| Politics: BRITAIN'S BEST KEPT SECRET IN THE ISLANDS |
Faulty Geiger counters hid hydrogen bomb scam.
Geiger counters supplied by colonial authorities to sample radioactive fallout from British tests during the 1950s were highly unreliable.
“The Geiger counters kept on breaking down,” recalls William Powell, a former serviceman.
“They kept sending new ones and these kept breaking down too.”
| Tauariki Greig... points to the north west side of a map of her home island, Rakahanga, where she and family saw British atomic testing begin in 1957. |
Powell's father was based in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, in the late fifties.
This coincided with the start of the British testing programme in the Pacific Islands and one of the best kept secrets of the Cold War when Britain faked a hydrogen bomb.
“The government concocted the biggest hoax in this country's history,” a British politician, Brian Jenkins, told Parliament.
“They exploded an atomic bomb that contained so much uranium that it caused a 750,000-tonne explosion, which made the Americans think we had an H-bomb.”
To this day, few yield records existed for the first three tests in the Pacific Islands conducted above Christmas Islands, beginning May 15, 1957.
Cold War rivalry
At that time, World War II cooperation had been replaced by Cold War rivalry, even between supposed allies.
Britain was lagging behind.
“An atom bomb is dirtier, more dangerous to personnel and more radioactive than a hydrogen bomb,” Jenkins is quoted by UK Hansard as saying.
“The British did not record the radiation readings in case they fell into the hands of clever American observers who would have noticed that the radiation levels did not coincide with the explosion of an atomic bomb. All the readings were faked and fixed in the interest of national security.”
Last month, Powell told ISLANDS BUSINESS he remembered his father saying there was more natural background radiation than anything he could record from the nuclear tests.
His comments join a few others who had begun to question for the first time the impact of British testing on the Cook Islands.
Christmas Islands was a long way from Rarotonga. But not far enough away to go unnoticed.
“Everyone was told to go outside and watch for the flash in the sky. And watch the sky turn red.”
And could you see the flash?
“Oh yeah.”
Much closer were the northern group islands of Penrhyn, Rakahanga, Pukapuka, Nassau and Manihiki, at least 1200 kilometres north.
Known today for its pearl farming, Manihiki in 1957 was home to a 10-year old girl, Tauariki Greig.
“I was playing hide and seek with my family; my father had hoisted me on to his shoulders to help me hide in a tree.
“It was a beautiful sunny clear day and I will never forget the flash of light brighter than the sun,” she wrote in a letter to the British Home Office.
Greig is a name well-known in Kiribati as well as the Cooks, but this was the first time that concerns about the fallout from the tests had crossed borders.
Greig, now a Meyer, had suffered mystery illnesses for the past five years and a DNA test revealed “genetic mutations,” she said.
Apart from asking for copies of all correspondences, there's been no further response from United Kingdom authorities.
Greig cannot forget memories of the day.
“Shortly after the blast,” says Greig, “the ground shook. We didn't know what was going to happen. That evening the whole sky just turned red.”
“It stayed like that for about a week. A few days after the blast our lagoon changed colour and all the fish died; floated to the surface.
“Our parents wouldn't let us eat the fish so the men buried them.”
Not widely appreciated was that of the 516 million tons of nuclear yield detonated since 1945, over half released worldwide were in atmospheric tests.
Second busiest region was the Pacific Islands. According to the 1999 Catalogue of World Wide Nuclear Testing, 170 million tons were released in atmospheric tests in the Pacific Islands.
By comparison, just 200,000 tons were released above Australia and one million above the United States' test site in Nevada.
America was the busiest in the Pacific Island with 140 million tons of yield from tests above Bikini, Enewetak and Johnston atolls.
Least well-known is Britain's atmospheric yield total of 31 million tons, three times more than the 10 million tons released by the much more unpopular atmospheric tests in French Polynesia.
When Britain began testing in the Pacific, the BBC reported that details were “sketchy” and that it was only an “experimental device.”
Now it seemed increasingly certain that the 'experimental devices' were British armed forces. And Pacific Islanders, no better informed than their colonial rulers.
Powell said the former Food and Agriculture department records from air and water samples were kept in a wooden building until self-government in 1965.
After that the records were “tossed out” and the building turned into a guard house at the Public Works Department.
“One of the biggest problems was that health records were not kept properly, especially from the northern group,” says Powell.
So far, the government of the Cook Islands has distanced itself from claims of nuclear fallout or criticising New Zealand for its failure to protect the interest of colonial era Cook Islanders.
“New Zealand has the responsibility of taking over the issue for the Cook Islanders because they were responsible for the Cook Islands when the English detonated the bombs,” Greig's husband, Meyer told TVNZ.
Pacific Affairs minister Phil Goff said they would take an approach from the government of the Cook Islands “seriously.”
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