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Global Hibakusha
Australia
Related Reports
Hilde Varney
Australian Peace Committee (S.A.)
1997 March 1 Bikini Day, Shizuoka
I would like to tell you of the Australian experience of nuclear testing. In the early 1950fs the then Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, without consulting the Australian people or even his own cabinet, invited the British Government to carry out nuclear tests in the Australian desert. The places chosen for the tests were two at Monte Bello (presituated W. Australian coast near Perth) at Maralinga and Emu in the Great Victoria Desert in South Australia and home of the Tjurutja Aboriginal people, which, while Mr. Menzies referred to it as a useless desert, is regarded by scientists and tourists alike as one of the worldfs unique territories.
Environment
Let us consider the damage to the Australian environment. Between 1953 and 1963, Britain conducted a program of nuclear warhead development at Maralinga and Emu, consisting of nine atomic explosions and several hundred smaller trials codenamed VIXEN B. Whilst the atomic tests did deposit radioactive material at the test site and on areas downwind, it was the VIXEN B trials which caused what is now considered as one of Australia?fs worst environmental disasters. These trials stemmed from an effort by British scientists to study the effects of conventional explosives on the bomb?fs components, and twelve of these, called one-point safety trials, sent jets of molten plutonium up to 1000 metres into the air, spreading plumes of contamination outwards from the firing site. In 1966, Britain, after a radiological survey, mounted Operation Brumby to clean up the test area. During the Operation, 21 pits were filled with contaminated equipment and 20 kilograms of the 22 kilograms of plutonium used in these trials - enough to produce 10 atomic bombs, and then capped it with 650 tons of concrete. In 1984, when the 3000 square kilometres of land surrounding the test site was due to be returned to Tjurutja Aboriginal people, scientists of the Australian Radiation Laboratory (ARL) carried out a radiological survey of the site to ensure that levels of radioactivity were such as could be considered safe. They were stunned to find that the levels of radioactivity were of the order of 10 times higher than those stated by the British 8 years earlier. They found that the significant contamination was much more widespread and in some places extended beyond the fenced boundary. They concluded that as much as 20 kilograms of plutonium, estimated as consisting of over 3 million pieces, is distributed over the test area, and not the 2 kilograms claimed by the British. In July 1984, in response to the ARL findings, the Australian Government set up a Royal Commission to enquire into the British nuclear tests. The Commission held the British Government responsible for a further cleanup, estimated in 1984 to cost 100 million British pounds, and blamed the 1950?fs Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, for the tests being held in Australia. It also found the British Government to be guilty of concealing vital information on the tests from the Australian Government and that in collusion with an Australian nuclear scientist Professor Ernest Titterton, had deliberately distorted facts that were communicated. The Commission also recommended that compensation for injuries sustained during and after the tests, should be extended to Aborigines, particularly those exposed to the black mist which swept over them after some of the atomic tests.
Aborigines
And what happened to the inhabitants of the atomic test site? At the time of the British nuclear tests in Australia, the Australian aboriginal people were considered to be little better than noble savages. Although not without their champions in the white community, they had up to that time suffered much cruelty and exploitation at the hands of white people, and many of them had become urban dwellers, wholly dependent on the white society. In the early 1950fs the Tjurutja Aboriginal people were living as they had for thousands of years, as hunters and food gatherers in a part of the Great Victoria Desert which borders the Nullabor Plain. Aboriginal people have a deep spiritual relationship with their land - a fact only recently accepted by white Australians, and certainly not appreciated in the 1950fs by the Australian and British military commanders, when it came to moving them prior to the tests. Without being given any choice, most of the Tjurutja people were moved to Yalata on the Great Australian Bight and those who remained - those who had hidden in fear of the unaccustomed sight of military vehicles, and since illiterate could not understand the posted warning signs, were present during the tests. Eyewitness accounts from service personnel, speak of seeing Aborigines wandering and camping in the test area during and after the tests. Testimony from Aborigines present in the area at the time, tell of a black mist that drifted over the landscape, leaving a black oily coating on everything in its wake, and of the sickness of many Aborigines which followed, particularly children and old people. At Yalata, the harsh conditions drove many of the Tjurutja people who had been moved there, to rebellion, crime, violence and alcohol abuse. In 1984, the Tjurutja people were granted access to their traditional tribal lands at Maralinga, but were prevented from the using 480 square kilometres of land surrounding the test site, because of high radiation levels. In 1991, it was agreed to compensate Aborigines for injuries suffered during and after the tests, and late last year the Australian Government granted a settlement of $13.5 million to re-establish them in the part of their tribal lands where it is safe to live. Since 1984, they have campaigned tenaciously to regain the test lands, and this year the Australian Government agreed to clean up the site at an estimated cost of $104 million, $45 million of which will be provided by the British Government. The clean-up, which is due to commence in September of this year, is expected to last six years, and until that time Tjurutja Aboriginal people are refugees in their own land!
Conclusion
Surely, the enormous and widespread opposition to the Chinese and French nuclear tests is an indication that the world community will no longer tolerate - no longer sees the need for - the existence of nuclear weapons. The Nuclear Powers do not appreciate that the continued threat of nuclear annihilation was tolerated during the cold war, only because nuclear weapons were deemed a necessity. They do not understand that nuclear weapons are now seen as chattels of political power, intimidation and prestige, rather than necessary weapons of war. Since the Second World War, America has threatened their use on more than forty occasions - mostly against third world non-nuclear states. Aside from the immorality of such intimidation, there is the real fear that belligerence and national pride will replace political expedience and that a nuclear war will result. To keep their nuclear arsenals up to date, testing is necessary. The French tell us that their tests are designed to make their arsenal more safe and secure. Let us not be fooled - nuclear testing can only have one purpose - to build more modern nuclear weapons!
Global Hibakusha
Australia
Related Reports
Philip White
Australian Peace Committee
2001 World Conference against A & H Bombs, Hiroshima
Nuclear Weapons Tests in Australia - Summary of Recent Developments
Between 1952 and 1957 the British and Australian Governments cooperated in a nuclear weapons test program at the Montebello Islands, off Western Australia, and at Emu and Maralinga in the south central desert area of Australia. According to The Advertiser newspaper (26 May 2001) 12 tests were conducted during this period. In 1985 a royal commission handed down a scathing report on the tests, which exposed Aborigines, military personnel and other civilians to radiation. After the royal commission a clean-up of the area was ordered, but it is claimed that the clean-up was a failure. Recently Maralinga and related issues have re-emerged in the media as more gruesome details have come to light. Below are the key points that have been covered in recent newspaper articles.
1. A Botched Clean-Up
It has been claimed that an agreement with the Maralinga Tjarutja indigenous people was breached through a failure to use in situ vitrification (immobilising the nuclear materials by turning the waste into glass) to store plutonium-contaminated debris from the nuclear tests. The decision to abandon in situ vitrification was made after a sub-surface explosion at Maralinga on March 21, 1999. An engineer involved in the clean-up says that they dug a hole in the ground in totally unsuitable geology to store the radioactive waste. The waste is now only 3m below the ground. He said a temporary storage pit should have been dug to a much greater depth and then lined with concrete for use until a permanent storage technique had been devised to immobilise the plutonium.
2. Nuclear Guinea Pigs
It has long been claimed that military service people and civilians were used as guinea pigs in the tests, in particular the Maralinga tests. Successive governments have refused to compensate these people. Only one nuclear test veteran has ever succesfully sued the government for compensation for radiation poisoning, although more than 8,000 service people and 8,000 civilians were assigned to the program. (Apparently some others have received confidential out of court settlements.) An estimated 6,000 servicemen have since died.
(a) Maralinga
It is claimed that:
* Australian, British and New Zealand servicemen based at Maralinga were ordered to assemble 7.2km from Ground Zero. They would listen, with their hands over their eyes, for five minutes while a countdown played through a loudspeaker. Officers would order them to wait for two seconds after the countdown finished before turning around and looking at the explosion.
* Within 24 hours of each test, people were ordered to drive towing vehicles into the radioactive site where they would retrieve vehicles parked to test the effects of the explosions. Sometimes they wore white radiation-protection suits, with breathing apparatus. On other occasions they were ordered just to wear khakis. They then washed the vehicles with high-pressure hoses, removing large quantities of contaminated soil. They gave blood samples each time they entered and left the hot zone, or finished washing and dismantling the vehicles. Their bodies and clothing were also swept with Geiger counters to measure their radiation count.
* British servicemen were used in clothing trials to test different materials against radiation.
* The Australian government planned to put 385 servicemen into trenches at Maralinga during an explosion to test the effects of radiation. The plan was aborted only when the British, US and Soviet governments agreed to a temporary moratorium on all nuclear testing in October, 1958.
* Servicemen were forced to roll around in radioactive bulldust.
(b) Montebello
Secret documents have been discovered which reveal that the British Navy knew that sailors sent into the fallout zone of nuclear weapons tests on the Montebello Islands could develop long-term illnesses from radiation exposure. The purpose of sending them there was to help determine permissible doses of radiation.
(c) Disabled People Used
It is claimed that severely disabled people were sent from Britain to be used as guinea pigs during British atomic tests at Maralinga in the 1950s. The physically and mentally disabled people are assumed to have died after exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions. Claims that disabled people were used in experiments to measure the effect of radiation exposure on the human body were examined in the 1985 royal commission into the tests. They were dismissed as unsubstantiated, but Britain's 'Independent' newspaper claims to have uncovered new evidence from a pilot who confirmed he flew disabled people to Australia from Britain.
(d) Stillborn Babies Used
It has been confirmed by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency that bones from Australian babies were used in scientific tests on nuclear fallout without their parents' consent. Chief Executive John Loy said that Australia sent bone specimens from babies and older people to the US and Britain for nuclear fallout tests, but he said that no evidence existed that stillborn babies had been sent. The agency claims that the samples were cremated in Australia and the ash was sent to Britain and the US for the strontium 90 to be measured. Later, Australia was able to carry out the measurement itself. These tests began in 1955 when Dr Willard Libby, of the University of Chicago, appealed for large numbers of bodies, preferably stillborn babies who died shortly after birth, for experiments on the effect of atom bomb test fallout. It is claimed that 6000 bodies were taken from hospitals in Australia, Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, the US and South America without parents' permission.
3. Indigenous People
The tests were carried out despite the fact that Aboriginal people remained in the general area. Many suffered serious health consequences as a result of the 'Black Mist' that spread over the area and some parts of their land are permanently inaccessible due to the remaining radiation. These issues are only briefly touched upon in recent newspaper articles and I don't have access to the 1985 royal commission report. I am therefore unable to give an adequate account of the suffering of Aboriginal people, but it should be remembered that they have probably suffered more than anyone. One recent newspaper article recounts how Aborigines were found drinking alcohol in a concrete bunker in the area just before the explosion. They were found by a soldier. He reported this fact to his supervisor who told him to “Forget about it, dont worry about it and say nothing.”
4. Responses and Admissions
(a) Maralinga Clean-up
Former federal government nuclear engineering adviser Alan Parkinson has called for a public inquiry into the disposal of radioactive materials at Maralinga.
(b) Servicemen guinea pigs
(i) The main priority now for the nuclear veterans is convincing the Veteran Affairs Minister to waive legislation prohibiting the men and their widows from receiving compensation because they did not see active service. The minimum they should receive are Veterans Affairs Department 'gold cards' entitling them to free medical treatment at public and private hospitals.
(ii) The search continues for files that were not submitted to the royal commission.
(iii) The Veterans Affairs Minister has announced that a roll of nuclear veterans will be released as a precursor to an extensive health survey.
(iv) The British Government has been forced to admit more than it has previously: namely that, in order to test the protection offered by military clothing in a fallout area, consenting officers were 'transported' to or walked in various uniforms to an area of low-level fallout.
(c) Babies
State governments have launched inquiries into claims Australian stillborn babies were used in nuclear experiments.
5. Conclusion
The British and Australian governments deliberately used human beings as guinea pigs in their nuclear test program. They have since systematically covered up the truth and obstructed the legitimate attempts of the victims to obtain compensation. But the problems just wont go away. Its much the same as everywhere else really.
Reference
Nuclear Weapons Tests in Australia - Newspaper Extracts
The Saga Continues
--Between 1952 and 1957 the British and Australian Governments cooperated in a nuclear weapons test program at the Montebello Islands, off Western Australia, and at Emu and Maralinga in the south central desert area of Australia. According to The Advertiser newspaper (26 May 2001) 12 tests were conducted during this period. In 1985 a royal commission handed down a scathing report on the tests, which exposed Aborigines, military personnel and other civilians to radiation. After the royal commission a clean-up of the area was ordered, but it is claimed that the clean-up was a failure. Recently Maralinga and related issues have re-emerged in the media as more gruesome details have come to light. Below are the key points that have been covered in recent newspaper articles.
1. A 'Botched' Clean-Up
"Former federal government nuclear engineering adviser Alan Parkinson has called for a public inquiry into the disposal of radioactive materials at Maralinga, after the agreed clean-up method was changed last year...Mr Parkinson, who was involved in the clean-up...during the 1990s...described the final disposal of contaminated materials and of the intensely radioactive plutonium particles as 'a botched job'. He criticised the decision in early 1999 not to proceed with the in situ vitrification of the radioactive waste -- immobilising the nuclear materials by turning the waste into glass. ‘The treatment of the plutonium-contaminated debris at Maralinga is not adequate,' he said. 'They dug a hole in the ground in totally unsuitable geology to store the radioactive waste. It's only 3m below the ground.' He said a temporary storage pit should have been dug to a much greater depth and then lined with concrete for use until a permanent storage technique had been devised to immobilise the plutonium. Mr Parkinson said the department had breached an initial agreement with the Maralinga Tjarutja people by failing to use in situ vitrification to store the waste...The Industry Department explained that the decision to abandon in situ vitrification was made after a sub-surface explosion at Maralinga on March 21, 1999, forced the contractor to change tack."
(from The Australian, 17 May 2001)
2. Nuclear Guinea Pigs
--It has long been claimed that military service people and civilians were used as guinea pigs in the nuclear weapons tests. Successive governments have refused to compensate these people. Only one nuclear test veteran has ever succesfully sued the government for compensation for radiation poisoning, although more than 8,000 service people and 8,000 civilians were assigned to the program. (Apparently some others have received confidential out of court settlements.) An estimated 6,000 servicemen have since died. There are also disturbing claims that disabled people and stillborn babies were used in nuclear weapons tests. Below are quotes and summaries of recent articles in Australian newspapers.
(a) Maralinga
"...about 283 Australian, British and New Zealand servicemen based at Maralinga were ordered to assemble 7.2km from Ground Zero. They would listen, with their hands over their tightly clenched eyes, for five minutes while a countdown played through a loudspeaker. Officers would order them to wait for two seconds after the countdown finished before turning around and looking at the explosion...Within 24 hours of each test, Mr Johnstone [Ric Johnstone, the only person to have successfully sued the government] was ordered to drive a towing vehicle into the radioactive site, dubbed the hot zone, where he would retrieve vehicles parked to test the effects of the explosions. Sometimes he would wear a white radiation-protection suit, with breathing apparatus. On other occasions he would be ordered just to wear his khakis. He and other mechanics would then wash the vehicles with high-pressure hoses, removing large quantities of contaminated soil. Mr Johnstone would give blood samples each time he entered and left the hot zone, or finished washing and dismantling the vehicles. His body and clothing would also be swept with Geiger counters to measure his radiation count. Officers would record these measurements in pencil before Mr Johnstone would be ordered to shower." (from The Advertiser, 26 May 2001)
--Recently documents have emerged that may not have been sited by the royal commission in the 1980s:
"The first break-through came when an Australian researcher based at Scotland's Dundee University, Susan Rabbit-Roff, produced documents detailing how 24 British servicemen were used in clothing trials to test different materials against radiation. Mrs Rabbit-Roff, who has been campaigning against Maralinga for several years, says the documents further challenge British and Australian claims there was no harmful testing of servicemen. Her argument was reinforced earlier this week when secret documents located by the daughter of a late nuclear veteran revealed the Australian government had planned to put 385 servicemen into trenches at Maralinga during an explosion to test the effects of radiation. The plan, codenamed Operation Lighthouse, was aborted only when the British, US and Soviet governments agreed to a temporary moratorium on all nuclear testing in October, 1958. The documents, dated between July, 1958, and September, 1958, were found in dusty folders in a Perth back-yard shed five years ago by a 36-year-old registered nurse, Ann Munslow-Davies. She was 16 when her father died at the age of 48 and she promised him she would uncover the secrets behind Maralinga and help other men gain compensation for their medical bills...[T]he documents...show the Australian government was a 'full and active participant' in planned nuclear tests on humans - disproving the theory that the government of former Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies did not know what was happening." (from The Advertiser, 26 May 2001)
One veteran claims that he "saw up to 250 servicemen, known as 'indoctrinees', forced to roll around in radioactive bulldust." (from The Advertiser, 26 May 2001)
--Regarding the nuclear veterans' demands:
"Mr Johnstone says the main priority now for the nuclear veterans is convincing Veteran Affairs Minister Bruce Scott to waive legislation prohibiting the men and their widows from receiving compensation because they did not see active service. He says the minimum they should receive are Veterans Affairs Department 'gold cards' entitling them to free medical treatment at public and private hospitals...'All we want is for them to have some help to pay for their medical bills and for their widows and children after they have gone.'" (from The Advertiser, 26 May 2001)
--The British Government has been forced to admit more than it has previously about the use of servicemen as guinea pigs:
"Last weekend, the UK Government issued a statement that it 'had not used these servicemen as guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation on them.' But, it said, to test the protection offered by military clothing in a fallout area consenting officers were 'transported' to or walked in various uniforms to an area of low-level fallout." (from The Age 19 May 2001)
--It's a fine distinction indeed to say that people wearing uniforms tested in this way were not being tested themselves. It's certainly hard to imagine these people gaining any comfort from the knowledge that it wasn't them, but their clothing that was being tested.
(b) Montebello
Secret documents have been discovered which reveal that the British Navy knew that sailors sent into the fallout zone of nuclear weapons tests on the Montebello Islands could develop long-term illnesses from radiation exposure. The purpose was to help determine permissible doses of radiation. (refer The Advertiser 15 June 2001)
(c) Disabled People Used
"Severely disabled people were sent from Britain to be used as guinea pigs during British atomic tests at Maralinga in the 1950s, it was claimed yesterday. The physically and mentally disabled people are assumed to have died after exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions. Claims that disabled people were used in experiments to measure the effect of radiation exposure on the human body were examined in the 1985 royal commission into the tests. They were dismissed as unsubstantiated but Britain's Independent newspaper claims to have uncovered new evidence from a pilot who confirmed he flew disabled people to Australia from Britain. The unnamed pilot told his story to Robert Jackson, the director of the Centre for Disability Research and Development at Edith Cowan University in Perth in the late 1980s. Dr Jackson told the Independent that he closely questioned the man and was convinced he was telling the truth. He said it was likely the tests did take place, given the attitudes towards disabled people at the time. The story is apparently supported by Terry Toon, the president of the Australian Atomic Ex-Servicemen's Association. He told the Independent of a building north of the Maralinga airstrip. He said a mechanic who went in to the building later said: 'The sound coming from inside the building was like the gibbering of mentally retarded people. After the second (atomic) test you couldn't hear them anymore.'" (from The Advertiser 12 June 2001)
(d) Stillborn Babies Used
"Bones from Australian babies were used in scientific tests on nuclear fallout without their parents' consent, the radiation safety agency confirmed yesterday. Chief Executive John Loy said Australia sent bone specimens from babies and older people to the US and Britain for nuclear fallout tests but no evidence existed that stillborn babies had been sent. It was a 'matter of public record' that Australia had a program for measuring strontium 90 in human bones between 1957 and 1978...Dr Loy's comments came amid controversy provoked by weekend reports in the UK that British and Australian babies were among the 6000 bodies used in the research. A spokeswoman for the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said last night the use of Australian material for the tests, including specimens from babies, had been widely reported in 1981. She confirmed parents of babies whose bones were used were not informed...The samples were cremated in Australia and the ash was sent to Britain and the US for the strontium 90 to be measured. Later, Australia was able to carry out the measurement itself." (from The Australian 7 June 2001)
"State governments have launched inquiries into claims Australian stillborn babies were used in nuclear experiments...The tests began in 1955 when Dr Willard Libby, of the University of Chicago, appealed for large numbers of bodies, preferably stillborn babies who died shortly after birth, for experiments on the effect of atom bomb test fallout. The newspaper said about 6000 bodies were taken from hospitals in Australia, Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, the US and South America without parents' permission." (from The Advertiser 6 June 2001)
3. Indigenous People
--This paper does not cover the effects of the tests on indigenous people. The tests were carried out despite the fact that Aboriginal people remained in the general area. Many suffered serious health consequences as a result of the "Black Mist" that spread over the area and some parts of their land are permanently inaccessible due to the remaining radiation. These issues are only briefly touched upon in recent newspaper articles and I don't have access to the 1985 royal commission report. I am therefore unable to give an adequate account of the suffering of Aboriginal people, but it should be remembered that they have probably suffered more than anyone.
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