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There is a reason the health and environmental efx of nuclear weapons (let alone the morality of their construction and use) were not mentioned here. 1/6 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/presidential-message-75th-anniversary-trinity-nuclear-test/ @chicagonoyuki @bojacobs @clubatomique
"This remarkable feat of engineering and scientific ingenuity was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, which helped end World War II and launch an unprecedented era of global stability, scientific innovation, and economic prosperity." <This is a slap in the face 2/6
to the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, whose region was contaminated by the Trinity test, and the tens of thousands of people around the globe whose homes and food supplies and bodies were poisoned by radiation exposure 3/6
from 1000s of subsequent nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, Australia, Alaska, French Polynesia, China, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. (check out Isao Hashimoto's "1945-1998" animation here: ) 4/6
Not to mention those poisoned by their proximity to plutonium production sites (Hanford, Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats), and the 1000s of uranium mines and mills developed to fuel this violent technology, as well as the victims of nuclear accidents like the Rio Puerto Spill, (1979) 5/6
and the power plant accidents at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011). Trump's statement is the sort of violent, nationalist erasure of history that needs to be combatted with the stories of impacted people, communities, and places. 6/6
