The health impact of nuclear tests in French Polynesia – archive, 1981

Pacific islanders agitate in the shadow of the bomb

By Christopher Price
17 September 1981

A recent Canard cartoon shows Adam and Eve looking at an H-bomb. “Look, H for Hernu,” (the new Socialist defence minister), says Adam. “Yes and for Horror, Holocaust, Hecatomb and Hiroshima,” adds Eve.

French Socialists have never hitherto allowed the nuclear issue to dominate their politics. If it is beginning to do so now it is partly because keeping their independent nuclear deterrent, which they continue to test underground in Muroroa atoll in French Polynesia, implies continuing colonial domination of the islands of the South Pacific – an issue which is very much alive, both among the Indigenous people of the Pacific and in the rank and file of the Socialist party in France.

Related: From the archive, 1996: France stops nuclear test programme

The official position – “auto-determination” – as stated by Mr Henri Emmanuelli, the French Colonial minister when he visited France’s Pacific colonies was that he would discuss anything if a democratic majority wanted to. But he also said that recent election results made a referendum on the subject unnecessary.

That none of these three groups of islands (Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna) can immediately prove a majority for independence is partly due to strenuous French efforts over the years to stamp on emerging independence movements. More powerful than anything else [influencing the calls for independence] are the pollutant effects of nuclear tests on the human and natural environment. They are now beginning to make themselves felt. Hitherto everything that happens on Mururoa has been officially secret. But Mr Hernu has now a new “frankness” about the tests in an effort to allay anxiety; and immediately after he left the Centre d’Expérimentation du Pacifique issued its first-ever admission of an accident; it was not safe to swim off Mururoa.

In fact, authoritative reports state that there is now a crack 15 to 19 inches wide and over half a mile long in the atoll below sea level; that radioactive leaks into the Pacific have been taking place for many years; that a neighbouring atoll, Fangataufa, has been literally blasted out of the sea.

It is not yet possible to gauge the effect of such leaks, but coupled with the profound disquiet about Japanese plans to use the Pacific as a nuclear waste dumping ground, fears about pollution of fish and other marine life and consequently poisoning of the whole ocean, island populations will undoubtedly put further pressure on the Mitterrand government to reconsider its nuclear testing policy.

“Why don’t they do it in Nice?” was the one constant question put to me by the Polynesians. It echoed “Mururoa and Auvergne”, the most telling of the posters in the campaign which forced the French, eight years ago, to put the tests underground. Now there is a new twist to the story. It’s not just H-bombs the French are exploding inside Mururoa.

It was confirmed by Mr Giscard in June 1980 that France had been undertaking feasibility studies of neutron bombs since 1976, and this week Mr Mauroy, the Socialist prime minister, committed his government to strengthening France’s strategic nuclear arsenal and to the development of the neutron bomb. The knowledge that France is as keen as the US on upping the nuclear option can only add to the disquiet.

On top of this there is mounting, though not yet definitive evidence of cancer and brain tumours in the area, especially among the young. The French authorities counter that there is still less radioactivity in Polynesia than in the Massif Central. Maybe, but the fact that they go to quite extraordinary lengths of security in the treatment of such cases in French hospitals, suggesting a pathological desire to suppress such evidence as exists. One Actuel reporter, Mr Luis González-Mata, who tried to investigate the issue in Polynesia and in France, met continuous hostility.

So far the French government’s response to the political pressure has been to offer that decentralisation of local government to its overseas territories which the towns and cities of France are soon to enjoy. But it will be pressed to go further. The Pacific Forum comprising all independent Pacific countries, decided in Vanuatu in August to send a delegation to Mr Mitterrand demanding to know his intentions.

This is an edited extract. Read the article in full.

Testimonies from the atoll

Manutahi started work as a welder on Mururoa in 1965 at the age of 32. That was before the tests had started. He worked on the construction of the blockhouses Dindon and Denise.

In 1965 and at the beginning of 1966, we were allowed to eat all the fish in the lagoon but when we returned in 1967, we were forbidden to eat any. I worked mainly on Fangataufa where we were building a new blockhouse called ‘Emperor.’ It was on Fangataufa that I saw the areas of worst contamination when I went with the guys checking the atoll with Geiger counters. When there was contamination the light would go on and the indicator started to move. In one area the indicator went very high. It was forbidden to touch anything and there were barriers to prevent people from entering the area.

Related: France underestimated impact of nuclear tests in French Polynesia

It was during the drilling work that I got contaminated. I was working in a little hole trying to dismantle an old pipe. I wasn’t careful enough and got splashed by some water that had been left in the hole. It was mainly my hair that got wet as I wasn’t wearing any protective gear on my head. I tried to wash it but it was difficult to get the stuff out. When I went into the decontamination chamber all the alarms went off. I washed my hair three times but it was still radioactive … So a specialist had to use some special product to decontaminate me.

I know of a quite a number of people who gave got sick working at Mururoa and Fangataufa but I don’t know what was wrong with them. I think that a lot of them had been poisoned from eating contaminated fish.

Tama began working at Mururoa in the 1960s as an office worker.

I got sick from eating fish several times. I was itchy all over and my skin peeled just like a snake. One of my friends was less fortunate he died after eating fish and mussels from the sea.

I left my job at Mururoa even though I earned as much as a member of the Territorial Assembly and got free flights home every weekend, because of a terrible accident I saw. The first French neutron bomb test codenamed Meknes was supposed to take place on 7 July 1979. A big bunker had been built just for this test. Inside the bunker was a container in which the bomb lay. Above the bunker itself was a control room which was connected to it with a thick double-glazed window. Before entering the main room, you had to go into a room where you put on an “astronaut” suit. You had to go through a system of several automatic doors before entering the room containing the bomb. There were only two workers inside the bunker at a time and they only worked there for two hours at a time. All in all there was a team of 17 people.

On 6 July 6 the accident happened. I had just finished tea. I had been replaced in the control room by one of my mates. While I was walking back up the steps to the control room I was about halfway up the explosion occurred. My colleague was flung out of the control room just in front of me dead instantly. Another “astronaut” my boss, Rene Villette was killed inside the bunker. The other “astronaut” had just been on his way out and was severely burnt. He was evacuated to France and died soon afterwards.

I asked for an immediate discharge but, while my French workmates were sent home after two weeks, I had to stay on for another two months. I think it was because I was a union member and the military didn’t want me to go back to Tahiti and tell people there what had happened, especially as anti-nuclear feeling was growing there.

Tolmata has four surviving children. While her husband was working at Mururoa, she had six other babies who died.

Our first and eldest child was born in 1975. She always seems to be sick with a chronic cough and stomach pains but she goes to school and is doing alright there. My second baby was born prematurely at seven and a half months and died the day he waw born.

My third baby was born at home at full term but died there two weeks later. She had a skin problem. Her skin would come off immediately if it was touched. The doctors said that the baby was fine but obviously she was not. No one knows the cause of her condition.

Eugene, my fourth baby, was born at full term but died when he was two months old. He had diarrhoea and we took him to Mamao, the hospital in Tahiti. The diarrhoea continued for some time. When it stopped, it was replaced by another condition. The baby became rigid, like wood. Every part of his body was racked by continuous muscular contractions and he had a high temperature. It was impossible to open his fists. The doctors would not talk about his condition. He was at Mamao for two weeks and then he died.

The doctors did not tell us anything and refused to fill out his death certificate. Without a death certificate the baby could not be buried so I pleaded with the doctors. They told me to get my general practitioner to fill in the form. The nurses at the hospital told me to tell people, if anyone should ask me, that my baby had died en route and not in the hospital. In the end I had to give in and ask my general practitioner to fill out the death certificate so that my child could be buried. I have no idea why all this happened and there was nothing that we could do about it. On top of that, we are angry that we were not allowed to stay with him in the hospital when he was so sick. Because of that we weren’t there when he died. I think my children have died because my husband worked at Mururoa.

Tupou lived and worked on Fangataufa and four years during the first underground tests there. His job was chef d’equipe with a group of workers looking after the drilling gear.

After each underground explosion there was a sort of tidal wave that washed over part of Fangataufa and a few days later thousands of stinking dead fish washed up on the shore. Initially there was no ciguatera, but then we were told not to fish any more. We couldn’t eat coconuts or anything else that grew there. I know people who got sick and were evacuated but nobody told us what the problem was. Nobody told us whether there were any dangers or what effect the dangers would have. Most of the island was fenced off but we were only told to respect the signs. If we didn’t on the first occasion we got a warning, on the second we were sent back to Tahiti immediately. But, of course, we went fishing all the same.

The problem is the amount of unemployment in Tahiti. People see all the luxury goods, the fancy cars and the beautiful homes and they want to get them too. Just to earn some money to feed their families, they have no choice but to go out there to Mururoa and Fangataufa and work under those dangerous conditions, even though they may not want to at all.

Testimonies Inside Stories of Mururoa Test Site, published this week by Greenpeace New Zealand. This is an edited extract. Read the article in full.