Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Collateral damage: American civilian survivors of the 1945 Trinity test

Young teenager Barbara Kent said that several hours after the atomic bomb went off on July 16, 1945, she and some friends in Ruidoso, New Mexico—a part of Lincoln County—noticed white flakes drifting down from a big cloud in the sky. “We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.” Kent says that this photo of her and her friends was taken that day, and that it features them playing in the fallout. Image courtesy of Barbara Kent’s daughter, Kaysie Kent.

n Sunday, July 15, 1945, at around 11 pm Mountain War Time, New York Times reporter and in-house Manhattan Project historian (or propagandist, some would say) William L. Laurence joined the project’s scientists on a caravan of buses, trucks, and cars heading out of Albuquerque. Their destination: the New Mexico desert, about 125 miles to the southeast, to witness the first atomic bomb detonation in history. None of the bomb’s creators knew whether the test—codenamed “Trinity”—would be successful. One of the scientists even speculated that the blast could ignite the nitrogen in the earth’s atmosphere and end human civilization.

When the caravan reached its destination—the Alamogordo Bombing Range in the desert basin known as the Jornada del Muerto (translated into English “dead’s man’s journey”)—the night sky was dark with black clouds, Laurence later recalled, except for an occasional, foreboding bolt of lightning. The group was given strict instructions about what to do when the bomb went off: Lie prone on the ground, face down, head facing away from ground zero. Do not look at the bomb’s flash directly. Stay on the ground until the blast wave passed. Someone produced a bottle of sunscreen, and the scientists passed it around, rubbing it into their faces and arms in the dark.

When the blast came, Laurence recalled, it felt like a biblical experience. “There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one,” he later recalled. “It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. One felt as though one were present at the moment of creation when God said, ‘Let there be light.’ ” (Laurence 1946) Standing nearby, the so-called “father of the bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, famously likened himself in that moment to Vishnu, “the destroyer of worlds.”

The protective guidance that Laurence and the other eyewitnesses had been given was shockingly inadequate in the face of such awesome and destructive power, but at least they knew it was coming. Civilians living nearby, on the other hand, were given no advance warning of the test. Nor was any effort made by the US government to evacuate them beforehand or afterward.

Sunblock 1 million wasn't invented yet. Cringe factor x10...

Several civilians nearby—stunned by the blast—later reported that they thought they were experiencing the end of the world. A local press report stated that the flash had been so bright that a blind girl in Socorro, New Mexico—about 100 miles from the bombing range—was able to see it, and asked: “What’s that?” In Ruidoso, New Mexico, a group of teenage campers were jolted out of their bunk beds onto their cabin floor. They ran outside, worried that a water heater had exploded. Barbara Kent, one of the campers, recently recalled in an interview with National Geographic that “[A]ll of a sudden, there was a big cloud overheard, and lights in the sky. It hurt our eyes. It was as if the sun came out tremendous. The whole sky turned strange.” (Blume 2021)

A few hours later, white flakes began to fall from the sky. The campers began to play in the flurry. (See figure at top of page.)

“We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.”
...

Barbara Kent, the teenaged camper, recalled attending an official town-square announcement soon after the blast in Ruidoso. Government officials told gathered locals that “[T]here was an explosion at a dump,’” she recalled later. “They said, ‘No one worry about anything; everything is fine.’ Some people believed it, but others couldn’t imagine that a dump explosion would do this. They lied to us. I didn’t learn the truth until years later” (Blume 2021).

*  *  *

The decision not to inform or evacuate nearby civilians about the Trinity test came from the top-down. For Manhattan Project leader Gen. Leslie R. Groves, getting the bomb ready for wartime use in near-total secrecy was crucial and trumped all other considerations. Some Manhattan Project doctors and physicists had attempted to warn Groves and Oppenheimer about the possible exposure risk for surrounding communities. Physicist Joseph Hirschfelder made preliminary calculations about possible fallout distribution, and told Oppenheimer that radiation from the active material and fission products might render up to 100 square kilometers (roughly just over 38.5 square miles) around the test site uninhabitable.

Full horror cringe article at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists


Repackaged MARCH OF TIME "Atomic Power" film from 1946 hits Chicago theaters in 1949. Atomic Power is an American short documentary film produced by The March of Time and released to theaters August 9, 1946, one year after the end of World War II. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

MARCH OF TIME TV SHOW EPISODE "REPORT ON THE ATOM"

Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrY5xDZiqE

Dating from the early atomic age, this episode of the "March of Time" TV show dates to 1952 and is hosted by Westbrook van Voorhis.  It examines the state of the atomic industry in the United States and nuclear testing, nuclear defense, atomic power, and the vital need to enhance the secrecy associated with the nuclear industry.  The film features historic footage of the University of Chicago and Dr. Enrico Fermi, and the building of the first nuclear reactor.  Dr. Robert Oppenheimer is shown in a clunky re-enactment, with the "atomic age" being born at the Trinity test site (supposedly this footage was shot in New Jersey a long time after the actual test!)  The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other facilities are shown, including the Hanford Plant and an atomic plant being built in Ohio, as well as the Savannah River Plant.  The hunt for uranium is seen, and its testing and refining for experimentation and use.  Admiral Hyman Rickover is seen, the father of the nuclear Navy, explaining how a nuclear reactor will operate inside a submarine, and B-52s are seen carrying atomic weapons. 

One of he most fascinating parts of the film is a promotion of the "atomic cannon", which is shown being transported at about the 19 minute mark.  The M65 Atomic Cannon, often called Atomic Annie,was a towed artillery piece built by the United States and capable of firing a nuclear device. It was developed in the early 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, and fielded by 1953 in Europe and Korea.  The use of the cannon during the Upshot-Knothole atomic bomb test is seen at the start of the film.

March of Time & nuclear desert rituals had dancers too, but not to be confused with these March of Time dancers...


IMDB

Brian Donlevy as Gen. Groves and Audrey Totter as his secretary Jean Marley O'Leary. THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947). Apparently, Ms. O'Leary is not depicted in OPPENHEIMER film. She wasn't in FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY (1989), either.


Atomic Heritage Foundation




Princess Leia gold bikini sells for $135K at Star Wars memorabilia auction

La,la,la, LOL!



Daily Beast







Tony Bennett sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" with Judy Garland on episode 11 of The Judy Garland Show, December 15, 1963: