My mom was actually nearby as a child -- Photo: the first nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Test Site New Mexico, July 16, 1945
Several generations of my family were living in and around Tularosa and Alamogordo, NM when this happened (and had lived in Carrizozo, which was much closer). After it happened, a police car drove around telling everyone that it was a munitions explosion at nearby Holloman Air Force Base. My grandmother was so angry, yelling she did not possibly believe that (with a bunch of cuss words mixed in, which was a shock to my great-grandmother standing next to her... remember, it was 1945 and she was a lady, oh my!). My mother was 5 and a half years old, and remembers it all in great detail. She said when the sky lit up, everyone ran outside, gathering their children in case of an attack on the air force base. They had been warned such a thing might occur during the war, and to be ready to evacuate their homes. Unfortunately, it put everyone outside for the bulk of the aftermath. My mom said they were all knocked down by the wave of heat that whooshed through... "no matter how strong any person was, there was no way for them to be able to stand up." After the wave passed through, they all stood up to find that there were some blisters on their skin. As I said, my mother remembers everything... one day I will write more about it.
The first nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Test Site New Mexico, July 16, 1945, taken from 6 miles away. As Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the demonstration, he recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds." Credit: Library of Congress
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Nice posting. Do you know about this edition of the Gita?
http://www.YogaVidya.com/gita.html
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My mother grew up in Los Alamos on the airforce base. My grandfather was Tommy Morris and I believe his job on the base was filming and photographing the tests they were conducting. I found boxes of pictures and old film footage after my grandmother passed away. Most of the photos were of tank troops when he was stationed in Africa, but some were of the desert. They were like before and after shots. I would love to read more about the families that lived on the base during the Manahattan Project.
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Hi Brandi! That is extremely interesting... I think it would be great to gather stories about the families. Maybe we can work on that?
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