Why Local Activists Are Slamming ‘Oppenheimer’: ‘Shame On Them’

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is out in theaters in just two days, and most film enthusiasts are buzzing with the speed and dynamism of agitated electrons. One group, however, is less than thrilled about the Cillian Murphy-led project about the so-called Father of the Atomic Bomb.

As per a story by the Associated Press, a group representing “downwinders” of the New Mexico test site of the first atomic explosion have some concerns about the movie. 

“They’ll never reflect on the fact that New Mexicans gave their lives. They did the dirtiest of jobs. They invaded our lives and our lands and then they left,” said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. She has been working to raise awareness of the Manhattan Project’s impact on the area.

A vigil was held at the Trinity test site and in New York City concurrent with the Big Apple premiere of the film this week. Lilly Adams, a representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which joined in the vigil with Cordova’s group, said “the human cost of Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test, and all nuclear weapons activities, is a crucial part of the conversation around U.S. nuclear legacy. We have to reckon with this human cost to fully understand Oppenheimer’s legacy and the harm caused by nuclear weapons.”

The residents in New Mexico have not been added to the government’s compensation program for people exposed to radiation, Adams added.  

Nolan’s film does not directly touch upon the people in the Los Alamos region who may have been affected by the atomic tests. The larger point of the three hour movie, however, deals extensively with the physicist’s conflicted feelings about building the weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his misgivings about the even more destructive hydrogen bomb and Oppenheimer's attempts to curtail the Cold War arms proliferation. Murphy’s character is shown recoiling while watching footage of the devastation in Japan, and he is plagued by visions of nuclear destruction.

Throughout the movie, the character speaks fondly of the New Mexico region, and is even shown telling President Truman (played by Gary Oldman) that the government should give the land "back to the Indians."

The Trinity test site was chosen in part for its remoteness, but given the secret nature of the experimental research those who lived in the area were not informed about what was happening. Cordova’s group notes that those who drew water from cisterns or lived off the land were unaware of the environmental fallout after the 1945 test. (Indeed, the heat of the plutonium-based blast mixed with the desert sands created a new substance: trinitite.)

“We were left here to live with the consequences,” Cordova said. “And they’ll over-glorify the science and the scientists and make no mention of us. And you know what? Shame on them.”