Atawhai man Neil Balloch with a photo of the nuclear explosion he witnessed when he was in the Navy during the 1950s. Photo: Andrew Board.

No compensation for nuclear bomb ‘guinea pigs’

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Neil Balloch was “lucky”. He was given darkened glasses to wear when the nuclear bomb went off. Others had to watch it with just their hands over their eyes, seeing the bones in their hands light up like an x-ray machine.

But that was where Neil’s supposed luck ended.

Neil – who lives in Atawhai – was one of 570 New Zealanders who witnessed the British nuclear testing at Christmas Island in the Pacific in the late 1950s. The ship he was on, the HMNZS Rotoiti, was stationed just 25 miles away from “ground zero”, letting off weather balloons. They saw the bomb dropped and sailed through the radiation zone as acid rain fell on them.

Later, they sat on the beach of Christmas Island drinking beer and catching and eating fish from the radiation zone.

He says, at the time he’d never heard the word “nuclear” and they had no idea of the side-effects of radiation. “We had no idea, when the bomb went off it was just a sense of wonder. Look at this amazing thing, fancy seeing something like that? We never thought it would be more than that.”

Six decades on, Neil is one of about 60 Kiwis still alive who witnessed the bomb testing. Many died of various cancers and Neil himself has many medical issues, including cancer.

His first wife struggled to give birth, and when she did her children and grandchildren have suffered varying degrees of birth defects, including a grandson born with a severe case of cleft-pallet.

“He had no mouth,” explains Neil. “From the bottom of his nose to his chin was a hole. It took 14 surgeries to fix him.”

For three decades the New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans Association (NZNTVA) has fought for compensation for the veterans and also for the “innocent offspring”.

A study by Massey University showed that the chromosomes of veterans at the testing have been “fragmented”, leading to long-lasting effects for “generations”. The study found that the chromosome damage in veterans at the testing was three times that of the normal population and on par with the Chernobyl clean-up workers.

The UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper reported that a British study showed that the wives of servicemen at the testing had three times the rate of miscarriage, children are five times more likely to die as infants, babies are three times more likely to be stillborn, veterans’ grandchildren are eight times more likely to have birth defects and are twice as likely to get childhood cancer. They reported that the problems are likely to last at least 500 years, or 20 generations.

Veterans in the UK have attempted to sue the government for compensation, but have so far been declined the right to go to court. However, a decision last week by a UK coroner delivered an open verdict on two nuclear test veterans saying they died of radiation-linked illness, which veterans, hope could open the door to compensation.

The New Zealand government has never officially recognised that the veterans involved in Operation Grapple were exposed to radiation, nor offered any compensation.

Last year, members of the NZNTVA met with then-veterans affairs minister, Michael Woodhouse, with two items on the agenda. To get the government to officially recognise that veterans were irradiated and for the government to make a public statement to that effect, and for the off-spring of veterans to be researched to establish if they are suffering genetic damage as a consequence of their father or grandfather’s exposure to radiation.

Both requests were declined.

Neil says he feels sick when thinking back to what they witnessed.

“It all makes me very angry. We were guinea pigs. After the bomb, they said radiation had been detected on our ship and we were told to turn on these sprinklers and hose the ship down. But the sprinklers didn’t work because they had been rushed in and they didn’t really have the fresh water to use them, all the fresh water was used to power the ship because it was a steam engine.”

Neil says he wants the government to acknowledge the radiation they suffered and to pay compensation, “not for me but for my children and grandchildren, that’s what makes me really irate.”