New Zealand's nuclear horror still not acknowledged say vets

Sunday, 2 May 2021

Veterans of the nuclear testing programme, Richard Bishop from Christchurch and Brian Harnor from Mount Maunganui, were in Palmerston North for the launch of a photo exhibition in their honour.

Photos on a wall, names on a board and an academic study will ensure the radiation damage to 551 men who witnessed Britain’s nuclear bomb explosions in the Pacific is never forgotten.

But what the New Zealand survivors of those blasts really want is an apology and compensation from the Government.

The stories of the nuclear veterans and the subsequent heartache and illness affecting them and the off-spring of those who had families have been retold in Palmerston North this weekend.

It was the third opening of Denise Baynham’s exhibition of the photographs and stories of navy veterans “Operation Grapple, We were There” at Te Manawa art gallery.

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“There are only 19 in the exhibition, but it pays homage to all,” the photographer said.

Alongside the portraits of the men, at home with their medals, hangs a name board, “Dust in our Blood”.

Richard Bishop, left, from Christchurch with fellow veteran John Purcell. Bishop’s portrait is on the wall behind.

Anu Sefton, the daughter of the late Roy Sefton who was a founder of the New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association, had a mission compiling the list after it appeared the Government had lost the records.

She hoped it would ensure the memory of those men who sailed on the navy ships Pukaki and Rotoiti into the centre of the Christmas Island tests in 1957-58 would never be lost again.

She talked about the anxiety many of the men returned with, the early cancer that claimed many of their lives, and the miscarriages, the birth defects and illness that plagued their children and their grandchildren.

“We pride ourselves on being a nuclear-free New Zealand, but will not honour our horrific nuclear past.”

She said while the survivors still struggled for acknowledgement that they were there, for their families, “we are still here”.

Veteran of the nuclear testing program Tere Tahi chats with photographer Denise Baynham. Tahi's portrait is on the wall behind them, and the late Roy Sefton's to the left.

Veteran Richard Bishop, whose photo features in the exhibition, remembered he joined the navy directly from Palmerston North Boys’ High School.

He was on the Pukaki, excited at 16 years old to be going up to the islands. “To me and just about everybody, it was going to be a good jolly.”

He is one of only three of his group of 15 seamen boys still alive to tell the tale.

In 2008, Massey University cytogenetic and genome researcher Al Rowland produced the scientific paper that confirmed what Sefton and others had suspected.

The men exposed to those bomb blasts, many times more powerful than the bombs that ended World War II in Japan, suffered radiation damage, and still do.

A carefully controlled sample of 50 veterans showed three times the frequency of genetic damage, technically called total chromosome translocations, than the control group.

Rowland is now the association’s patron, and he and Sefton’s close friend and successor Tere Tahu are determined to have the Government acknowledge the harm done.

They have a meeting with Veterans’ Affairs Minister Meka Whaitiri on May 10, with the goal of gaining an audience with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Veteran John Purcell said until now, they had only received “a wall of silence” from successive ministers.

“It is my belief that the Crown abrogated its duty of care by dispatching HMNZS Pukaki and Rotoiti to take part in the British nuclear testing, being fully aware that we were being sent into harm’s way.”

What he wants is a public apology, a public acceptance of the research findings, urgent research regarding the children and grandchildren of veterans, and compensation.