3/28/23, 11:33 AM Nuclear testing in the Pacific - Nuclear-free New Zealand | NZHistory, New Zealand history online

Nuclear-free New Zealand

Page 2 – Nuclear testing in the Pacific

After the Second World War the United States, along with its French and British allies,
frequently tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific region. In the 1950s New Zealand
military personnel observed British and American nuclear tests in Australia, the Pacific
and Nevada, and vessels of the Royal New Zealand Navy served as weather ships for
British tests in the Indian Ocean. In 1963 the British, American and Soviet governments
agreed to ban atmospheric tests. New Zealand also signed this treaty – but India, China
and France were among those countries which did not.

New Zealand was involved in ongoing protest over French nuclear testing from the
1966, when France began testing nuclear weapons in French Polynesia. Mururoa (or
Moruroa) Atoll became the focal point for both the tests and opposition to them.
Greenpeace vessels sailed into the test site in 1972, and the following year the New
Zealand and Australian governments took France to the International Court of Justice in
an attempt to ban the tests. France ignored the court’s ruling that they must cease
testing.

The third Labour government, led by Norman Kirk, responded by sending two navy
frigates, HMNZS Otago and Canterbury, into the test area, with a Cabinet minister on
board. Kirk put all his Cabinet ministers’ names into a hat and drew out that of Fraser
Colman, the minister of immigration and mines. Some insiders unkindly suggested that
the lowly ranked Colman’s name had been written on every slip of paper.

The opposition National Party declined Kirk’s invitation to send a representative on the
protest voyage. National’s leader, Jack Marshall, saw the despatch of the frigate
as ‘irresponsible’ – this ‘futile and empty gesture’ would only inflame the situation.
Marshall’s preference was to take France back to the International Court of Justice.

Colman sailed from Auckland on 28 June aboard Otago, which carried a crew of 242. A
month later the ship was at Mururoa, and those on board witnessed the first
atmospheric test. Colman transferred to Canterbury when it arrived to relieve Otago,
and he and the crew saw the second French atmospheric test on Mururoa. These
protests achieved some success: in 1974 a new French president, Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, ordered that the tests move underground. With testing continuing, however,
Mururoa remained a focus of anti-nuclear protest.

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