Ringside H-Bomb Comment On

Wanted: 17,000 Geiger Counters

The Christmas Island Affair

H-bomb jitters which have attacked most of the Islands people within 1,000 miles of Christmas Is. since the British announced that they would explode a bomb there, have not been helped by the stupid hush policy of Security; or the half-truths and evasions of politicians.

WHEN it was officially announced 18 months ago that Britain would, this year, conduct hydrogen bomb tests based on Christmas Island, some 17,000 Cook Islanders were slow to react to the potentialities of the ringside seat so gratuitously arranged for them.

No doubt traditional Polynesian courtesy demanded that they remain silent until asked to comment upon this “favoured nation” treatment.

While not so strategically situated as the 2,000-odd residents of the Northern Cook Group, the people of Samoa were the first to speak up on the matter, a protest being made by them in May last to the United Nations Trusteeship Council, asking for an assurance that no danger or harm from the bomb tests would re sult to the people of Samoa.

Stripped bare of the inevitable wordy assurances, the lengthy reply from the New Zealand Government —to whom the petition had been referred—revealed that the tests (note the plural) would be high altitude bursts without heavy fall out, conducted “far from any in habited island,” and that special meteorological services would be provided to ensure accurate predic tion of the fall-out dispersal.

Some time later, as Islands folk pondered on the safety factor and how far “far from an inhabited island” should one be for comfort, a cryptic NZ press item made known that radio-active rain had fallen on Wellington as a result of the Aus tralian atomic tests in Central Aus tralia, a couple of thousand miles away.

Public concern in the Cook Islands came to a head when a letter to the editor on H-Bomb policy appeared in the August issue of the

From March until August the Christmas Island area will be closed to shipping—the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force will police the area.

It was announced in London at the end of January that the project will in all cost £100,000,000; that two and possibly four bombs will be dropped between Christmas Island and the forward observation point at Malden Island, 400 miles south. They will include a tactical hydrogen bomb and a guided missile warhead.

The biggest will be equal to about three million tons of TNT, or 300,000 World War II blockbusters.

Malden is already manned—weather reports can already be picked up from there.

Cook Islands Review. Accompany ing the letter was a neat little sketch map with distance circles based on Christmas Island, making

it horribly clear that Penrhyn, most northern Cook atoll, lay within the 800-mile circle.

As an ultimate outcome, the fol lowing remit was presented to the 1956 session of the Cook Islands Legislative Council, in October: “That the people of the Cook Islands, more particularly the people of the Northern Group, are greatly concerned at the nearness of the proposed hydrogen bomb test, and asked that the testing area be situated at some greater distance than Christmas Island.”

Rather naively phrased, perhaps, but pertinent.

Mr. G. A. Walsh, visiting NZ MP for the Legco Session, was able to assure his listeners that the actual

explosions would take place more than 1,000 miles distant from Christmas Island, somewhere in the “vast ocean area to the north and east of that island.”

It was also stressed that no tidal wave could result from such high altitude bursts. Just as well, seeing that Christmas Island has a maxi mum height of 5 feet.

It also came out that the UK Government had allocated £15,000,000 to equip Christmas Island as a naval and air base and, for obvious reasons, would take every precau tion to avoid contamination of that base.

This extra 1,000 miles margin naturally went down well with the Cook Islanders, but recent develop ments tend to cast doubt on its veracity.

In this space-annihilating age cryptic Notices to Airmen largely supplant the more romantic Notices to Mariners of a more leisurely era and one such has defined with pre cision the danger area to aircraft and personnel from March 1 to August 1.

Plotted, the defined danger area takes a queer, angular shape, with one northern “box” sitting askew on a larger southern “box.” It em braces the islands of Christmas, Malden and Starbuck and its odd shape is clearly due to the angular contortions necessary to exclude, to the north, Palmyra, Washington and

Fanning Islands (British) ; to the west, Jarvis Island (USA) ; and to the south, Penrhyn. In this apparently arbitrary manner these inhabited isles are made “safe.”

In the case of Jarvis a consider able constriction is necessary to achieve this purely theoretical im munity. Penrhyn sits just safe, south of the border. Both Malden and Starbuck are barren, deserted atolls, once profitably exploited for their guano deposits.

Although the latitude of Christmas is 2 N, it is noteworthy that the bulk of the danger area lies south of the equator, with Christmas near centre in the northern block, and Malden near centre in the southern block. • It would seem therefore that we must ignore that comforting “vast ocean area to the north and east of Christmas Island” and focus attention on Christmas and Malden as key pieces in the com ing drama. Added weight is given to this idea by the recent an nouncement that the British Meteorological Office will establish reporting stations on Christmas, Malden and Penrhyn, at which islands both surface and upper air observations will be made.

It is not yet known whether these stations will be ship or land based.

Two NZ frigates are scheduled to assist in this weather work.

On January 9-10, an RNZAF

Sunderland flyingboat from Laucala Bay, Fiji, paid a brief visit to Penrhyn via Aitutaki, carrying as passengers NZ PWD Engineer Bob Schmidt and Mr. Don Reid, of NZ Island Territories Dept., the latter staying behind in the interests of the atomic age.

There seems little doubt that every effort is being made to organise this affair in the best in terests of humanity, if one can use the term, but many Cook Islanders remain uncomfortable, fully aware that no one yet knows the full answer to this fall-out nightmare.

Perhaps it is as well that Captain James Cook, who discovered Christmas Island on Christmas Eve, 1777, was, by reason of his imminent and untimely end on Hawaiian soil, denied a grave in which to turn be tween March 1 and August 1, 1957.

His interesting notes on his sojourn at Christmas and of the solar eclipse he observed there, make much more pleasant reading than do current items about this great, dry, 5-ft high atoll. t An application by local interests has been made to the W. Samoa Government for a license to fish for beche-de-mer with a view to exporting the commodity to Hong kong. The Government will investi gate the prospects of such an in dustry and, if necessary, frame regulations to safeguard against ex

ploitation and depletion and to pro tect the customary fishing rights of the Samoans concerned. t A Niue Islander, Malami Viliami, 46, was arrested in Auckland on January 12 and charged with the murder of a countryman, Luitohi

Japeth, aged 45. The alleged murdej was said to have taken place or the street following an argumen which broke out amongst a grou} of Niueans in a nearby house Police took possession of a piece o timber found near the victim, wh( died in the ambulance.