Jim Madrid tells of witnessing Trinity test. Photo: Olivia Fermi © 2010
I’m here now in Tularosa, New Mexico for the 65th anniversary of the testing of of the first atomic bomb (code-named Trinity). The first person I meet at a potluck in the home of one of the organizers, is a man who witnessed the Trinity test. Jim Madrid is here from Denver, CO with his wife Bea and his grandson Joshua. My own grandfather Enrico Fermi didn’t live long enough to share his stories of the the Manhattan Project and the mushroom cloud over the desert. It’s a powerful moment for me, hearing, for the first time, a first hand account.
Here is Jim’s story:
“It was early morning July 16, 1945. I was 13 years old and we were on our way to work at Holloman Air Force Base. I used to go there to get odd jobs. My mother was driving the car. There were two other women, Phil, my brother, and myself. We were cramped into that car that morning. We got over the overpass going west, maybe six or seven blocks. We witnessed this horrendous light. This huge, huge light coming in from the North. It rose from the heavens, so bright, so extremely bright.
“My mother said in Spanish, ‘El sol esta arrimando. El mundo se va a acabar.’ The sun is coming close. The world is coming to an end.” She told me to drop to my knees, but I kept looking.
“We kept looking at the light. After awhile all we could see was a black and white light – like a negative. It changed my vision and lasted a long time. Weeks or months – I don’t remember. That light was horrendous. As high as the heavens. I expected to see God coming out from under it. If it’s the end of the world, I wanted to see. But it didn’t happen that way.
“We carried on to the Base. I was left with terrible eyesight. It has left a rash on my skin. It’s painful. No one knows what it is and they give me palliative treatments, but it’s there.
“It’s make me emotional to tell this story today. They’re all dead now. My mom got salivary cancer. I got a call to come here this weekend – just a few days ago. I said yes I’ll be there. I want people to know my story.”
Addendum:
August 10, 2010. Jim Madrid’s wish is being fulfilled. Today Reuters published a piece about Madrid, his fellow Trinity downwinders, the Centers for Disease Control’s study and the federal legislation to compensate survivors and their families.
Here’s how it happened. A few days after I spoke with Jim, I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My hosts handed me a front-page story about a physicist who had worked closely with my grandfather Enrico Fermi on the development of the atomic bomb – the bomb Jim witnessed. Robert Carter, the physicist, happened to be visiting Santa Fe at the same time as I was. Dennis Carroll, the journalist who wrote the article kindly put me in touch with Carter and I had the treat of hearing some new stories about my grandfather. When Dennis told me he collects oral histories of workers at nuclear weapons facilities, I told him about Jim Madrid and the first downwinders and he pitched the story to Reuters.
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I shouldn’t be amazed but I am that the government didn’t tell everyone to at the very least stay inside. The rashes he had, the messed up eyesight-all craziness, and I am sure avoidable. If we were told as kids not to look directly at the sun in a solar eclipse, then shouldn’t people have been told not to look directly at an atomic blast? I am so glad we don’t do sneaky things like this anymore, that we are transparent and let everyone know about dangers upfront. (Just kidding).
Dear Olivia, Thank you for so effectively commemorating July 16th on July 16th. Are you going to the official commemorations in Japan? If you are, I would love to see you there and have just a few minutes to interview you. I am so impressed with your blog, and I work on increasing discourse on nuclear issues. I am working on my PhD in the history of science. I will be in Hiroshima with American University’s Nuclear Studies course and Nagasaki and then back to Hiroshima. I admire what you have done so much and I think you are such a wonderful creative writer and thinker.
Linda, Thank you for your kind words!
Was this done out of ignorance or stupidity?
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In 1952 or early ’53 my father who worked as a rocket technician took me as a toddler to the Trinity Site before the green glass was plowed under into a containment pit. I distinctly recall crunching the green glass under foot and kicking up the tan underlying dust. We went to the exact spot where the tower once was and I remember seeing the remnants of the tower concrete pads with iron rods sticking out. It was not as I understand now open to the public at that time and he being in employed with Land-Air, Inc and contracted with the military had clearance to off-limits areas of the base. We picked up pieces of this green glass that I have in my possession to this day.
In 1962, I obtained my first Geiger counter and tested this glass and was astonished to see the meter peg at the highest level of sensitivity. And that was 10 years after we picked it up. So to this day I wonder how radioactive that glass was when were were there in late 1952 or early 1953. Now what I remember afterwards I was extremely ill for near a month as we were residing in Alamogordo at the the time. I did recover from this “unexplained” illness, and after my father’s untimely death in 1955 we left Alamogordo and went to NY.
But I was from that time always prone to illnesses. And oddly, I would recover and be in perfect health, but when I did get sick, it was always very bad, and on several occasions I had near fatal events separated by about 10 year intervals. In 1975 I nearly died from an undiagnosed liver condition when I turned “yellow”, 1986, a near fatal case of Chicken Pox, 1991 a near fatal case of Hanta virus, 2003 nearly died from an auto-immune (ADEM) condition that caused damage to my left brain hemisphere and a exploratory brain operation that has now left me disabled. (I was not expected to live through it).
Over the last nine years since I have been illness free. Everyone around me gets the flu and I get a mere snivel for a day at best. And the reason for this I have a hyper-active immune system. And I always wondered why. So I did some searching and discovered that children exposed to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs often have hyper-immune systems. And they have odd singular solid type cysts in their thyroid glands, and I too have the same singular type thyroid cyst for which I am being treated.
After looking at this and many other web pages regarding those that were exposed to radioactive fallout from that first A-bomb I now wonder if that is not the reason for the hyper-immune system that at times will turn against me. My brother who was never exposed, or brought into contact with the Trinity Site as I was has not had the problems that plague me to this very day.
I have posted a link to this rare auto-immune disorder (ADEM) which was triggered by a spider bite toxin. Hyper auto immune reactions, such as mine can be triggered by any toxin or biological agent. But the underlying hyper-immune condition might very well be related to the exposure that I had when I picked up pieces of that green glass and kicked up the dust in 1952 or ’53.
Steve Schoner if you see this please get in touch with me via email at tcordova@queston.net Fred Tyler and i have started a group to explore the health effects from radiation exposure. There are many people sick in the Tularosa Basin from the test. I’m sorry for your health problems. I have known others that visited the site in the earlier days and brought home trinitite. They are all sick today. Please contact me.
Thanks, Tina Cordova
Steve,
I’m glad you have been able to recover from so many different serious illnesses. Your comment about a hyper immune system is interesting. I have never heard about anything like it. Please send me the info on the link as I would like to learn a little more about it
Thanks,
Fred Tyler