Uranium mined in New Mexico was part of that refined and used to fuel Gadget, the Trinity Test bomb, as well as Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The miners are not depicted in the film, and only slight mention is given to the work of uranium enrichment undertaken at Oak Ridge Tennessee or plutonium refining that occurred at the Hanford reactors in Washington State.
“They don’t talk about how New Mexicans did the dirtiest jobs, how we were part of building the roads and the bridges and the buildings. And then when that was completed, they sent us into the dirtiest jobs inside of the labs handling radioactive waste,” said Cordova. “They also didn’t depict the women that they bussed up there, Native women and the Hispanic women that literally cooked every meal, cleaned every house, changed every diaper, and made every baby bottle. They won’t show that in a film like this.”
After the second act of the film builds to the Trinity detonation, it takes careful detail capturing the reaction to the flash and then the sound wave from the assembled scientists. The thousands of residents of New Mexico who lived within 50 miles of the blast are given no screen time, or mention. The fallout, which the New York Times reported reached 46 states as well as Canada and Mexico, is not depicted or mentioned on screen.
“I have been dealing with a great deal of angst before watching this movie. It has left me with continued anger over the idea that they came to New Mexico when they established the Manhattan Project, invaded our lands and our lives, and they walked away. And when they made the Oppenheimer movie, they came here and took advantage of our tax incentives, they invaded our lands and our lives, and they walked away,” said Cordova. “It would’ve taken nothing away from this movie if they had added a panel at the very end and acknowledged our sacrifices.”
There is no such acknowledgement in the film of the existence of downwinders from the test, in New Mexico or elsewhere. Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” once assigns a number to the atomic dead, offering the 110,000 estimate produced by the US military in the 1940s. A higher estimate, of at least 210,000, was produced in the 1970s, and was the number used by panelists.