In 2006, in anticipation of my retirement from academia, we bought 160 acres of beautiful land in the central highlands of New Mexico. There we were going to live out our cowboy fantasy by raising horses and riding them on my rancher friend’s cattle roundups. The high desert land was covered with grass, juniper, and some Pinyon pine trees, and offered a spectacular view of the Manzano Mountains. The land sat atop the Chupadera Mesa about 13 miles outside of Mountainair and six miles off the main road. Santa Fe was only an hour and a half to the North.
One beautiful March day, my rancher friend, and real deal ex-bull rider cowboy, Blaine and I were riding about to check his herd. A blizzard had buried his 12,000 acres under three feet of snow and we wanted to see how the herd had fared. As we rode along on horseback, he recounted the story of his relatives who had lived downwind of the Trinity bomb test in 1945. None of his relatives were warned of the test or the potential hazard from the radioactive fallout the explosion was sure to produce. He then enumerated a rather long list of his relatives that had subsequently died of cancer. I made a mental note at the time to look into this further as a “retirement project.” My research produced some rather startling results. But first, a short story about John Wayne.
Snow Canyon is a state park in Southwestern Utah just 12 miles west of the city of St. George. The magnificent towering red walls of the canyon have made it a favorite of tourists and campers. In1953, Snow Canyon was used as a film location by a production company headed by Howard Hughes. The canyon apparently resembled the Gobi Desert well enough for Hughes to use it for his film about the Mongol legend Genghis Khan. The filmed titled, The Conqueror, would star John Wayne, Susan Haywood, Agnes Moorehead, and Pedro Armendariz. The film was to be directed by William Powell. Altogether, about 220 people were present in the Canyon for the shooting and all of them unaware that they had become human guinea pigs, a “treatment group” as it were for the AEC’s unholy “experiment” with bomb testing.
Hughes was well aware of the atomic bomb tests that were taking place in Nevada, some 70 miles north of Las Vegas and 100 miles from Snow Canyon. Over the course of the previous year 11 bombs had been exploded in the so-called “Upshot-Knothole Series,” including the now notorious “shot Harry” known as “dirty Harry” for the prodigious amount of fallout it produced due to its unexpectedly large yield. Snow Canyon and St. George were dead “downwind” of Shot Harry and the canyons high sidewalls acted as a funneling device to gather radioactive dust into a reservoir of radioactive fallout. St. George also received a good size dose of radioactivity and thus became known as “fallout city.” Indeed, the “dirty Harry” shot produced the “worst case of fallout descending on a concentrated population of civilians as a result of the weapons tests” in Nevada.
Hughes, who would eventually become a fierce opponent of atomic tests out of concern for his real estate investments in Las Vegas, Nevada, on this occasion, accepted the word of the AEC that Snow Canyon was safe. While it was surely radioactive, the AEC declared the level safe. In fact, there is a photo of John Wayne measuring the radioactivity with a Geiger counter. But, at this time, and for some time after, the AEC publicly insisted that there was a safe threshold for radiation exposure even though it was well aware of the dangers of even low exposure levels. For the AEC national security and the requisite secrecy had precedence over public safety.
To make the canyon appear like the windswept Gobi desert huge industrial fans were used to blow up radioactive dust which caked on to the actor’s makeup and teeth, and forced the crew to wear “outlaw” bandanas over their faces. The crew surely both inhaled and ate some of this radioactive dust either directly, or on their food. The crew also drank locally produced milk and fresh food that was thoroughly irradiated. The radioactive substances like Sr-90 and I-131 did get taken up by plants and live stock, including dairy cattle. All of this took place in the blistering heat of the canyon which reached 110 degrees every day. The actors and crew thus drank loads of radioactive water and inhaled it in their showers.
The degree of radioactivity was significant. Many a prospector in the Canyon and around St. George had been fooled into thinking they had found a uranium deposit. The radiation disappeared when one dug just an inch or two below the surface, however.
When the location shooting was completed, Hughes loaded up 60 tons of the fallout-laden dirt and shipped it to Hollywood so he would have more realistic sets on his sound stage where the remainder of the film would be shot. This contamination surely affected many others not in the film company.
The film, released in 1956, was a box-office disaster; it was literally laughed out of the theaters (John Wayne as a Mongol??). After an indignant Hughes pulled it from circulation, it soon faded from notice – except in the various compilations of the “worst films ever made.”
In 1958, however, a new storyline would emerge. In 1958, John Wayne’s Conqueror co-star, Pedro Aremndariz was diagnosed with kidney cancer. In 1963, Armendariz shot himself in the heart after he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. At about the same time, director Dick Powell died from lung cancer. Later in 1974 and 1975 Agnes Moorehead and Susan Hayward would succumb to cancer. Moorehead had uterine cancer, but Hayward had over a ten year period fought skin, breast, and uterine cancer. In 1979, John Wayne died from a combination of throat, lung and stomach cancer.
While it is not true, as Agnes Moorehead claimed, that “everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died,” it is true that the incidence of cancer among the film crew and movie stars that made, The Conqueror, was far from normal by any standard including, if such a study were ever done but never was, statistical significance. As of the early 1980s, of the 220 people who worked on the film, 91 had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died from it. Hollywood legend has it that Hughes felt very guilty about these deaths and spent his last paranoid years watching The Conqueror every night as his penance.
Did the government kill John Wayne? As ironic as that might be, given Wayne’s super-patriotism, one simply cannot say, he was a four-pack a day smoker. However, to the question, “did the government expose a group of people to an extraordinary risk of getting some form of cancer?” the answer is a definitive yes. Now the central question is, “did the AEC know it was exposing people to dangerous levels of radiation when it proclaimed Snow Canyon safe?” Was the Snow Canyon incident merely an accident that resulted from lack of information about the dangers of ionizing radiation, or was it the consequence of the government suppressing evidence? Did the government act with reckless disregard for the public safety as a matter of national defense policy? In short, in the midst of the Cold War hysteria of the 1950s, were the people of St. George and the film-makers “sacrificed” for the sake of the national security? The question now is, “did the government sacrifice John Wayne?”
None of the families of the victims of The Conqueror Epidemic has ever brought suit and they never will because, per a decision of a Federal Appeals Court in the 1980s, the doctrine of sovereign immunity prevents citizens from suing the government. Even should they have done so, they would not have had much success against the AEC.
In 1979, Congressional hearings held by Senator Kennedy revealed a broad pattern of malfeasance on the part of the AEC. The AEC, it was found had consistently and deliberately misinformed the public as to the hazards of fallout. In May of 1982, a federal judge declared with a tone of “barely controlled anger” that the facts disclosed in the hearings and presented to his court in an earlier proceeding involving the AEC clearly and convincingly demonstrated “a species of fraud upon the court.” The judge lamented that while he once had a somewhat “pristine view of the integrity of the moral values of government officials” it was clear to him that the information regarding the dangers of radiation produced by government officials in “the course of their employment was intentionally false or deceptive.” These officials, he said, engaged in the “deliberate concealment of evidence: a vital report was deliberately withheld.” They also engaged in “improper and successful attempts to pressure witnesses not to testify as to their real opinion.” and that “information in another report was presented in a manner as to be deceitful.”
From the Sands of Iwo Jima to the Swamps of Viet Nam in Green Beret, Wayne personified the best of martial values. A vocal critic of Viet Nam War protestors, he above all believed in the motto “my country right or wrong.” While we can never be absolutely sure whether his country did him wrong in Snow Canyon, we do know that the AEC did promulgate what was according to Stuart Udall, “the most long-lived public deception in US history.” The AEC chose secrecy over candor, and deception over truth, setting the pattern for the Gulf of Tonkin Fabrication, the Watergate cover-up, the Iran-Contra affair, the WMD deception in Iraq and other events where the US government violated the most fundamental tenet of democracy; the government does not lie to the people. Nor does it make them guinea pigs in inhumane experiments.
While the information I discovered about John Wayne was interesting and disturbing it was not nearly as disturbing as what I discovered about my future home, the Chupadera Mesa, and the atomic nightmare lived by Blaine’s relatives after the Trinity Atomic Bomb test. The Government’s actions, or should I say the lack of action, was just another example of government prevarication and indifference to the welfare of the people.
The light from the Trinity blast was equivalent to about twenty suns and could be seen in three states. The blast was so bright it was actually noticed by a blind woman in Socorro. The shock wave from the explosion actually shattered windows in Silver City120 miles away. Ten miles from the explosion people felt a blast of heat equivalent to standing about three feet from a fireplace and everything living within a mile was obliterated – plants, snakes, squirrels lizards, even the ants. Within seven minutes the explosion raised an enormous cloud of radioactive dust some 38,000 feet into the atmosphere. It would eventually reach to 70,000 feet into the stratosphere.
Ranchers, living more than 20 miles from the Trinity site, reported that the fallout, in the form a substance that looked like white flour, rained down for 4-5 days after the test and gave the ground the appearance of a recent snow, or frost.
The bomb was surely powerful, indeed it was more powerful than the scientists had expected, it was a not very efficient “dirty bomb.” Of the 6kg of plutonium used in the bomb only 1kg was actually fissioned in the explosion. The remaining 5kg were dispersed into the environment as were all of the other radio nuclides produced by the fissioning of the plutonium.
The fallout from Trinity was 30-40 times greater than that of subsequent tests because at Trinity the fireball touched the ground and created vast quantities of radioactive soil and vaporized rock. These substances quickly found their way into the local food supply and milk and into the bodies of unborn babies.
The Chupadera Mesa was the main grazing area for the region around Trinity. It sits at about 7000 feet elevation and is covered with pinion pine, juniper, and open grassy meadows. While the major part of Northern New Mexico was covered with low radioactivity, the coarser, heavier, plutonium-laden particles started to descend almost immediately, and as the cloud drifted over the Chupadera Mesa afternoon thunderstorms concentrated the fallout even further. Most of the plutonium deposition was on the Mesa.
Particularly high levels of radiation were detected to the north and east of Trinity in the towns of Bingham and Carrizozo where the G-M counter went off the scale, but were not deemed high enough by Manhattan Project officials to warrant an evacuation. It was never clear just exactly what level of contamination would have actually warranted an evacuation. The most intense readings were in a place called Hoot Owl Canyon some 20 miles to the Northeast of Trinity. Readings at this site suggested radiation was sufficiently high to “cause serious physiological effects.” Other hot spots were found in places like Cedarvale (where my friend Blaine still lives) and Bingham. Thus, when the cloud passed over places like Vaughn, Bingham and Carrizozo, and the readings declined and it was assumed the problem had passed. No prophylactic measures were implemented to protect ranchers from subsequent exposures to contaminated soil and grasses on which their cattle grazed.
Some of the cattle grazing on the Chupadera became famous as “atomic calves” or “rada cows.” It seems that a few weeks after the explosion the cows began losing hair, and when it grew back it was white instead of the usual Hereford color. Cattle feces found on the Mesa also showed high levels of radioactivity. In the end the government claimed that the cows “appeared normal in every way,” there were “no unexplained causes of death” and all produced healthy offspring with no signs of genetic damage.
However, independent scientists, who studied Chupadera Mesa in 1947, found birds that were malformed and believed them to be radiation-damaged. They also found mice with cataracts at rates far above normal. Some of these scientists worried that springs may have been contaminated and wondered whether limits should be imposed on grazing, and even whether some families should be moved to avoid long-term low level exposures. What happened was a call for further studies with no other action being taken. It is quite problematic that the focus of all these studies was only on the immediate danger of acute radiation exposures with no concern whatsoever for the long-term effects of exposure to chronic low-level radiation from the deposition of the fallout.
The early studies of the people exposed to the fallout were merely “casual.” They consisted of ‘monitors” going incognito into the impacted areas and striking up conversations with various local residents.” One resident, a crotchety old man named John Muncey (Blaine’s name is Muncey), was the postmaster of Carthage and also ran a car repair shop, informed the monitor that he slept through the explosion. His only complaint was that the desert was too quiet. He said he was sick and tired of hearing only the sounds of desert animals. This and many other conversations led the monitors to the belief that everyone seemed normal so nothing was done.
But not everyone was quite so complacent. A study done in 1950, but held “classified” until the early 1960s, asserted that it would be “rash to conclude, in the absence of specific information, that no hazards associated with products of the bomb detonation exists in this area, the harmful effects of which may not appear for a number of years. It is not possible under the present circumstances to assess the potential hazard of plutonium found to people and cattle living on the Chupadera Mesa.” “It would seem logical to suspect,” the report continued, that conditions hazardous to man are not absent from the areas of the Chupadera Mesa, particularly if occupancy occurred over a considerable number of years.” Considerable indeed, the half-life of plutonium is over 24,000 years and plutonium is one of the most deadly substances on earth.
Blaine’s relatives all lived on the Mesa or near it so there appears to be some substantial circumstantial evidence that his relatives may have suffered a serious exposure to fallout and later contracted cancer. We, of course, visited our little piece of land several times and may have inhaled some plutonium-laden dust, but so far so good. We still love New Mexico and miss our friends there, but on the happier side we feel we may have dodged a plutonium bullet aimed at us by a government that has all too often been rather caviler about not only the rights of its citizens, but their very lives.