Transcript
NICK MCLELLAN: One of the major concerns from the survivors of those tests including many British troops but also New Zealand sailors, Fijian soldiers and sailors and local Gilbertese labourers who were there as plantation workers and their families are concerned about health effects and also inter-generational effects. A study conducated by professor Al Roland of Massey University of the New Zealand sailors who were there on two ships, two New Zealand frigates as weather ships for the nuclear tests found significant health effects particularly genetic damage, chromosomal translocations. And for the aging veterans now many in their 80s their concern not only about their own health but that for their children and even grandchildren.
KOROI HAWKINS: And have they, these Pacific islanders and people involved in these tests pursued compensation in the way that in French Polynesia and other places in the Pacific have been pursuing?
NM: Both the United States and France have set up compensation schemes for their nuclear survivors. In both cases there are gaps and indeed a demand for more money better systems. Also for damage to property in the case of the Marshall Islands. But the British have never accepted that sort of liability. There was a major court case brought by British New Zealand and Fijian veterans through the British courts over nearly a decade. That was rejected however because of problems of proof and causation. The British have never accepted that there were hazards. Even though the book documents, clear evidence of Fijian and New Zealand personnel being exposed to hazardous levels of ionizing radiation with consequent impacts on their health.
KH: What about now in modern times. Kiribati looks at Kiritimati or Kirisimasi Island as a place that they are looking for to develop tourism they are thinking of putting a fish plant on there. Is that feasible given what occurred there?
NM: The damage conducted for example at Murorua and Fangataufa Atolls where the French let off 193 tests is certainly much worse than is seen on Christmas Island. But there are concerns about the lingering effects particularly on health. There hasn't been comprehensive radiological studies in recent times. Although about a decade ago there was a clean up effort to get rid of a lot of the waste and rubbish that was left by the British decades ago when they departed in the mid 1960s. I think the legacies are as much political as environmental and one of the concerns is that development of the British hydrogen bomb arsenal is now being replicated by other states. And so as we enter the 60th anniversary of the Grapple Tests we see North Korea following the same path of threatening to explode hydrogen bombs above the Pacific Ocean. We havent yet cleaned up the legacies of decades ago and yet we still see the development of nuclear arsenals and still see the peoples of the Pacific being affected.
KH: With the United Nations latest treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons how much of a stretch is it to imagine a world where all nuclear powers stand down so to speak or stop using these weapons or having them in their possession.
NM: Over 50 states have already signed the new treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons including Asia Pacific nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and others. The problem is however that the nuclear powers are still refusing to participate in this new treaty and yet they are sensitive to the challenge from non-nuclear states. In 2014 Marshall Islands took all nine nuclear weapon states before the international court of justice. And although there case was unsuccessful. It did cause a reaction. Britain in February this year withdrew from the compulsory jurisdiction of the international court of justice on matters relating to nuclear weapons. It was one of only three weapons states that accepted this jurisdiction. But the Marshall Islands challenge which was only knocked back by the vote of the president after an eight eight split on the court, showed that there is an enormous concern amongst the nuclear weapons states that there is growing calls for abolition and the new treaty for the prohibition of nuclear weapons really symbolises that call.
KH: What drove you to write the book?
NM: I have lived and worked in the Pacific for many years and during the late 1990s I lived in Fiji working with the Pacific concerns resource centre. At that time together with my colleague Lusena Salambula and Josua Namoce we interviewed and recorded the history in a book published in Fiji and about the Fijian soldiers and sailors who witnessed the nuclear tests. Since that time I have been fascinated by the experience. The British of course tested in my own country Australia with atomic weapons and yet the hydrogen bomb tests in Kiribati are not very well known and so the book is compiling a lot of information gathered and presents portraits of people who are opposed to the tests. It is really important to recognise that in the 1950s there was widespread opposition from Fiji, from Western Samoa, from the Cook Islands to these tests going ahead.
