The Nuclear Age in the Pacific Islands

Abstract

���� ��� The study of nuclear testing in the Pacific by French scholar Jean-Marc Regnault is to be welcomed. But there are a number of areas where I would place a different emphasis to explain the sources of resistance to French nuclear and colonial policy in the region. From the beginning of the nuclear age, indigenous peoples of the Pacific have borne the brunt of nuclear weapons testing by France, Britain, and the United States. Seeking “empty” spaces, the western powers chose to conduct Cold War programs of nuclear testing in the deserts of central Australia or the isolated atolls of the central and south Pacific. But these regions were not “terra nullius,” and a central feature of planning for nuclear testing was a casual racism toward the indigenous inhabitants of the region. A striking example comes from planning documents for the 1957 British nuclear tests at Christmas and Malden Islands, code-named “Grapple.” 1 In November 1956, a British military report outlined possible radiation dosages for people near the Grapple nuclear tests. In the racist terminology of the time, the report notes: For civilised populations, assumed to wear boots and clothing and to wash, the amount of activity necessary to produce this dosage is more than is necessary to give an equivalent dosage to primitive peoples who are assumed not to possess these habits. . . . It is assumed that in the possible regions of fallout at Grapple there may be scantily clad people in boats to whom the criteria of primitive peoples should apply.2 A meeting held a week later agreed to inform the UK defense minister that “independent authorities agree that. . . . only very slight health hazard to people would arise, and that only to primitive peoples.” 3