“The world is coming to an end”
The story of Henry Herrera.
By Joshua Wheeler (Text) and Reto Sterchi (Photo), 16.10.2021
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Henry was 11 years old and living in Tularosa when the bomb went off about 50 miles northwest of his home. He thought to himself, “the world is coming to an end.” He watched the cloud of fallout move toward the mountains to the northeast and then the dark cloud shifted south, came back toward Tularosa.
He remembers that the fallout “was on our roofs, our gardens, milk cows, rabbits, pigs, turkeys, and chickens … all we had was rain water from the cistern and ditch water. All the debris from our roof was in our cistern after the first rainfall.”
Henry first got cancer of the salivary gland. The radiation treatment caused osteo-radio necrosis and damage to his carotid artery. His brother died of cancer. Both of his sisters are cancer survivors.