In New Mexico: Voices from Trinity

By D. L. Coutu

By 7:45 Saturday morning, 150 cars are lined up bumper to bumper, lights on --station wagons, Mustangs, Winnebagos from places like Indiana, North Dakota and Ohio. A couple from Florida in a rented car wait for the motorcade to begin. The husband fidgets nervously with his movie camera, anxious to get to the Trinity site, the 432 sq. mi. of desert where the world's first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, at precisely 5:29:45 a.m., Mountain War Time. Once a year the site is opened to visitors. "We've been looking forward to this for a long time," the man says. "The whole atomic thing began during my lifetime, and this is kind of romantic."

In the parking lot, members of the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce busily hand out leaflets warning that radiation on the site is still above average levels. A booklet adds that it is only one-fifth as great as the radiation received from a chest X ray. No eating, drinking or smoking is permitted within the ten-acre, fenced-in area around ground zero, lest radioactive materials be ingested. "What's a little radiation?" scoffs 14-year-old Lee Hutchinson, visiting Trinity for the second time. "It's bad at Three Mile Island because that's in the middle of civilization. But this is really in the middle of nothing."

It certainly is. One hundred and fifty miles from the southern border of New Mexico and just over 100 miles from Alamogordo, the site lies between two jagged mountain ranges in a valley named by the conquistadors Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man's Walk). It is remote and entirely unpopulated, the perfect testing ground for the plutonium monster that the "longhairs" were concocting at Los Alamos in 1944. That winter Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, was pressed to give the site a code name. The erudite scientist glanced down at some lines of John Donne's poetry in a volume that he had been reading: "Batter my heart, three-person'd God." "Trinity," he said over the phone, "we'll call it Trinity."

The flash of what Winston Churchill called the "second coming in wrath" could be seen as far as 250 miles away.

The blast was heard 50 miles away. Its explosive power was as great as that of 20,000 tons of TNT.

This morning, in mock-funeral fashion, the motorcade of atomic-age pilgrims solemnly winds its way past whorls of dust and yucca bushes to reach the 6-ft. Cyclone chain-link fence that surrounds the blast area. Among the pilgrims, some 1,700 of them, are mothers and babies, parents and grandparents, families of three and four who scurry out of cars, Minoltas in hand, eager to record for posterity the "place where it all began." What they see is nothing much. The original 400-yd., 25-ft.-deep crater has long since been filled in to prevent further radiation. The "pearls of Trinity" -- ceramic-like green glass, or Trinitite, formed from the sand by the enormous blast of heat -- have been mostly buried or stolen by souvenir hunters. A few relics remain, though, sparkling in the pale sun, and visitors still filch them, cramming the radioactive rocks into their pockets.

Along the mesh fence is hung, like pictures at a street art exhibit, a series of large photographs showing the second-by-second history of the atomic explosion with brutal earnestness. The crowds pass silently from picture to picture. A small obelisk, made of black lava stone found in the area, stands at ground zero, permanently marking the spot where the bomb rested on a steel tower 100 ft. tall. Children pose for pictures beside it.

One pilgrim, Harold Ryder, lingers a moment. "I designed the tower for that bomb," he confides. "I was in Ohio, and we had a contract from the University of California. We knew it was going to be used for a test, but we didn't know what kind of test." Some weeks later, he reveals, the chief engineer came in with a photograph of what was left of the tower: it had totally evaporated. Marvels the 78-year-old Ryder: "He had a piece of glass in his hand and said, 'This is what happened to the sand. We exploded an atomic bomb.' I didn't know what an atomic bomb was."

There is a touch of patriotism. Elmer Leigh, down from Denver, says he journeyed here this morning "out of a sense of loyalty to the country and what we were able to accomplish here." But most of today's pilgrims are people searching for the roots of the world as it is now. "I'm kind of curious," says Vic Baugus, an engineer up from Houston with his wife and two children. "Who knows, we may all go out with this thing, and at least I've been here to see what it's done once." Says another man: "I'm antinuclear. I just wanted to see what opened the whole can of worms."

John Hierath of El Paso has come with his Japanese wife and five-month-old baby. "We've been to Nagasaki and seen the peace monument there," he explains. "And my wife's brother lives in Hiroshima. When we heard about this, we were really excited. We're all set, even have our own little Geiger counter."

There are plenty of Geiger counters.

Damon Rich, 11, is carrying one that he made himself as a member of a White Sands Boy Scout troop. Rich and a few of his cronies are ambling all over the grounds as part of a larger venture designed to earn them their "atomic energy" merit badges. "It's not a very exciting place," Rich sighs, "but you do learn about radioactivity."

Ronald Smith has a purpose too.

Glancing stealthily around the remote, deserted plain, he slowly and carefully chooses his words. "I came here because I'm anti-Government," he confides. "Did you look carefully at the mountains as you drove up here today? Did you see all the diggings? Fifteen miles down the way is a place called Victorio Peak where there's a crack in the ground 2,000 ft. deep, where the Indians hid 100 tons of gold. Ova Noss's husband found it, and shortly after that the Government decided it had to have all of the property. I want to see what they're up to on the backside of these mountains."

The Victorio of Victorio Peak in Smith's story was an Apache chief who allegedly stashed his tribal riches inside the mountain shortly before he was murdered by the Mexican army in 1880.

For 100 years the legend of that treasure has grown in New Mexico. In 1977 an expedition backed by none other than Lawyer F. Lee Bailey spent eight days and thousands of dollars trying to find the cache, rumored to be worth more than a billion dollars. "They've got the gold," Ronald Smith now whispers. "The Government's got the gold." But Smith admits that there is still another reason for his being here: "I've got arthritis," he confesses. "Maybe an hour and a half out here in the radiation will do me some good."

About 11:15 Richard Baker, associate director for National Security Programs at the now famous hilltop laboratory, gives a little talk about the old days in Los Alamos. He begins: "It is very difficult to convey the special spirit of that particular time and place. Working toward a common goal, people formed a strong bond and sensed they were part of something romantic -- as indeed they were." Engineer Bill Dunlap listens carefully. One of seven Los Alamos Old Boys to return to Trinity this Saturday, Dunlap oversaw construction of the Trinity bunkers and other campsites. He was one of several hundred men sworn never to reveal what he didn't know. "Lady, to be truthful, we didn't know what we were doing," the portly gentleman grins.

On the evening of the Trinity test, Dunlap had it straight from the horse's mouth that Los Alamos was producing submarines and Trinity was being constructed to supply additional parts.

At 11:50 a.m. the event is over.

The chain-link fence is padlocked for yet another year. The cameras are packed away. The 489 cars quickly dis perse into the desert, bound back to civilization.

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