Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Downwinders swap nuke horror stories

After four close relatives, including youngest daughter Melanie, died from cancer, Claudia Peterson of St. George, Utah, was haunted with doubts over federal government assurances about the safety of nuclear weapons tests.

Peterson and other residents of the Southwest grew up with duck-and-cover drills to protect school children from atomic bombing. Often they could practice to the real above-ground weapons experiments at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s.

Speaking at the Nuclear Abolition 2000 conference at UNLV Wednesday, Peterson said her family had been healthy until the 1950s. She watched her father-in-law, a uranium miner, die from lung cancer. Her father died of a brain tumor. Her 37-year-old sister died of melanoma. Her 6-year-old daughter died of leukemia.

"I come to this issue with a heavy heart," she said, her eyes brimming with tears as she recalled a visit last summer at a Hiroshima museum for the victims of the first nuclear weapons dropped on Japan.

"I was fine until I came around a corner and saw a little dress, about the size of my daughter's dress," Peterson said. Then the impact of the nuclear arms race struck her.

Peterson said she became involved in healing global wounds as she tried to heal the wounds from her personal losses.

After her daughter died, Peterson said she approached the Utah congressional delegation for help in gaining compensation for those living downwind of the Test Site during the above-ground nuclear experiments.

Sacrifices must be made

"I will never forget this, but a Utah congressman said to me, 'Sometimes small sacrifices have to be made,'" Peterson said. Those listening to her gasped.

"My hope for my grandchildren is that they do not have to live under the (atomic) cloud," Peterson said. "We were so blind and robotized that the federal government would never do anything to harm us."

Growing up, Peterson remembers piles of dead sheep on Utah ranches every spring as the lambs were born. "I remember the piles of deformed, dead lambs, and thinking that was normal."

After a 1953 above-ground nuclear test series, more than 5,000 sheep died in Utah. The government blamed drought. The ranchers went to court and battled the government for more than 30 years, without winning compensation.

Shoshone Indian Carrie Dann, who lives in Northern Nevada, said the cattle never had deformities or cancers until the 1950s, when continental nuclear testing began. Through the 1970s, many calves were born crooked or not born at all.

"We're animals, just like they are," Dann said. "Whenever the government uses nuclear weapons, they are having an effect not only on humans, but all of life."

For Janet Gordon of Cedar City, Utah, the toll from nuclear power and weapons has never ended. "It's continuing to happen," she said, describing the scene at a recent congressional hearing in Washington.

"My daughter's eyes"

"A woman put two eyes on the table in front of the congressmen," Gordon said. "She said, 'Here are my daughter's eyes, my daughter was born without any.'

"This is a problem worldwide and the effects are long, long term."

The anti-nuclear activists move to the Nevada Test Site for closing ceremonies today after meeting in Las Vegas since Monday.

The Nevada Desert Experience, a group of activists based in numerous religious faiths, is expected to reach the Test Site late tonight or early Friday for a full round of prayers and protests.

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