The Specter of Nuclear War, Revisited (New Mexico, 2022)
Near Akela Flats, New Mexico, March 2022
It is March, and the winds are lighter so far this year. Some days have been colder than usual, and we’ve gone to the desert a few times. Jaime took us to see petroglyphs on BLM land, north of Akela Flats, near Massacre Peak where the whole desert drains into an endorheic basin, which people lived next to for centuries. I am upset and unsurprised by the breaking news of war in Ukraine, so I turned my phone off for the day. We have two trucks and ham radios, and after a few wrong turns, find the site with deep metates carved into rocks for grinding grains, now pooled with water. There is a den of rattlesnakes under one of the petroglyphs, like little dragons guarding their sacred caves, and I scoop my youngest son into my arms. I have never seen five snakes at once in the desert, nor heard the cacophony of multiple rattles, warning us back. It should be too early in the year for them to be out.
The relatives on my paternal side have been in New Mexico for several generations. After Alaska, New Mexico is probably the state with the most geological diversity — there are peaks exceeding 13,000 feet, and long stretches of desert, large wilderness tracts of forest still mostly left alone. Nearer to our home in El Paso, there are glittering gypsum sands, and to the northeast of them, a black field of lava called the Valley of Fire. The whole state is bisected by the Rio Grande, now diminished in drought.
In 2009, when I turned 30 years old, I finally made it to the Trinity Site. I was passing a night or two with extended family members at my small cabin north of Truth or Consequences, with a view of the shrinking reservoir of Elephant Butte. The site is open to the public only twice annually — the first Saturdays in April and October, and being a beautiful fall day, I could justify the drive as being somewhat “on the way” back to my temporary home in the Lincoln National Forest. I was surprised that nobody wanted to go with me, or see it for themselves — one had been years ago, and said it was just a piece of desert, and others thought it insignificant.
On the way into the restricted area, army officials handed out a pamphlet warning that no political speech was allowed. The road that went south from US 380 had the only warning signs for Oryx I have ever seen — the strange, zebra-like antelope that was imported from Africa, the population thriving here with few predators. I only spent perhaps an hour at the actual site of the blast. I drew a peace sign with my boot in the dust. There were booksellers, and I picked up a copy of “American Prometheus”, Kai Bird and Martin J. Scherwin’s biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The most chilling scene of this book to me, the one that still stays with me, was the party at a scientist’s house in Los Alamos after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. People were celebrating, drinking, and dancing, and Oppenheimer, realizing what he had done, goes outside to vomit repeatedly in the bushes. Since my visit to Trinity and subsequently Los Alamos, I hadn’t thought much about New Mexico’s nuclear history until lately.
***
The El Paso Public Library’s main downtown branch has been undergoing renovation, and the El Paso Times microfilm and Border collection were moved out to the Sergio Troncoso branch in far east El Paso. So one warm summer day, I headed down there with my younger son in tow, to browse through a few months of papers and see how this history was seen in the summer of 1945. There were both editorials and articles that were incongruously optimistic, but there were also veiled warnings about nuclear power, racist cartoons, and dehumanizing language towards the Japanese.
One editorial was entitled “Vision of 1975”, a satirical glimpse 30 years into the future. It read as follows:
Scene — Breakfast table in an American home in 1975.
Wife — If you don’t get that microeyelatron attended to, we are all going to die in this house. The temperature this morning was up to 76.4 while the absolute safe maximum for good health is 73.6.
Husband — That darned atomotician charged me so much the last time I had the thing repaired that I still owe him. What do you want me to do?
Wife — And another thing, you’d better take junior’s plane away from him. He’s too lazy to adjust the shields about the atomic power unit, so that rays are getting out. The walls of the hangar are getting powdery from disintegration.
Husband — More trouble. I checked on our house power unit yesterday and I found we have only 15 to the 19th power atoms left and it looks like a cold winter is coming. Besides, look at the stock quotations. Uranium 872 is going up again. What’s a guy to do?
***
La Jornada del Muerto, July 1945
Sierra Electric Cooperative, August 2022, article about the Owl Café in San Antonio “A Famous Bite”, by Dixie Boyle
“In the Spring of 1945, San Antonio was invaded by a group of men claiming to be gold prospectors exploring the Rio Grande Valley. They rented rooms from Jose and played pool most evenings at the Owl Bar. When the group left the bar one evening in July, they told Jose to take all the bottles and glasses down from the bar and to expect to see something he had never seen before the following morning. It was a surprise when everyone realized the men had not been searching for gold but preparing to detonate the world’s first atomic bomb. The scientist and technicians working on the Manhattan Project were some of the Owl Bar’s first customers.”
On July 16, 1945, just before dawn, the Gadget was “successfully” detonated over the New Mexico desert, in an area that contained half a million people within a 150-mile radius. Local residents in the surrounding New Mexico towns were given no warning, and decades later, a group called the “Trinity Downwinders” is still trying to be recognized as victims under the Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) originally passed in 1990. National Geographic Magazine did a profile of this history in September 2021, and opened the piece with a chilling account of the ballet camp in the mountains near Ruidoso, full of 13-year-old girls who were mesmerized by the lit-up sky and the fallout that came down in flakes. [article] They rubbed the flakes over their bodies, thinking it was snow, even though it was hot. This fallout dust coated everything for days, polluting crops, water, and any surface soil. Many of the survivors recount many family member lost early to cancers, and struggles with their own health over the years that is consistent with radiation exposure. While RECA was recently extended another two years, the New Mexico survivors of the Trinity blast still do not remain eligible for payments from the government.
El Paso Times, “Atomic Bomb Vaporizes Steel Tower During New Mexico Test” — The War Department revealed Monday that the blast of the new bomb is so violent that nearby steel structures are utterly destroyed — not merely disintegrated , but transformed instantly into gas.
This sensational disclosure was made in a report on the opening of the “age of atomic energy,” when the first United States atomic bomb was exploded on a remote section of the New Mexico desert on July 16. Some of the historic test, the Army said, was the Alamogordo Air Base, 120 miles southeast of Albuquerque. The revolutionary bomb, destined to alter the aspect and future course of wars and perhaps the fate of mankind, was mounted on a steel tower. Then assembled scientists retired to, points from six to 10 miles from the scene of the detonation. “At the appointed time” the Army recorded, “there was a blinding flash lighting up the whole area, brighter than the brightest daylight.
Darkening skies, the Department stated, “had poured forth rain and lightning immediately up to the mere hour set for the drama…. The test would have attracted the world’s attention, the Army pointed out, had it not been for the fact that it was held in desolate desert lands, and that the Army had the co-operation of newspapers in the vicinity.
War Department officials pointed out one of the most significant results of the explosion — a blind person perceived the flash.
The blind person was a girl, near Albuquerque, many miles from the scene.
When the flash painted the desert sky, before the roar of the distant explosion could be heard, the girl exclaimed:
“What, was that!”
***
El Paso Times, page 3, August 9, 1945
No Deadly After Effects of Atom Bomb
(A.P.) — Fears that deadly after-effects of the new atomic bomb might linger for years were calmed Wednesday by the man in the best position to know. The War Department quoted Dr. J.O. Oppenheimer, head of this phase of atomic research, in denying published reports that blasted-out areas might continue to emit killing radioactive rays, for years. The War Department said in a statement Wednesday, “Dr. J.H. Oppenheimer, the head of this phase of work, when asked for his views said: ‘Based on all of our experimental work and study, and on the results of the tests in New Mexico, there is every reason to believe that there was no appreciable radioactivity on the ground at Hiroshima and what little there was decayed very rapidly.
(somewhat incongruously paired with this page filler):
It is safe to hold a queen bee in your hand, since they only use their stings on other queen bees.
***
Rock Canyon, New Mexico, March, 2022
Now that my son is ten, he is studying both world wars, and is fascinated by atomic energy. He likes to check out books from the library about Chernobyl, the Holocaust, and can explain better than most adults the intricacies of a nuclear power plant.
In the middle of March we go back up to the little lake house, just the three of us, for a few nights of stargazing and birdwatching. There are now large white pelicans that live year-round at the lake, some of the largest birds out there, and we also see blue herons and egrets. The Trinity Site is roughly on the side of the mountain ridge, although the winds blew the opposite direction (northeast), so this area had no measurable impact, at least according to the maps. I ask my son if he wants me to take him there someday, and he demurs.
In April, I play at my aunt’s funeral, the first of my dad’s siblings to die. Four days later, I lead a service for peace at our church, with music and intentional prayer for those places throughout the world in conflict. In school, I mostly studied war and conflict, and I feel like I understand how things go wrong, but less and less about how to make them right. Now I teach preschoolers about peace, sing songs and read books, and I feel ill-equipped to explain the world. I have my young students close their eyes, and we send our love and good wishes out to others, first each other, then the school, then our cities, then our countries, then the whole world. One night in April I had a terrible nightmare, where I was outside hanging laundry, and then there was a flash, and then warm flakes falling on me, and my body began to tingle and go numb, and then I woke up. I have always had powerful dreams and nightmares, but this one is new.
Washington Post, April 28, 2022 IAEA: Chernobyl radiation levels safe, but it’s no place for ‘a picnic’
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the levels of radiation in areas excavated by Russian soldiers near the Chernobyl nuclear site were elevated but that they still fell well within the limits for workers’ annual exposure.
Grossi said that the radiation levels were only a third as high as the established limit, but he said the spot where Russian soldiers had dug trenches was “clearly not a place to have a picnic.”
***
Near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, July 2022
It is July, 77 years after the Trinity Explosion, and we head to the national forest outside of Cloudcroft to camp for a night. My father and his siblings spent the summers in Cloudcroft in the 1950s away from the El Paso heat, riding horses and playing in the forest, while my grandparents worked in El Paso. The war in Ukraine has been going on for roughly 140 days. My uncle worked at the bowling alley, as the eldest, setting back the pins by hand, before the mechanical arm came in to reset the destruction. We camp in Upper Karr Canyon, on national forest land that is grazed and has no fee. That night many cattle wander through our camp, we hear their marching, munching, urinating outside our tent. I am alert and awake throughout the night, and only fall asleep towards dawn, after a fox screams, sounding almost like a woman. We have no cell phone service, so I can thankfully not be updated about the state of the rest of the world. We buy cherries and peaches the next morning, and let the juice dribble down our chins.
***
August, 1945 and August, 2022
The news of the Trinity explosion was suppressed and censored until the first bomb fell on Japan. The El Paso Times first editorial on the bomb was published Tuesday, August 5, and reads: “The terror weapon has come — an atomic bomb. President Truman Monday announced that this new bomb, with power equal to 30,000 tons of TNT, has been turned loose on the Japs. Of course, no objections are to be made against destroying Nips as fast as possible and in numbers as great as possible, but the advance being made by the human mind in the science of destruction should cause pause for reflection, now that we are about to vanquish the last of our enemies and want to write a peace treaty that will prevent further war.”
Meanwhile, in Ukraine the International Atomic Energy Agency on August 3, 2022 states that the Zaporizhzha plant is “completely out of control”, needing immediate inspection and repairs. Two days following, a reactor is disconnected from the power grid after enduring several rounds of rocket fire. On August 8, the plant is hit again, damaging radiation sensors and injuring a worker. The next day, the mayor of Nagasaki warns the world of a “tangible and present crisis” of nuclear war being repeated, while honoring the survivors and memory of those killed 77 years ago in his city.
On Sunday, August 7, 2022, the Washington Post runs a headline about fears of nuclear catastrophe, with experts quoted as saying: “The ongoing fighting has no precedent in military history. It is the first time in the history of the nuclear age that a major nuclear power facility for a sustained period of time is in the middle of an active war zone.”
On Thursday, August 9, 1945, the El Paso Times headlines announced the second bomb attack: “Atom Bomb Hits Nagasaki as Reds Attack Japanese.”
On Saturday, August 11, 1945, the El Paso Times announced that once V-J day occurred, a celebration would be held at 9 p.m. on Mount Cristo Rey, and illuminated by the Anti-aircraft Command, as a “pilgrimage to hail peace”, that was extended to all persons of both sides of the Rio Grande, regardless of race or creed”.
On Friday, August 17, 1945, my father was born. My grandmother already had three children aged six and under, and worked alongside my grandfather, so I don’t know what she felt, but I imagine it was a doubled sense of relief, a healthy boy and a world that was not about to end.
***
October 2022
We are more than six months into the war in Ukraine. Putin continues to hold the world captive by the nuclear threat. Over the summer I have read Masha Gessen, I have read Yevgenia Belorusets, I have read Maria Stepanova and the problems of appropriation of memory, and retracing family/place history. I went to Mexico City, Morelos, and Guerrero, and read Margaret Randall. I try to understand the nature of an existential threat, what is climate change, gun violence, a rise in autocracy, or nuclear war. I don’t know how different it is from the 50s, when my parents had to hide under their desks. My brother and his two boys are far away now, in Europe, where they are awaiting a cold and expensive winter.
Our cold here is milder, and for me a great relief from the summer heat. I feel like I can breathe again, and make decisions with focus. My children build a campfire in the desert and throw cholla in it, releasing the pungent odor, watching it crackle and sparkle in brief flashes of brilliance, not to be held, not to be pondered.
A guest who I hosted in September left me an academic book on the jinn. In the Arab world, both pre- and post-Islam, the jinn is an intelligent being that is constituted of fire, versus the clay of man. But, it is not a creature of fire that we see, but more of an invisible airy fire, an atomic fire, that is. The book is relevant to much of my thought; the perception of other worlds we cannot see, the morality of the atomic age, and how Christian theologians such as Karl Barth at first justified atomic weapons, only later to realize no nuclear war could ever be conceived as a just war. I also am struck how the idea of atomic energy was something destined to be discovered, and how once that “genie was let out of the bottle”, it could no longer be put back in, which remains our justification for keeping weapons.
But I’ve spent a lot of time in the deserts and mountains around El Paso and New Mexico. I know that most of this land was shaped by water and by fire, by the grinding of earth’s bones, and that our impact remains relatively small in geologic time. Humans’ period on the earth will also end, and this land and these mountains will remain for many more years. Even the nuclear waste stored underground, not far from my home, will someday break down. Our planet will become part of other worlds, unseen worlds and the energy on this planet will meld with energy from other worlds, other times. I can’t block out my individual fear, for real people, real countries, for my family, but I can try to understand my world better, try to focus my light, my fire, on the things that matter today, which can only be love, hope, kindness, and peace.
