The Trinity Test: From my Grandma’s back porch

The trinity test was the first test ever of a nuclear weapon; it was conducted on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45am in New Mexico at what is now known as White Sands Missile Range. This test was crucial for various reasons; its success gave Truman leverage against Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, and following the test, two bombs were prepared and then dropped at different dates on Hiroshima (Aug 6) and Nagasaki (Aug 9). Effectively ending the war and also marking the beginning of the commonly referred to “Atomic Age” leading into the cold war.

This topic is of particular interest to me because my grandmother lived in Belen, New Mexico at the time of the Trinity Test. Belen is roughly 176 miles North of Alamogordo but even that distance was of little consequence, my grandma described witnessing it “as the sky just lighting up as if it was on fire”. Imagine the variety of emotions all those who had witnessed this event such as my grandma experienced. Initial confusion at what they had just witnessed, some could have even have interpreted it as the apocalypse. Visualize the whole just lighting on fire and dependent upon proximity the after effects of the bomb’s explosion (windows rattling, earth shaking, and loud boom). Then later to have army officials appear at your door with the pathetic excuse, that there had been a secret ammunition dump in Alamogordo that had caught fire causing the explosion witnessed. The gossip in the surrounding towns must have been wild with conspiracy stories, and then on August 6th learning of the bombing of Hiroshima and the immediate deaths of 70,000+ men, women and children. Realization of the unleashed power of this weapon which had been detonated only a short distance from their homes by the US Army and seeing all the death, destruction and pain it was causing in Japan. To have witnessed firsthand something with the power to destroy the world, scary and emotionally damaging too many like my grandmother; I remember as a littler girl my grandmother telling me this story as a bogey man story. Be a good little girl otherwise the Army will drop a bomb on your town whose effects will be evident for many generations to follow.