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‘People Just Die in Silence’
(Part I)
Led by Tona Henderson, the Idaho Downwinders have spent two decades advocating federal recognition and compensation for those affected by nuclear testing
BY MICAH DREW
Emmett City Councilor Tona Henderson lived most of her life believing that taxes and death by cancer were inevitable.
“I’ve done genealogy research for a long time just to see where my family came from and so I’ve looked at lots of obituaries and death certificates, and at the time I thought it was pretty normal to see many people who have died from cancer,” Henderson said. Forty-five of her relatives, who all lived in Gem County, were diagnosed with cancer, 15 of whom died from it. “Growing up, I always heard people say, ‘if you don’t die of old age or a car wreck, you’ll die from cancer.’”
Henderson is the founder and director of Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit which represents people who lived in Idaho during the height of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and were subject to radioactive fallout.
Her advocacy work began in the early 2000s when groups of Emmett residents would gather in the Rumor Mill, the donut shop she owned, and talk about their experiences with cancer and suspicions that it was related to radiation exposure from the 100 known above ground nuclear explosions carried out between 1951 and 1953.
She remembers the devastating impact to the community truly sinking in when a series of reporters from the Times, Reader’s Digest, and Spokesman-Review visited the town to talk to those affected.
“One of them, she told me she’d never met someone with a thyroid problem in her life,” Henderson recalled. In the donut shop that day were 14 people who either had thyroid cancer or needed medication for thyroid conditions. “I realized we needed to do something on a grander scale so people can tell their stories.”
On Sept. 11, 2004, Henderson organized the first rally of the Idaho Downwinders in Emmett, inviting every elected official in Idaho. More than 300 people showed up and shared their stories, including Shari Garman, who Henderson attributes to kicking off the Downwinder furor in Idaho.
Garman, an Emmett native, survived a bout of thyroid cancer, but passed away a year after the first Idaho Downwinders rally after four additional cancers spread throughout her body. The latter part of her life had been dedicated to getting the federal government to acknowledge their role in harming Idahoans.
20 years later, Henderson is still fighting.
“Shari didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, she lived a healthy life, but she still suffered because of what happened,” Henderson said. “She asked me, ‘Please don’t give up on this,’ and I made the promise not to, but it’s really hard. I can’t give up on it. It is just unbelievable that people can turn a blind eye to this.” There is currently a federal statute in place that recognizes the impact of radiation fallout and provides monetary compensation for individuals who contracted cancer and several other diseases related to radiation, but Idahoans are not part of it. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, passed in 1990 and included compensation of up to $50,000 for “Downwinders,” living in 21 counties spread across Nevada, Utah, and Arizona during the height of the testing. RECA also compensates uranium mine workers in 11 states, including Idaho.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the bulk of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing occurred at the Nevada Test Site, a 680 square mile stretch of desert, chosen specifically for its lack of proximity to, well, anywhere. Las Vegas is the closest metropolitan area, 65 miles to the southeast, but westerly winds that whipped through the desert were expected to carry any radioactive clouds away from populated areas. The only American citizens government officials thought may be affected—primarily living in southern Utah and northern Nevada—were termed “low-use segments of the population,” according to formerly classified Atomic Energy Commission documents.
“That’s the way we’ve been thought of all these years,” Henderson said.
On June 5, 1952, the U.S. government detonated the “How” bomb, a 14-kiloton nuclear weapon that sent a radioactive mushroom cloud more than six miles into the atmosphere. Over the next two weeks, the radioactive fallout drifted some 450 miles to the north into Idaho.
Accounts from residents during that time mention seeing their fields and orchards covered in a gray-white dusting that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The fallout included high concentrations of radioactive Iodine131, an isotope linked to increased risks of thyroid and other cancers and is found in high concentrations in the milk of cows and goats that graze in contaminated fields.
According to a 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute, of the top five counties that received the highest radiation dose from nuclear weapons testing, four are in Idaho—Gem, Blaine, Custer, and Lemhi.
Henderson’s parents were married in Emmett two weeks after the “How” detonation and held a wedding reception outside.
Only around 8,000 people live in Emmett. Since 2004, Henderson has recorded 1,140 instances of cancer diagnoses among Emmett residents, including her parents and two older brothers.
“It continues to strike me every time I add to this list, the devastating impact of this,” Henderson said.
Henderson’s primary goal over the last 20 years has been to expand RECA to include other heavily affected communities—specifically looking at those counties identified by the National Cancer Institute as bearing the brunt of radioactive fallout. Over the years, she’s met with congressional delegations from multiple states, testified before Senate committees, and met with vice presidents. In December, Henderson said, they got as close as they ever had. That is in no small part because of Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, the only Idaho official who showed up to the first Downwinders rally in 2004.
“The engagement [of the Idaho Downwinders] has been critical in telling the true, personal stories of Idahoans who have suffered without recompense,” a spokesperson from Crapo’s office told IdaHome. “It was their personal stories at a 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing that helped garner new support for the bill.” That bill was an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which would expand RECA’s geographic eligibility to then-residents of Idaho, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Guam, and would extend RECA for 19 years. Crapo championed the amendment in the Senate, and it passed 61-37 last summer.
Unfortunately, the amendment was stripped from the NDAA before it passed through Congress in December.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Crapo told the story of another Emmett resident, Don Harrison, who contracted five different cancers and passed away in 2018.
“Because Emmett received the third-most radiation from being downwind of the Trinity tests, Don Harrison lived on poisoned ground,” Crapo said. “To be clear, the government’s test of nuclear weapons caused this. It is our solemn duty to compensate those who have su ered because of these tests.”
RECA, in its current form, is set to sunset in June of this year, but Crapo and fellow U.S. Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) continue to work on getting a bill to reauthorize and expand the statute to the Senate floor. A standalone bill was introduced on Feb. 29.
While Henderson is hopeful the bill will pass before RECA expires, after 20 years of falling short, she’s not taking any chances to slow her engagement. It’s her duty to continue telling the stories of those who no longer can.
“They told us back during testing that we could be part of history. But they targeted us and they lied about it,” Henderson said. “Now, people just die in silence.” is is the first article in a two-part series. In the next issue, explore ongoing developments, including a new bill to extend and expand RECA.
