（1945年新墨西哥州三位一体试验场发生历史性爆炸后，蘑菇云形成）

TULAROSA, N.M. — A strong rumble woke 13-year-old Lucy Benavidez Garwood in the darkness, shaking the three-room adobe house where she and her family lived and rattling dishes in the kitchen cupboard. Neighbors who gathered that morning agreed it must have been an earthquake.
They learned the truth several weeks later when U.S. forces attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on the two cities had been developed in Tularosa’s own backyard — that pre-dawn test blast jolting communities across southern New Mexico, shooting a mushroom cloud 10 miles into the sky, then raining radioactive ash on thousands of unsuspecting residents.
What happened here in the aftermath, surviving “downwinders” and their relatives say, is a legacy of serious health consequences that have gone unacknowledged for 78 years. Their struggles continue to be pushed aside; the new blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” which spotlights the scientist most credited for the bomb, ignores completely the people who lived in the shadow of his test site.

新墨西哥州图拉罗萨——黑暗中，一声巨响惊醒了13岁的露西·贝纳维德兹·加伍德，震动了她和家人居住的三间土坯房，厨房橱柜里的盘子也发出了嘎嘎声。那天早上聚集在一起的邻居们一致认为这一定是一场地震。
几周后，当美军袭击日本广岛和长崎时，他们得知了真相。投在这两座城市的原子弹是在图拉罗萨自己的后院研制出来的——黎明前的试验爆炸震动了新墨西哥州南部的社区，将蘑菇云射向10英里高的天空，随后将放射性灰尘降落在数千名毫无戒备的居民头上。
幸存的“下风居民（生活在核试验或其他有毒物质释放地点下风方向的居民）”和他们的亲属说，在此之后发生的事情是78年来未被承认的严重健康后果的遗留问题。他们的挣扎继续被搁置一边；新的大片《奥本海默》聚焦于为这颗原子弹做出最大贡献的科学家，却完全忽视了生活在他的试验场阴影下的人们。

“They were counting on us to be unsophisticated and uneducated and unable to stick up for ourselves,” said Tina Cordova, a Tularosa native who for 18 years has led the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which she co-founded after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “We’re not those people anymore.”
The Trinity site, about 60 miles northwest of tiny Tularosa, was chosen in part for its supposed isolation. Nearly half a million people lived within a 150-mile radius, though. Manhattan Project leaders knew a nuclear test would put them at risk, but with the nation at war, secrecy was the priority. Evacuation plans were never acted upon. The military concocted a cover story: The boom was an explosion of an ammunitions magazine.
“I feel like we weren’t valued,” said Garwood, now 91, with a family tree scarred by cancers. “Like they didn’t value our lives or our culture.”

“他们指望我们是不成熟和没有受过教育的，无法为自己辩护的人，”图拉罗萨本地人蒂娜·科尔多瓦说道。18年来，她一直领导着图拉罗萨盆地下风居民联盟，这个组织是她在被诊断出甲状腺癌后共同创立的。“我们不再是那些人了。”
位于图拉罗萨以西约60英里的三位一体试验场，部分原因是因为它被认为是相对隔离的地方。然而，在150英里半径内居住着近50万人。曼哈顿计划的领导人知道核试验会让他们面临风险，但在国家处于战争状态下，保密才是最重要的。撤离计划从未实施过。军方编造了一个掩盖故事：那声巨响是军火库爆炸引起的。
“我觉得我们没有受到重视，”现年91岁的加伍德说，她的家族因癌症而遭受了创伤。“就像他们不重视我们的生命或我们的文化。”

The July 16, 1945, blast was more massive than Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists expected, equivalent to nearly 25,000 tons of TNT, according to recent estimates. Witnesses said the plutonium ash fell for days, on areas where people grew their own food, drank rainwater collected in cisterns and cooled off in irrigation canals that made the arid region fertile.
Jimmy Villavicencio was 4 years old when the bomb detonated near his home in Oscura, a railroad camp to the east. He was outside helping his mother and a neighbor do laundry in the cool before sunrise.
“I looked over to a big cloud, what my mother called a tsunami,” Villavicencio, another cancer survivor, recalled several days ago. His mother frantically removed the wet clothes from the line and hung the pillowcases in the windows to protect their home from the incoming dust. “We heard, like, a gush of wind, and right behind it came the dirt, and I mean dirt.”

1945年7月16日的爆炸比奥本海默和他的科学家同事们预期的要大，根据最近的估计，相当于近25000吨TNT。目击者说，钚灰连续几天落在一些地区，那里的人们自己种植粮食，饮用蓄水池收集的雨水，并在那些使干旱地区变得肥沃的灌溉渠道中冷却。
核弹在他位于奥斯库拉的家附近引爆时，吉米·维拉维森西奥只有4岁。奥斯库拉是东部的一个铁路营地。日出时分前，他在外面帮妈妈和邻居洗衣服。
“我看向了一片巨大的云，我母亲称之为海啸，”维拉维森西奥，另一位癌症幸存者，几天前回忆道。他的母亲焦急地从晾衣绳上取下湿衣服，将枕套挂在窗户上，以保护家免受飘进的尘土的侵扰。“我们听到了像是喷涌的风，随即风声之后是尘土，我是说真的尘土。”

The debris caked the pillowcases. A powder coated their car. Long after the seeming storm had settled, “snowflakes kept falling,” he said. Weeks later, a neighbor’s chickens began dying. “We … are still paying the price,” he added.
According to a new study, the fallout floated to 46 states, Mexico and Canada within 10 days. In 28 of 33 New Mexico counties, it estimates the accumulation of radioactive material was higher than required under the federal compensation program.

碎片沾满了枕套。他们的汽车被一层粉末覆盖着。即便在这场看似的风暴平息之后，"雪花仍在飘落，" 他说。数周后，邻居家的鸡开始死去。"我们... 仍在为此付出代价，" 他补充道。
根据一项新的研究，辐射尘埃在10天内飘散到了46个州、墨西哥和加拿大。据估计，在新墨西哥州的33个县中，有28个县的放射性物质积累量高于联邦补偿计划所要求的水平。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


That program — the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 — has paid out more than $2.5 billion to people who lived downwind of dozens of aboveground explosions conducted starting in the 1950s at the Nevada Test Site, as well as uranium industry workers and “on-site participants” at the Trinity test. New Mexico civilians have never been eligible.
Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have pressed for years to expand RECA to include people who lived in their and other states during test periods. On Thursday, the Senate took up the amendment for the first time and passed it. Approval by the House remains uncertain, with some members contending the cost is too high. The program will expire next May without further action.
“This is a historic victory,” Luján said in an interview after the vote, which he attributed in part to the success of “Oppenheimer” and its scenes in New Mexico. “Any time there’s more stories being told, more information being shared, it educates all of us.”

该计划——1990年的《辐射暴露补偿法案》——已向居住在内华达试验场1950年代开始进行的数十次地面爆炸下风处的人、铀工业工人和三位一体试验“现场参与者”支付了超过25亿美元。而新墨西哥州的平民从未有资格获得补偿。
参议员本·雷·卢汉（新墨西哥州民主党人）和迈克·克拉波（爱达荷州共和党人）多年来一直在努力扩大《辐射暴露补偿法案》的范围，包括在试验期间居住在他们和其他州的人。周四，参议院首次审议并通过了这项修正案。众议院是否批准仍然不确定，一些议员认为成本太高。如果不采取进一步行动，该计划将于明年5月到期。
“这是一个历史性的胜利。”卢汉在投票后接受采访时说，他将其部分归功于《奥本海默》的成功及其在新墨西哥州的场景。“每当有更多的故事被讲述，更多的信息被分享，它会教育我们所有人。”

“Why is our suffering different?” asks Bernice Gutierrez, who was born eight days after the test. She lived in Carrizozo, directly east of the Trinity site. She, her eldest son and daughter and 20 other family members have battled cancer, she said. “What has made us different than the other people given compensation?”

“为什么我们的遭遇不同？”测试八天后出生的伯尼丝·古铁雷斯问道。她居住在卡里佐佐，就在三位一体试验场的正东方。她说，她和她的长子、女儿以及其他20名家庭成员一直在与癌症作斗争。“是什么让我们与其他获得赔偿的人不同？”