Trinity Site is the place in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was detonated, on July 16, 1945. This is often said to be near Alamogordo, but it is actually off the road (US 380) from San Antonio, where Conrad Hilton, of all people, grew up, and Carrizozo. This is well north of Alamogordo, but that is where the wire service story was datelined.
Although I had driven near it several times, until 1997 I was unclear exactly where the Trinity Site was and when it was that the public could go out to it. Then I discovered that one of the days the site was to be open was actually to be on my birthday, October 4th, a Saturday that year. I immediately arranged to make the trip. I thought a number of people might want to go along, but in the end I only linked up with my old friend from Beirut, and long time 
New Mexico resident, Craig Nettleton.
Except for the ground zero monument, fences, and a small number of other items, some temporary, Trinity Site looks much like the rest of the desert now. If we did not know what had happened there, it could easily be passed by unremarked. While Craig and I were driving up, we noticed the crowd of people before we saw anything distinctive about the site.
While the military prohibits demonstrations or political statements on the site (one wonders what military necessity trumps the First Amendment at a National Historic Site), several people seemed to be engaged in some kinds of religious observance. I contributed to that by reading two sections of Chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita (Juan Mascaró).
9. When Krishna the God of Yoga, had thus spoken, O king, he appeared then to Arjuna in his supreme divine form.
10. And Arjuna saw in that form countless visions of wonder: eyes from innumerable faces, numerous celestial ornaments, numberless heavenly weapons;
11. Celestial garlands and vestures, forms anointed with heavenly perfumes. The Infinite Divinity was facing all sides, all marvels in him containing.
12. If the light of a thousand suns suddenly rose in the sky, that splendour might be compared to the radiance of the Supreme Sprit.
13. And Arjuna saw in that radiance the whole universe in its variety, standing in a vast unity in the body of the God of gods.
14. Trembling with awe and wonder, Arjuna bowed his head, and joining his hands in adoration he thus spoke to his God.
One reflects on the pre-drawn burst of radiance of the nuclear blast, a "heavily weapon" indeed, actually hotter and brighter than the surface of the sun. The "light of a thousands suns," never seen before on earth, thus occurred for many spectators and surprised residents of New Mexico at Trinity Site, leaving many "trembling with awe and wonder." It may seem inappropriate to think of the first nuclear weapon in this religious context, but the Lord Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, to be sure, is no Lord of Peace, as we see in the following passage, remembered in a different form by Robert Oppenheimer, but chilling enough in Mascaró's translation:
32. I am all-powerful Time [/Death] which destroys all things, and I have come here to slay these men. Even if thou dost not fight, all the warriors facing thee shall die.33. Arise therefore! Win thy glory, conquer thine enemies, and enjoy thy kingdom. Through the fate of their Karma I have doomed them to die: be thou merely the means of my work.
34. Drona, Bhishma, Jayad-ratha and Karna, and other heroic warriors of this great war have already been slain by me; tremble not, fight and slay them. Thou shalt conquer thine enemies in battle.
As in the Mahâbhârata itself, with its fearful celestial weapons, which could even destroy the universe, so at the Trinity Site humanity acquired just such a weapon, which spelled the doom of many, both the wicked, as was Duryodhana, and the noble, blameless, and tragic, as were Drona, Bhishma, and Karna. The continuing debate over the morality of the tactics in World War II, including the use of the nuclear weapons and other bombing of civilian targets, which had been avoided as immoral in World War I, finds no less than a full parallel in the moral ambivalence of the Mahâbhârata, of Krishna's own advice to the Pandavas, which was often to violate the Rules of War for the sake of the "good cause." The awe, terror, portent, threat, and moral complexity of the Trinity weapon, immediately felt by Oppenheimer, was nothing new to the human imagination. It is as though it was all foreseen.
By the way, don't miss the chili cheeseburgers at the Owl Bar and Steakhouse in San Antonio.
Conrad Hilton came a long way from San Antonio, New Mexico. After running a store there, he headed for the oil boom of Texas, but then decided that housing the oilmen would be more profitable, and less messy perhaps, than wildcatting. This worked admirably. A few years later he was marrying Zsa Zsa Gabor. With that, we see the American Dream moving from dusty small town West, not far from where Billy the Kid shot his way out of jail, and from the raucous Texas oil fields, to Hollywood. Conrad's eldest son, by his first wife (of course), then marries (briefly) Elizabeth Taylor. (William) Barron Hilton also frequented Hollywood a bit, since my own mother met him (and, for that matter, Frank Sinatra) at places like the Hollywood Palladium in the 1940's. To inherit the Hilton fortune, Barron actually had to break his father's will, which had left little of the empire to the children. The result was that the dynasty continues, though now the most conspicuous heirs, Paris and Nikki Hilton, have gone Hollywood and become media personalities themselves. This has not necessarily happened in the best way, since Paris in particular has been called the "nitwit du jour" and has appeared on a sex video recorded by one of her boyfriends. Their ability to run a hotel empire is questionable, but perhaps their personal involvement is no longer necessary -- or it just may be that the less wild Nikki, and their brothers and cousins, will display the business sense.
The Hiltons
Copyright (c) 2006 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., Postumus Friesianorum, All Rights Reserved