Sizzle Reel for "Forgotten: Trinity's Downwinders" from Dennis J. Carroll on Vimeo.
The Trinity Project from halflife* digital on Vimeo.
Focusing on the lives of several individuals and their families, we will follow the Trinity downwinders’ multi-generational journey.
1. as unwitting participants in the world’s biggest science experiment more than six decades ago
2. their initial acquiescence as loyal, trusting Americans
3. their slow, gradual awakening after decades of illness and deaths to the realization that their own government might be responsible for their suffering.
3. their slow, gradual awakening after decades of illness and deaths to the realization that their own government might be responsible for their suffering.
4. their anger at being ignored and dismissed, to this day, as expendable, and that in nearly 70 years and unlike with the Japanese atom bomb victims, the United States has never come back to check on their well-being.
5. and finally, their resolve and actions toward achieving historical recognition and compensation for their sacrifices.
Among other things, our film will address these questions and issues:
- Why have these Americans been ignored and dismissed for nearly 70 years?
- Why were Trinity downwinders left out of federal legislation that recognized and compensated the downwinders of subsequent atomic bomb tests in Nevada and elsewhere who were much further away from the detonations?
- Why is it that in all the years since the detonation, no one has ever returned to assess possible damage to the environment or the health of the residents and their children and grandchildren?
- What is the evidence connecting the illnesses and deaths to radiation relased in the Trinity test?
- Why has it taken so long for the Trinity downwinders to connect the dots between the 1945 blast and their illnesses and deaths?
- What is the significance of the findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. including that radiation levels immediately after the blast near homes were recorded at levels 10,000 times higher than those considered safe?
- How do the experiences of the Trinity downwinders, and the Trinity blast itself, relate and compare to the more recent releases of radiation from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
- How the Army has turned the Trinity site into a tourist spot with souvenir and vendor stands and allows children to play in the sand, picking up the still radioactive trinitite glass at ground zero.
