Dear Friend,

The sweeping skies over Alamogordo are absolutely stunning, and the land is full of life. I’m here in New Mexico, US, to listen to the people and communities whose health and environment was harmed by the first ever use of a nuclear weapon and to support their efforts for justice, compensation and an end to nuclear weapons.

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico shows Melissa Parke Bandelier National Monument, near Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, where some of the homes of and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans in the Southwest U.S. are preserved.

Trinity was the codename for the first ever use of a nuclear weapon. The plutonium bomb exploded at Alamogordo bombing range (later renamed White Sands Proving Ground) in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 was the same design as the one used a few weeks later against Nagasaki to kill 70,000 people.

People living in Tularosa 40 miles (64 kilometers) away were thrown out of their beds by the blast and ash fell for days. No effort was made to evacuate people either before or after the explosion and some even played in the white flakes that came floating down on them.

In the last few weeks, the US passed legislation that would help some, but not all, of the victims of nuclear weapons development. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) is a step in the right direction to correct past wrongs and hold the government accountable. The improvements over previous efforts show the voices of communities on the front line are being heard- but it doesn’t cover all of the communities harmed by U.S. nuclear weapons development. It is a welcome step in the right direction, but the journey is far from over.

The harms caused by nuclear weapons started here in New Mexico, but another 2000 nuclear bombs were exploded around the world with enduring & devastating consequences for the communities and environment, from Algeria to Australia, from the Marshall Islands to Mongolia, from French Polynesia and Kiribati, to Kazakhstan and of course here in New Mexico.

These communities have organised themselves and pushed for governments that have detonated nuclear weapons to provide healthcare, support and compensation for people they have harmed. These communities are also at the forefront of global efforts to abolish nuclear weapons through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and are working tirelessly with the countries that have joined the treaty for justice for these past harms.

Our work, together with communities that know the real impact of nuclear weapons, is clear: 80 years of living under this threat is enough. We must eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us. Never again.

Thank you for standing with us,

Melissa Parke,
Executive Director
ICAN