knew nothing about the atomic bomb explosion. Not only did they not receive any warning before the explosion, the radioactive fallout fell for several days after the explosion, but also they did not receive evacuation arrangements.
According to the report released by the Centers for Disease Control and prevention in 2010, the mushroom cloud generated by the nuclear explosion is 160 kilometers long and 48 kilometers wide. Snowflake like radioactive sediments cover orchards, gardens, ponds and rivers, and even drift to Rochester, New York City in the northeast.
Army General Leslie R. groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, realized that other countries might see the light generated by the explosion and thought it could not be completely concealed, so he "fed" a news to the associated press, saying that the explosion originated from the ammunition depot and "there were no casualties".
There is no doubt that other US media "copy" this statement.
Kent recalled that government officials told the campers that the explosion occurred in an ammunition depot, "it's okay, what should we do".
[disguised truth]
Five days after the atomic bomb explosion, Stafford Warren, chief medical officer of the Manhattan Project, said in a letter to groves that "a large amount of radioactive dust is still floating in the air", and there is a "very serious radiation hazard" within nearly 7000 square kilometers downwind of the nuclear test.
Warren suggested that no one should be within 240 kilometers of the site for future atomic bomb tests.
Residents near the atomic bomb site later found something wrong - chickens and dogs in their homes died, and livestock fur was different.
In Roswell, New Mexico, a health care worker found a surge in the number of infant deaths, with 35 in August of that year.
She wrote to Warren to express her concern. In her reply, Warren's assistant assured her that the safety and health of residents "are not in any form of harm".
Louis hemperman, leader of the radiation control group of the Manhattan Project, disclosed in an interview in 1986 that the senior management of the atomic bomb development program knew that the residents "may be excessively exposed (to the radiation environment)", "but they can't prove it, we can't prove it, so we assume we can get away with it".
Hemperman admitted that it was hoped that "the situation would not become too difficult".
[forgotten people]
Kent later heard that many friends who attended the summer camp with her in 1945 were ill.
She said that at the age of 30, "I became the only survivor of the girls in that summer camp".
Kent underwent thyroidectomy and suffered from endometrial cancer, skin cancer and other cancers.
She said that the government "lied" and she learned years later that the "snowflake" came from the atomic bomb explosion.
In 2020, the National Cancer Institute of the United States released the results of a study on the Trinity nuclear test for nearly seven years, which showed that up to 1000 people may suffer from cancer due to the radioactive fallout from the explosion.
Since the U.S. Congress passed the radiation exposure compensation act in 1990, it has been four years5000 people received compensation totalling more than US $2 billion, including staff related to nuclear tests since the end of the Second World War and residents at the downwind of relevant nuclear test sites. However, the Trinity nuclear test was conducted before the end of World War II, and the personnel affected by the nuclear explosion and its radioactive fallout were not included in the scope of compensation.
According to the radiation exposure compensation law revised in 2000, military and government staff who "participated in" Sany nuclear test on site are eligible for compensation, but residents downwind of the test site are still ineligible.
Tina Cordova, a resident of Tularosa village in New Mexico, suffered from illness after the atomic bomb explosion and died one after another. When she participated in the establishment of the residents' rights protection organization at the leeward of the Sany nuclear test in 2005, she was not aware of the radiation exposure compensation law.
Kodova said that the government has not "directly answered" why residents at the downwind of the Trinity nuclear test were excluded from the law. She said that in addition to monetary compensation, she expected the government to apologize.
For many years, Senator Ben ray Luhan of New Mexico has tried to amend the radiation exposure compensation act to include residents affected by radioactive fallout from the Sany nuclear test into the population eligible for compensation.
Luhan said: "it is a fact that people died because of the Trinity nuclear test. It is a fact that people are still suffering. The United States needs to stand up, shoulder this responsibility and deal with this mistake." (Lin Shuting) (special feature of Xinhua News Agency)