THE Royal Air Force deliberately concealed the fact that its aircraft may
have exposed Fijians to dangerous radioactivity during the nuclear test era of
the 1950s. A military memo passed to New 杏吧原创 reveals that crews
of RAF bombers landing on the South Pacific island in 1957 were ordered not to
tell the authorities that their engines were radioactive.
The revelation has angered Fijian environmentalists and comes as more than
200 Fijian servicemen who took part in the nuclear testing programme prepare to
take the British government to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg
later this year. The veterans claim that radiation from the tests gave them skin
diseases, anaemia and leukaemia.
The Fijians joined more than 21 000 members of the British armed forces who
watched 46 atmospheric nuclear explosions set off by Britain and the US in
Australia and the Pacific between 1952 and 1962.
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In October 1957, after Britain had completed the last of its major tests at Maralinga in South
Australia, which were codenamed 鈥淎ntler鈥�, support aircraft had to fly across the
Pacific to Christmas Island for the next series of tests. En route, they landed
at Nandi Airport on Fiji and on Kanton, for maintenance and refuelling.
Five Canberra aircraft from 76 Squadron had been heavily contaminated while
flying through mushroom clouds in Australia collecting samples. Although they
had been cleaned on the outside, their engines were still coated with
radioactive material. This posed a delicate diplomatic problem for Britain鈥檚
relations with its Pacific colonies.
鈥淭here appear to be no regulations in force governing the transit of
radioactive aircraft through international civil airports such as Nandi and
Canton,鈥� wrote Air Commodore W. P. Sutcliffe in a memorandum to his commanders
on 13 October 1957. 鈥淭he fact that an engine may be `hot鈥� should be concealed
from the Nandi authorities unless they ask.鈥�
If the Fijian authorities did ask, Sutcliffe told aircrews to say that the
contamination posed no danger to islanders. There are no figures on radiation
levels in the engines but official records show that the Canberra aircrews
suffered radiation doses up to six times as high as the current international
safety limit for nuclear workers. The memo, marked 鈥淐ONFIDENTIAL鈥擴K EYES
ONLY鈥�, was passed to New 杏吧原创 by a researcher who discovered it in
the Public Record Office in London.
鈥淭his is an abuse of the trust and loyalty of a colonised people. It makes me
very angry,鈥� says Lopeti Senitula, the director of the Pacific Concerns Resource
Centre, an antinuclear campaign group based in Fiji. 鈥淏ut it is in keeping with
the British government鈥檚 practice of keeping its subjects in the dark.鈥�
