By JIM YARDLEY SANTA FE, N.M., Aug. 26 — The story handed down in Jose Gonzales's family is that his father was working in a field on the day the government men came to take away his farm. Up and down he worked the field until they told him to hitch his team and drive it off the property forever. At the time, Mr. Gonzales was serving in the Army in World War II, so he admits he cannot document the story. But land records confirm that his family was among the small group of Hispanic homesteaders whose property was used for the Manhattan Project, the secret program that created the atomic bomb. Now, nearly six decades later, Mr. Gonzales, 83, is suing the government, claiming bluntly "that we were taken for a ride." In a case layered with ethnicity, history and politics, Mr. Gonzales and other heirs are asking for reparations, saying the government cheated their forebears, in some cases paying them nothing, even as nearby Anglo landowners received far more money for their property. "I don't see that there was justice," said Mr. Gonzales, who fought in Africa and Europe before being sent to Japan, where at Hiroshima he saw firsthand the power of the bomb developed on his family's land. The case is also complicated. The heirs to the homesteaders, fractured by infighting, have split in two and filed lawsuits pursuing different tactics. One group, pushing for a political solution, has lobbied the state's congressional delegation for reparations' legislation this fall. The other group, which is more confrontational, is bracing for a court fight. "We're asking for some of the land back," said Joe Gutierrez, the group's leader. "There was some discrimination in how they assessed these properties." Andrew Smith, the Justice Department lawyer who is handling the cases, said he was confident the government could win in court, particularly since the claims are 60 years old, raising questions concerning the statute of limitations. "The issues become stale and the facts become cold and the people who were present in the dispute are no longer around," Mr. Smith said. "It makes it about impossible for the court to get at the merits of the case." The dispute traces to 1942, when the government began looking for a site to develop a nuclear weapon. The director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was familiar with the remote, mountainous area of New Mexico near the town of Los Alamos, about 30 miles from Santa Fe. Eventually, the site was selected for what is now called the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The government needed roughly 54,000 acres for the project, and most of the land was taken from a national forest. But about 8,900 acres were in private hands, owned by the Hispanic homesteaders and two Anglo- owned enterprises, the Los Alamos Ranch School and Anchor Ranch. Both the school and the ranch hired lawyers and negotiated sale prices; the school, according to research commissioned by the Hispanic heirs, was paid $225 per acre, including buildings. Anchor Ranch was paid $43 per acre just for the land. The Hispanic homesteaders were paid as little as $7 an acre, including improvements, according to the research. Some landowners never received their payments, the study showed, and some people told of being forced off their land at gunpoint. Teresita Garcia Martinez, 72, recalled how her family owned 300 acres after her grandfather had staked a claim in the late 1800's under the Homestead Act. Her father, Adolfo Garcia, operated a sawmill that employed the entire family and a dozen other men. But when government officials told her father that his land would be needed for wartime national security, she said he obeyed. He was paid $23 an acre. "The whole family suffered," she said, adding that her father worked temporarily as a janitor at Los Alamos. She said some relatives moved to California and Arizona in search of work. "The whole family had to separate. It was a family business." In 1997, the claims made by Mrs. Martinez and others gained public attention after Congress approved legislation to turn over more than 4,600 acres of land owned by the laboratory to the surrounding county and to a local Indian tribe. The state's two United States senators, Republican Pete V. Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman, had sponsored the legislation to help development in the city of Los Alamos and because the tribe had never been compensated for land taken to build the laboratory. The legislation also called for the claims of the Hispanic homesteaders to be examined by the Department of Energy, which asked the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct an investigation. The Army determined that the homesteaders had no legal basis for more compensation, ruling that the original condemnation had been proper, a finding that helped prompt the current lawsuits. Initially, the heirs were united in a lawsuit filed in January 2000 by a Santa Fe lawyer, Gene Gallegos. Mr. Gallegos met with members of Mr. Domenici's staff and decided that the chances of winning timely reparations were better through an act of Congress than in court. He is negotiating with Congressional staff members. But others, led by Mr. Gutierrez, disagreed and said they felt cut out of the negotiations. Mr. Gutierrez's group filed its lawsuit in May. Mr. Smith, the Justice Department lawyer, said the government did not have a position on a reparations bill but would probably request that the two cases be consolidated. Mr. Gonzales, the World War II veteran whose family was one of the original landowners, said he hoped the legal wrangling would not delay a resolution. "Time is marching on, and if the people who were hurt the most are to see justice in their lifetimes," he said, "then it has to happen now." Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company