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May 236 min read

Downwinders and the U.S. Nuclear Military-Industrial Complex

Buenas yan håfa adai,


From earlier than I can remember, my grandmother was my best friend. She was incredibly kind, funny, bold, and generous–and consistently my cousins’ and my safe haven from our parents when we caused a bit of trouble. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer at 50 years old, it shocked our entire family. She was our rock. And a healthy one.


From 1945 to 1992, the U.S. conducted over 1,000 nuclear bombs as “tests” on U.S. soil. Each nuclear bomb released fallout: radioactive material propelled into the atmosphere, carried by winds, landing on people, clothes, buildings, animals, plants, soils, waters, contaminating anything it touched. This fallout doesn’t just affect those in the immediate area but entire communities great distances away, if the winds or currents carry the fallout in their direction. These people are dubbed “downwinders.” The federal government monitored and predicted which way the winds would blow. They chose who would be downwinders–which lives they were willing to sacrifice to further their nuclear war. 


There were no signs my grandmother was anything less than the picture of health until she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and passed a few months later. I never thought about why she got cancer. So many people in our community in Guåhan (Guam) contract and die from cancer. It’s a commonplace mystery. But now, I’m learning she, like many others, was a ”downwinder”--a victim of the U.S. nuclear “testing.” When my grandmother was 4 years old, the U.S. government detonated the largest nuclear weapon they ever had in history: Castle Bravo. Like so many others, the radioactive fallout likely killed her.


In a two-part series on our Instagram, we first explored nuclear energy, asking a series of questions: Is Nuclear Energy Clean Energy? How Is Nuclear Energy Produced? Why Isn’t Nuclear Energy Clean? What is the supply and demand driving it? Where is domestic uranium refined to produce nuclear energy? What are the human, environmental, monetary, and other costs?


TLDR: Nuclear energy is not clean energy. From start (uranium mining) to finish (nuclear waste), nuclear energy production poisons our lands, waters, and peoples. It destroys sacred sites and lifeways. We must continue to push our governments to pursue truly clean energy development in renewable, natural energies, like solar and wind, in a just transition that benefits–rather than harms–our planet and peoples. As the Biden administration pushes to triple nuclear energy production as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, we must push back.


In our part 2, we explore nuclear weapons testing. Many of you have likely seen the movie Oppenheimer. First, I would like to highly recommend two documentaries which shed light on truths Oppenheimer missed: Downwind and First We Bombed New Mexico. Just keep some tissues on hand nearby.


In 1945, the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 130,000 people, mostly civilians. The U.S. obtained most of the uranium to build these bombs, and thousands after, from the Congo, when it was still a Belgian colony. During WWII, U.S. spies supervised the Belgian-operated mine, which forced Congolese workers to extract uranium with their bare hands, to fulfill secret, low-cost U.S. contracts. When a U.S. spy reported that some Belgian companies sold uranium to Germans, over 1,200 people were sentenced to death and 242 were executed. The U.S. was the mine’s sole customer, by design. It received hundreds of tons of uranium every month, fueling most of its WWII and Cold War nuclear activities for nearly 2 decades until Congo’s independence in 1960. After Prime Minister Lumumba reached out to the Soviet Union in 1960, he was assassinated less than 6 months later, sending the country into a five-year civil war, resulting in 2 million deaths. The humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is ongoing.


The federal government detonated the vast majority of these nuclear bombs on U.S. soil, poisoning its own citizens. The federal government knew that detonating nuclear bombs to “test” them would have extremely dangerous and deadly consequences. They sacrificed Indigenous Peoples and homelands and “low use” populations. They used Marshallese people to study the effects of the radiation the U.S. poisoned them with, reasoning that although “uncivilized,” they were more like them than mice.


After years of advocacy and far too many relatives lost to cancers and other radiation-induced diseases, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1990 (later amended in 2000)–but left out the majority of those really impacted by the U.S. nuclear military-industrial complex.


RECA is set to expire this June. A bill to expand RECA has already passed the Senate (S. 3853). Now, we need to ensure it passes in the House, becomes law, and continues to include more and more of our relatives who the federal government knowingly committed nuclear atrocities against.


What you can do:

It is imperative that we recognize and address the intersection of militarization, water contamination, and Indigenous rights. By advocating for environmental justice, supporting affected communities, and demanding accountability from government and military entities, we can work towards a future where clean water is a universal right.


Every time the U.S. engages in nuclear development–whether it be for weapons or energy–it produces nuclear waste, which can remain radioactive for thousands of years. From every step in the U.S. nuclear military-industrial complex–from uranium mining to refining uranium to nuclear weapons or nuclear power production to nuclear waste–the U.S. poisons generations of our peoples and surely our descendants.


This issue affects everyone. We are all downwinders.

Barbara Blas Cruz

Jun 2 1949 - Jan 13 2000

Beloved Wife, Mother,

And Grandmother


In Solidarity,

Kyra Blas

WPLC Legal Fellow

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