04 | Rainbow Warrior | The Land and the Soul

By 1985, nearly four decades after the US nuclear testing in the Pacific's Marshall Islands, advocate Jeton Anjain has had enough. He decides to act to save his people of Rongelap Atoll. And with the help of some well-connected friends, he pulls off one of the great humanitarian feats of the 20th century.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Hello, I'm Geraldine Doog.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  And I'm Hamish McDonald. Together, we host Radio National's Global Rhyming. And each week, I think we try and attempt to make sense of this crazy world. Is that what we do?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we make it a watercooler conversation because I think it's in our interest to have it thus, you know? From Gaza to Greenland, from coups to climate, we dissect big international stories with people who've had a hand in shaping them.

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  I promise you, Geraldine does hold me to task.

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  Global Rhyming. Search for Global Rhyming, hear it now on the ABC Listen app.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Last time, we looked at the US government's medical testing of Marshall Islanders after they were exposed to fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear test. While examining US documentation of events and comparing that with the testimonies of the Rongolapis people, we met Senator Jeter Nanjain, who, as her search for answers and a solution to the medical issues his people are facing, became increasingly frustrated. In 1985, as the Marshall Islands was negotiating its independence from the US, and Jain was introduced by a mutual friend to Greenpeace, and a historical decision was made. Following through on that decision would prove much more complicated than either party could anticipate.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  May 1985. Senator Jeter Nanjain is deep in conversation with his friend anthropologist Glenn Alkale. They're getting it all on tape, the thinking and the events that have brought them to this moment.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  And then the Department of Energy. They have been changing the name of the department that come and monitor my people for the last thirty years, but they never changed it.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  You'll remember from episode three, Jethon and Glenn talking on the Rongelap beach, recording the story of this island and all it's been through in the past 30 years. But this time, we're going to roll the tape forward. We're going to tell you why it's so urgent to get Jethon's voice, his knowledge, his thoughts, his work on tape. And we're going to explain what they're waiting for. Three decades since the Castle Bravo detonation, when a 15-megaton nuclear weapon covered their island in fallout, the people on Rongelap have seen cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects in numbers that make no sense. They know.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  They know their land is poisoned and that it's making them sick. Jethon is talking about the intense monitoring of the Rongelappees by the US.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  And when they tell us that everything on Rongelap was okay, but then we begin to think, why, if we are okay, why are they coming to Rongelap twice a year to monitor our health?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  It's a simple question, but it's one he could never get a straight answer to. We've told you the Marshall Island saying before, if you take away their land, their spirits go too. It's worth repeating here. Losing your land is like losing your soul. But the land is causing his people to lose their lives. Time has run out. It's now no less than a choice between body and soul.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  For ABC Radio Australia and RNZ, I'm James Nokise and this is episode four of The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. In this episode, the land and the soul will tell you what that choice was.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  By 1985, the Rongelapis are still living on an island poisoned by radiation.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  To be fair, the Americans have done multiple tests and insist the radiation is at acceptable levels, as long as much of the food comes from off-island. But listening to Jatton in those tapes, it's clear he doesn't trust those assurances. The Rongelapis wanted to go back in 1957, but they were relying on US data at the time saying the island was "safe for human habitation." And the US Atomic Energy Commission gave the assurance, even when, in the very next sentence, they said, "The extent of contamination is greater than found elsewhere in the world. And, there has been no previous experience with populations exposed to such levels."

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Later reports admitted the data US authorities relied on was "meager." Then, there were the thyroid conditions that developed after doctors had told them nothing would go wrong. And, the ongoing testing and treatment of the Rongelap people that made them feel like guinea pigs. And, the power dynamic between the tiny martial islands and the world's superpower, America.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  You can see why Jatton and the people of Rongelap weren't inclined to believe assurances their island was safe. Then came the data to prove that it, in fact, wasn't safe at all. And it came from Jatton and Jen's fellow nuclear citizens, the people of Bikini Atoll.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Take care as you listen to this. It's a tough story.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  If you recall, back in episode 2, the Bikinians had been persuaded in 1946 by the US to move off their atoll before testing began. Quote, "For the good of mankind." It was post-Second World War, edging towards the start of the Cold War, and safety for as many people as possible and for capitalism felt key. The Bikinians were actually moved three times, the first being to a small island called Longuric, just to the east. Then it became clear that Longuric couldn't sustain them, as the population went dangerously close to starvation. So they were moved again to Kwajaleinato, and then to Kili Island. But Kili wasn't a great choice either.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  It was hard to grow enough food there, and big waves made it hard to go fishing. Those same waves made essential food deliveries difficult, and the people began to starve again. Two typhoons in two years didn't help either. The people began to refer to Kili as a prison. Turns out, not all islands are the same. So in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson promised the Bikinians they would be able to return home. He said, "It is our goal to assist the people of Bikini to build on these once-desolated islands a new and model community."

• 7:54Speaker 01

  In late 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission rules that local food sources are still too irradiated to be eaten, and the Bikinian Council vote not to return. But they say individuals can go back if they want to, so three extended families and 50 construction workers returned to the island. But in 1978, the US Department of Energy discovered that some of the returnees were showing increases of the radioactive isotope cesium, increases of up to 75%.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  cesium-137 is produced in nuclear fission and if it's ingested into the human body it gets into soft tissue increasing the risk of cancer. Four years later, a US Department of Energy report described the population living back on Bikini as the only global source of data on humans where intake via ingestion is thought to contribute the major fraction of the plutonium body burden. In plain language, they're getting data from people feeding themselves of radiated food. And while they're doing that, an 11-year-old boy died of radiation-related cancer.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  So when we were in the Bikini, of course, we never heard of the word radiation. It was kind of like a new thing. I was born on Kwachale Nato and I've never heard of many things.

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  This is Alison Kellen, former mayor of the Bikinians.

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  I lived on Bikini in the 70s and I was one of those kids that used to play on the beach and got relocated in 78.

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  By the end of the 1970s, the people who'd returned to Bikini at the start of the decade had left again. Gone to other islands or the US. Bikini wasn't safe.

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  My mom, she was 96 when she passed away, but during her last few years, she kept asking me if we were ever going back. I said, "Mom, I don't know."

• 10:02Speaker 04

  So I was lying and telling the truth at the same time because I don't know if we're ever going to return to Bikini, but I know that we're not going to go, at least during our lifetime.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  There are actually parts of Bikini that are safe to live in now. Well, "safe" is a relative term, but scientists have cleared sections of the land and water for resettlement. That doesn't matter anymore to Alison.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  I am almost 60 years old. I would say, "Give me a couple more years till I hit my retirement age and then I can go." So if I die, I die and I won't take any of my relatives with me. My wife want to follow me, yeah, by all means. But I don't trust the land that is safe. I don't trust that it's safe enough to take my grandkids or my kids with me.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  It wasn't just the report about Bikini that influenced Jeter Nanjan into action. Further evidence that Rongelap wasn't safe appeared with the aid of the Bikinians' American lawyer, Jonathan Weiskell.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Weiskell served as legal counsel for the people of Bikini from the mid-'70s and even wrote a book on their fight, Operation Crossroads. And as their lawyer, he brought a suit against the US government in 1975, suing for compensation for damages caused by testing on the atoll. As part of this suit, aerial studies of Bikini and surrounding areas were undertaken to measure radiation levels. The levels were graded from 1 to 4, with 4 being the highest level. According to Glenn Alkale, the US DOE in 1975 takes this information to produce a report, published in English and Marshalese, and downplays the seriousness of the study. But in the report is a map of radiation levels showing that the numbers are the same for Bikini and Rongelap,

• 11:55Speaker 01

  a collection of 2s, 3s, and 4s. For Jeter Nanjan, this seems like the evidence he's been seeking. Why? With the same scores, is Bikini Atoll declared unsafe for habitation, but Rongelap deemed fine? Why would anyone be allowed on Rongelap? The DOE's report says that while the northern part of Rongelap has levels as high as Bikini Atoll, the rest of it is within safe range, and the solution is simple: don't go to the northern part of the island.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  When in some part of that report, it is clearly stated that the people cannot visit the islands in the northern part of Rongelap at all because it is highly contaminated.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Jethan has a problem with this because while you can keep people away from the contamination, there are some other things to consider.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  And they feel that if the other part of the island is highly contaminated, what about Rongelap, the main island that they are staying? When they think about fish, birds, or whatever marine life come from those places, which they cannot tell if they were there previously.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Fish swim, birds fly, and unfortunately, there's no way to stop a contaminated fish or a contaminated bird travelling to the places it's been deemed safe to catch them. So when the DOE says everything is okay...

• 13:21Speaker 03

  If part of the island is bad, they also know that the whole island is bad for them to say. They feel that they were being lied to by the government of energy.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  After reading this DOE report, Jethan says the people of Rongelap are hit by a sadness and a feeling of utter helplessness.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Well, in the past, they used to be very active people. But after that report came out, every time I see them, they don't do anything. They just sit there and think. They are not very active today. But what sort of thoughts do you think they have when they're sitting around just thinking? What do you think they're thinking about? I know they are thinking about it, actually, because they feel that if they stay a longer, the whole population will be completely wiped out by radioactive...

• 14:12Speaker 01

  These numbers, this collection of threes and fours on a map, in combination with the DOE's assurances that it was safe, assurances that Jethan feels he's unable to accept. It all forces his hand. The people of Rongelap have to leave.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  But there's a danger in leaving too. They can see it in the experience of the Bikinians. Because as early as 1946, when the people of Bikini were first evacuated, their despair at leaving their land was clear. Lord Akisabuki, a martial arts leader from Bikini Atoll, wrote the Bikinian anthem: "No longer can I stay, it's true. No longer can I live in peace and harmony." The displacement of the people of Bikini, the loss of their traditional livelihood, caused social dislocation, economic hardship, and physical and psychological trauma. This is most likely what the Rongelapis are facing should they follow Jeter Nanjan and leave. But if they don't go, their children have no hope. Their children will die.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  And so, the decision is made. Rongelap will be evacuated. Everyone will leave.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  But if they leave, how do they leave? Just how do they move their entire population to safety? Adults, children, housing, building, all of it, to start again? Well, the answer to that involves a bit of luck, audacity, and a little help from some well-connected friends. Turns out, it's not what you know, but who you know.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  So, I'm Giff Johnson, and I'm the editor of the Martial Islands Journal, which is the weekly newspaper of the Martial Islands.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Giff Johnson is tall, lean, and he strides when he walks. He's a busy man. He leads us up a flight of stairs into the newsroom of the journal, an open-plan space. His team are on the phone, on their computers, compiling another issue of the Martial Islands Journal.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  And the title editor bestows on us the requirements of everything from, you know, turn the lights off, sweep the floor, answer the telephone, as well as editing, you know, the reporters' stories. And it's kind of a glorified title in a small place, but we do OK. And the paper continues to come out with kind of alarming regularity.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Born in Chicago, Giff grew up in Fiji and Hawaii, where he became a young activist against French nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1970s. That led to his involvement in the legacy of US testing in the Marshalls. His first wife, Darlene Kijiu, grew up downwind of Bikini Atoll and was an early and powerful activist and critic of American testing. Her 1983 address to the World Council of Churches exposed the many, many, many health issues in the Marshalls, resulting from the testing era. She died of breast cancer in 1996. She was 45. Giff wrote the book "Don't Ever Whisper" about his wife's life and work. "I can feel his love for Darlene and her people when I read it."

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Giff Johnson lives in Majora now. He's remarried and a dual citizen of the US and the Marshalls. Behind his simple oval glasses, his gaze is calm but very direct. So is his speech.

• 17:38Speaker 05

  And I think for people who understand things in the world, we can say that the Bravo test was our Chernobyl, you know, 30 years before Chernobyl, and done in secrecy. We didn't have CNN exposing the thing to the world, except that Bravo was worse than Chernobyl in terms of radioactivity released. I mean, they had been allowed to move back by the US in 1957 to an atoll that had never been cleaned up.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Here, Giff is talking about the US resettling of the Rongolap people back on their land after the three-year temporary evacuation.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  So essentially, they'd been living there 50s, 60s, 70s into the 80s, eating radioactive food and just living on islands that were, like, US reports say, the most radioactive place in the world, right?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  As someone who'd spent a lifetime campaigning in the Pacific, Giff was immediately drawn to Jeter Najan.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  And he was a really strong advocate for dealing with Rongolap people's health conditions, the obvious radiological problems on the atoll.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  And as Jeter grew more and more frustrated at the lack of US interest in helping his people, Giff Johnson, a man with strong ties to advocacy and anti-nuclear groups, found himself in a position to help.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  In many ways, what happened next comes down to quick thinking, great connections, and some very, very good timing.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  And so, the Greenpeace people were talking about the Rainbow Warrior making this big Pacific tour in 1985. And this was in like mid, early mid 1984, and they were just starting to plan each of the stops. And so, the Greenpeace folks said to me, "Look, we want to go to the Marshall Islands, like, we want to be useful. Like, yeah, we can hang a banner, or, you know, sort of do the usual Greenpeace thing, but can we do something that's more meaningful? Is there anything that you would suggest?"

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, so it happened, they could do something more meaningful. Giffen Jethan went to meet with Steve Sawyer, the then-head of Greenpeace.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  And Steve was like a super logistics guy, and like, he was the overall guy planning the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. So we got together, and so then, you know, Steve's been thinking about this, and the way I recall the meeting going is, Jethan said, Jethan Anjan said to him, "Well, we, you know, like, we want to evacuate Rongalap." And so, Steve responded and said, "Oh, okay." He says, like, "You mean like a symbolic evacuation? Like, we sail to Rongalap, we get 20 or 30 people on the Rainbow Warrior, we sail to Kwajalein, or, you know, wherever, and then we do a big press conference."

• 20:40Speaker 01

  "This is perfect," thinks Steve Sawyer. A big press event to show the world what's happened to the people of the Marshall Islands, to demonstrate just how dangerous nukes are, how unfair American imperialism is. Something about the way Anjan's looking at him, though, suggests he's on a slightly different page.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  And it's sort of like, there was a pause, right? And Jethen says, "No." He says, "That's not what I'm talking about at all." "We want to evacuate the entire community, houses, everything, and move to Mejeto Island in Kwajalein Atoll because we fear for our future on Rongelap."

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Steve Sawyer is, well, a little taken aback.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  You could just see, like, he just hadn't, like, thought about an actual, total evacuation of a community.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  This is a totally different order of things.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  And Jethen was saying, "We're gonna tear down all the houses, right, take 'em apart, and we want all the lumber and the tin and, you know, all our belongings, everything." So you could suddenly see Steve, his mind racing, like, "Could it be done, right? Like, how many trips? How much time? Like, the logistics." And the wheels are going around.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Can they do this? How do they do this? Giff and Jethen watch as Steve Sawyer mouths this over.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  And he looks at you and says, "Yeah, maybe we could do it."

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Jethen keeps his eyes on Sawyer.

• 22:17Speaker 05

  And then, so then the thing went from there.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  May 17th, 1985. The Rainbow Warrior sails into Rongelap. They've been at sea since the middle of March, sailing from Florida in the US. The multinational crew of sailor activists are in the middle of months of work. The tour has already made a stop in Hawaii. And after their work here in the marshalls, they plan to go to Vanuatu, then Auckland, New Zealand. Then they'll lead a peace float killer to Mururoa Atoll to protest French nuclear testing. The Warrior is skippered by American Peter Wilcox. Onboard is a young New Zealander, Bunny McDiarmid, part of the crew. She'll never forget her first sight of Rongelap.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  Rongelap is an atoll. So it has lots of small islands that have kind of grown up on the rim of an underwater volcano. And so you have a ring of small islands around a lagoon. And it was an incredibly beautiful and large atoll.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  When they arrive in the lagoon, a small plywood boat called a boom boom comes to meet the warrior. The women and children on board are singing. An elderly woman holds a sign. "We love the future of our children." The crew of the Rainbow Warrior drop anchor and follow the women ashore in an inflatable. As they come onto the beach, they see a banner, an archway, that repeats the words.

• 23:48Speaker 06

  "Welcome to Rongele. We love the future of our kids." And with all the older women standing there singing, and they had lays made for us to welcome us ashore. And it was, I mean, it looked idyllic. But that's kind of the issue with radioactivity. You can't see it, but it can kill you.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  There are offerings of fresh coconuts. And when Bunny tells me that, I'm thinking about that issue, the invisibility of the poison.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, we'd had a discussion before we arrived. And we had also a doctor on board and lots of greenpeace experts before we went who had done quite a lot of thinking and talking about it. And basically, it was up to everyone to make their own decision about whether they accepted food or coconuts. I think most of us drank the coconuts that they offered. Yeah, most of us, I think, made the decision that we would accept what we were offered.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  The Rainbow Warrior crew speak very little martialis, almost none. And while the welcome is warm, the Rongelepeas are hardly going to pour their hearts out to strangers. Shy smiles are exchanged, meetings are held, and Bunny can't help but notice this doesn't look much like an island ready to be packed away and left for good.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  I guess it was a little surreal for them and for us. I mean, arriving on this very remote place where nobody looked like they were packed up and ready to go, and they weren't, actually. So we spent a couple of days where their senator and them had more meetings, sitting, talking about it, and was like a revisit.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  In fact, they want to leave. Despite all that could go wrong, they're ready, sort of.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And then the process begins. On the 19th of May, one by one, houses are dismantled. The plywood sheets, the two-by-fours, the corrugated roofs, all bundled up and labelled with the name of the family who owns it. These bundles will be packed into the boat with the personal belongings of the islanders.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  They'll start their lives all over again on Mejato, 200 kilometres to the south. Getting there is an overnight trip, and it needs to be timed so you enter Mejato in the daylight. Its coral reef is too dangerous to navigate in darkness. There'll be three trips in total to get every person, along with the houses they live in, the clothes they wear, everything they own, over to their new home. David Robey, one of the journalists aboard, sends out a report to Radio New Zealand's Morning Report programme. I'll read from it now. It's hard to make a guest measure of how many people are on the Rainbow Warrior. As she travels towards Mejato, the trawler seems packed with Rongelap islanders heading for a new home of hope. Most are sleeping on deck, but many have bunked down in the hold

• 26:48Speaker 01

  and some elderly people have found refuge in the messroom. Many of the trunks bear labels from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the clinic monitoring the islanders' health since the Bravo fallout 31 years ago. And photographing all of it is Fernando Pereira. His images capture both the surreal reality of the situation, the inherent strangeness in moving an entire population from one island to another, and also the joy from adults as they help their children. Because there was no ladder, the men lift the kids up and pass them to other men on board. You can see the wind blowing people's hair. My dad and I, we went from here. We got on Rainbow Warrior. Grace Evans was on Rongelap in 1985.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  At seven years old, she finds her world upended as one of the many children transported by the Rainbow Warrior. Her memories are mixed, but there's still the excitement of a child on a ship at sea.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  They had like three trips when they evacuated the people of Rongelap. So we got on the last trip from Rongelap to Mejato.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Another photo shows a woman with two children on the deck of the Warrior. Though they're safe, they're forlorn. Large coconuts are on the floor behind them in the background. Ropes and power cords are hanging on the wall. The young girl in a pink dress sits in front of the woman, using her thumb to play with her teeth. The youngest, a boy in his brown pants and short-sleeved shirt, leans on the suitcase the woman sits on, his hands clasped in front of him. Four women sit at the front of the transport boat. Two in pink, one in red and wearing a flower lei on her head. And sitting in the centre, on the edge of the edge of the seat, is a young woman in a pink dress and yellow top, staring right at the camera.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  It's a bright day, but the exposure makes it unclear if the weather is clear or overcast. The sea is bumpy but not rough. None of the women are smiling, and why would they be? But they also do not appear concerned as much as apprehensive. In the background, the Rainbow Warrior looms, ready to transport them to a new home.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Benny Hoffman, second mate on the Warrior, kept a diary of the evacuation. I'll read from it now. 20th May, the first 75 islanders. Seventy-five per cent are children. Crossing is fine and not too much seasickness. Fifteen tonnes of cargo. They arrive in Metto, north-west corner of Kwajalein, at 0700 on 21st. They offload until 1400, then again all day the next day. A swell at the anchorage makes it difficult. And RW starts the trip back to Rongelap at 4pm.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  On the 23rd May, the packing starts again. Instead of the 85 islanders they think they're taking, there are 120. The ship has more wind and swell than the previous trip, and there is a lot of seasickness. People sleep everywhere. Including the deck and engine room. Heavily pregnant women get crew cabins.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Twenty-fourth, they ferry passengers to shore then building supplies. At noon, the motorboat runs aground and is damaged. The crew need to stay the night to fix it. Unpacking takes place the next day.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Arrive at Metto on twenty-seventh, followed by a ration ship from the USDA. The Rongelapis had been unable to get rations for six weeks and food had been badly depleted with food unable to be harvested from the north end of the island due to radiation. Glenn Alcalay from National Committee for Radiation Victims is with them.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  May, final trip. Only buildings left standing are the hospital and the church. Ten men, including J A, stay behind to count trees for further compensation claim with US. Only sign of housing is foundation on stilts.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  J A is Jetanajan. He sits on the beach of his deserted island with nothing but a church, hospital, and some palm trees left on the place he calls home. It's this moment that he and Glenn Alcalay sit down to record the conversation you heard. His composure is astonishing, but you can hear his anger too, that it has all come down to this.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  And they said, hey, that's not, that's sickness, it's not a radioactive into sickness. You go to the, your own government to treat you. They know very well that our government doesn't have any money, but they don't want to use their own money to send these people to other places that they get better treatment.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It's an anger that was never Jeter's alone, and it's an anger that's never gone away.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  A moving, a community, from their very fabric of their society, their land, ancestral land, you know? Just move them like it's a pet, like animal, you're moving from one house to another house.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  This is Kenneth Kedi. He's Rongelapis, and has never forgotten what it meant to his people to have to make them move away from their home. Majitou is small, just 3 kilometers long by 1 wide. When the people of Rongelap arrived, it was uninhabited. There was one building on the entire island.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  I think it was about 20 by 60 feet temporary house that was built. The young man and the older gentleman, we couldn't live in there. They made it for the ladies and the babies only. The rest of us were living outside, under the rain, in a tent. Just put a rope together on the edge of the tent and tie them to the trees, and then that's our home underneath that while it's pouring rain. Almost every night, I don't know what, you know, it just happened that it was raining during that time quite often. So almost every night it was raining, we were under that rain.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  It is hard building their lives again. It rains and the air steams, and people are dislocated, angry. But of course, the intensity of that building period fades. The feelings do not.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  It's almost like some sort of horror movie. And it shouldn't be happening to any population, any community, where you have to abandon your ancestral land, like I said, the very fabric of your society, your livelihood. That's your land, in Marshalle especially. You know, there's a saying in Marshalle, my friend, it says, "Man without a land is no man."

• 33:45Speaker 01

  After three trips, the evacuation is complete. Apart from a small team of men staying behind to take some measurements before leaving forever, the island is empty. The rows of houses are gone, the people gone too. No children laughing, crying, no mothers and fathers scolding, gently teasing, rocking their babies. No one.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  On the night of May 30, the crew of the Rainbow Warrior and their Rongelapis passengers throw a party in Majetou. It's the birthday of Fernando Pereda, photographer on the Rainbow Warrior. He turns 35. The crew understand this was not a neat, happy ending for the Rongelapis, but they feel they've done what they could, have done something important in the face of the horror of nuclear testing. Hopefully, they think, the world will begin to understand.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Before they watch the Warrior crew sail away, some of the islanders ask them for paper and a pen. They want to write a message. "We, the people of Rongelap, love our homeland, but how can our people live in a place which is dangerous and poisonous? I mean, why didn't the American people test Bravo in a state capital? Why? Rainbow Warrior, thank you for being so nice to us. Keep up your good work."

• 35:11Speaker 01

  It's time for the Rainbow Warrior to leave. No one in the crew finds it easy. They have plenty of work to do before this journey is over, but for many of them, the evacuation of Rongelap would be the most significant act of their journey and their lives.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  The Rainbow Warrior and her crew will go on to stage a protest at the American missile base at Quajlanato, then sail to Kiribati and Vanuatu. Then comes the long legs south to Auckland. The plan is to dock for two weeks of rest, planning and restocking. After that, it's on to Mururo and the climax of their journey, leading a large flotilla to protest French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. That protest against French testing would never happen. Because when she left the Marshall Islands, the Rainbow Warrior had embarked on her last journey. Next episode, we go back to Auckland to follow the extraordinary story of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the investigation into who planted the bomb,

• 36:16Speaker 01

  and the geopolitical fallout when those behind the crime are caught. That's next time on The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior was written, produced and presented by me, James Norkese. Sophie Townsend is the script editor and writer. Justin Gregory, writer and producer. The Last Voyage is a co-production between ABC Radio Australia and RNZ. Justine Kelly is the head of ABC Radio Australia. Tim Watkins is executive editor, audio for RNZ. Falea Ngafulu Ingasstunza is the content director for ABC Radio Australia. Piana Yuritich-Gregg is the production coordinator for RNZ. Alison Barclay for the ABC.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  RNZ's Rangipowik engineered the series. Designed by Dexter Edwards. Website by Hingy Kong for RNZ. Huge thanks to Eve Burns, Hilary Hosier, Giff Johnson from the Marshall Islands Journal. Our respect and love to all the people we met in the Marshall Islands. To listen to more episodes of The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, head to ABC Pacific. Catch the whole series wherever you listen to your podcasts.