Article

Braceros & Other Farm Workers: Forgotten Radiation Victims

Historic image. Group of 30 men most wearing tall hats, vests, and pants walk along a railroad track carrying bags.
Arriving Braceros

Clifford “Click” Relander Collection- “Arriving Braceros,” Clifford “Click” Relander Collection, Yakima Valley Libraries, accessed March 27, 2024, https://yakimalocalhistory.omeka.net/items/show/1333.

Article written by Saul Bautista

The year was 1964 and a young woman named Maria Nicasio arrived in Prosser, Washington hoping to start a new life with her parents and siblings. The weather was nice and there were plenty of opportunities for work. She got a job as a farm worker in the asparagus crops in nearby Benton City. While Maria and her family worked by the Yakima River, they also drank from and bathed in it and ate the raw asparagus and other crops they were harvesting.[1] She did not know it at the time but living and working as agricultural laborers just miles from the plutonium production facility at Hanford would have severe health consequences for herself and her family.
Line drawing with 2 maps. Small map of Washington in upper corner with an oval in the lower center to show area for big map, which shows 12 counties in divided into irregular shapes with names counties. Dots represent camp locations.
Map of Reported Farm Worker Camps by County for the years 1944-1947.

WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVES

The Bracero Program

Maria and her family were only a small part of a bigger picture of the immigration history of rural Washington. Hispanic and other seasonal agricultural workers had been employed in the fields going back to the early 1900s. This community grew rapidly in the wake of World War II as local Anglo farm workers joined the military or left the fields for higher-paying jobs in defense industries on the west coast. Facing an urgent need to maintain the domestic US food supply, on August 4, 1942, the American Government entered a bilateral immigratory contract with the Mexican Government for the movement of thousands of temporary workers on to privately-owned farms in the western U.S.[2] This program was called the Bracero program and was responsible for the dramatic growth of the Hispanic community in the Pacific Northwest. Originally, braceros contracted for a period of 90 days, after which they had to return to their homes back in Mexico. However, the contracts quickly had to be extended from the original 90 days to six months due to on-going war-time labor deficits.[3] Due to discriminatory policies by the state of Texas, braceros had no choice but to go directly from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest. Braceros from Michoacán were transported by train to Hood River in Oregon and Yakima in Washington. Between the years 1943 and 1947 the American government contracted 220,640 braceros from Mexico; 13,809 of them worked in Washington state.[4] By the 1950s Hispanic workers migrating from Mexico to the U.S. produced a stable flow of workers in the state of Washington. Mexican immigrants got jobs in the US to support their hometowns in Mexico, so that their people could have stable homes and a decent standard of living. Their activities ended up promoting the view that immigrating was the best course of action to economically support their families and communities.[5]

By the time the Bracero program ended in 1964, Yakima had become the epicenter where more and more Hispanic immigrants made their home. Mexican braceros were replaced by three new sources of Hispanic migrants: direct illegal immigration to the state of Washington; Hispanic immigrants from other states moving to Washington, and more specifically Yakima; and third, Mexican Americans moving from the southwest.[6]
Line drawing with 2 maps. Small map of Washington in upper corner with an oval in the lower center to show area for big map, which shows 12 counties in divided into irregular shapes with names counties. Dots represent camp locations.
Map of Reported Farm Worker Camps by County for the years 1948-1951.

WASHINGTON STATE ARCHIVES

Daily lives of farm workers Downwind from Hanford

The braceros, alongside Native American and other farm worker groups, harvested a succession of crops by season, beginning with asparagus and cherries and continuing with peas, sugar beets, strawberries and tree fruits, vegetables, hay and hops.[7] During the peak years of plutonium production at Hanford, farm workers were exposed to radiation at very high rates due to their long hours outdoors, contact with contaminated soil and blowing dust, and from swimming in and drinking surface water. They also ingested radioactive particles and other toxins from wild and locally grown leafy vegetables and from foods purchased locally from Native Americans.[8] While the braceros were single men coming alone, after the war large family groups, like the Nicasios, were also recruited to do seasonal work in Washington.[9] They lived in large, army-style tent camps or barracks. The Yakima Chief Ranch camps on the Yakima River were home to 2000-3000 hops workers who described the camps as “small towns.”[10]

Due to the seasonal, temporary nature of farm labor in the 1940s and 1950s, it is not possible to track down the former workers who were exposed to and possibly sickened from radiation. However, we know that Hanford’s plutonium production released 560,000 curies of airborne radioactive idodine-131 in 1945 alone. In July 1951, at the peak of growing season, another 23,000 curies of idodine-131 escaped due to filter failure. Eight reactors operated at full capacity in the later 1950s and early 1960s, contaminating fish and shellfish in the Columbia River and all the way out to the Washington coast. [11] A 1997 study commissioned by the Washington Department of Health located the majority of farm worker camps during Hanford’s peak production in a downwind arc, stretching from Wenatchee south and east to Walla Walla. This same region was home to many individuals who were ultimately compensated by the Federal Government for health damage resulting from Hanford’s radiation. This is strong evidence that the braceros and other farm workers were also affected by the nuclear plant.[12]

Returning to Maria

Maria Nicasio’s mother died of cancer at the age of 60 and her oldest son developed a tumor in his forehead, which was incapable of being removed. Her 43-year-old brother also developed a tumor in his head that was only partially operable.[13] Maria suffered from chronic joint pain and her father suffered two heart attacks. It is difficult to know for certain, but the Nicasio family and thousands of other farm workers were likely victims of the effects of radiation from the Hanford Nuclear facility.

Footnotes
[1] Maria Nicasio, Oral History interview by Luis Guanabal, December 14, 1999, Hanford Health Information Archives collection, AR69-2-0-21, Series 1: Donor Materials, Donor 629. Washington State Archives.
[2] Mario Jimenez Sifuentez, Of Forest and Fields Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 10
[3] Mary Kay Duffie and William Willard, “Final Report: Migrant Farm Worker Scoping Study,” Washington State Department of Health, Olympia, WA, 1997, p. 11, HHIN SERIES: WASHINGTON COORDINATOR FILES. Box 1, Jan 1993-Dec 1998. AR 20060814-02. Washington State Archives.
[4] Duffie and Willard, 11.
[5] Ana R. Minian, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 127.
[6] Duffie and Willard, 45.
[7] Duffie and Willard, p. 7.
[8] Duffie and Willard, xiv-xv.
[9] Duffie and Willard, 46
[10] Duffie and Willard, 47.
[11] Hanford Health Information Network Final Report, June 2000, Hanford Health Information Archives Collection, AR-69-2-0-21, Series 5, Sub-series 1, Washington State Archives, Appendix T, 1-3.
[12] Trisha T. Pritikin, The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020), 28.
[13] Nicasio, Oral History, 2.

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Manhattan Project National Historical Park

Last updated: April 2, 2024