Ex-servicemen want recognition for Mururoa

A sailor is silhouetted against a rising mushroom cloud, while aboard the HMNZ Otago in a 1973 protest against French nuclear testing in the Mururoa Atoll.

Navy ex-servicemen suffering ill health from the fallout of French nuclear testing at Mururoa are calling for a special remembrance day.

The Mururoa veterans, who attended the 40th anniversary reunion in Tauranga on Saturday, were unanimous that they and their families should be treated the same as the Vietnam War soldiers who were sprayed with the hormone defoliant spray Agent Orange.

Reunion organiser and president of the Mururoa Veterans Society Peter Mitchell said the event was a success with 84 attending from all over New Zealand and Australia.

Mr Mitchell was on the HMNZS Canterbury when it joined HMNZS Otago off Mururoa in 1973 for the Government's historic protest against atmospheric nuclear testing by the French.

The subsequent exposure to radiation has seen many veterans and their children born after 1973 suffering a catalogue of health problems - in the same way as Vietnam War soldiers and their children suffer from the effects of Agent Orange.

Mr Mitchell said the reunion resulted in a call for the Government to recognise a remembrance day for the 500 servicemen aboard the two ships. He said they wanted to be treated the same as the soldiers who were sprayed with Agent Orange, including a database to be compiled of the diseases that the ex-navy serviceman say are affecting their children as a result of the exposure to radiation.

"We are worried about what we have handed down to our children and what they will hand down to their children."

The database would include children getting blood tests and DNA checks to make sure they were not getting diseases linked to genetic problems from radiation poisoning.

Mr Mitchell said Agent Orange children received payouts from the Government once the evidence became overwhelming, and he would like to see children born in the aftermath of the nuclear testing getting the same consideration from the Government.

He dismissed the Government's argument the servicemen were volunteers because when they joined the navy they swore an oath to do their duty to the Queen and country, which included the protest voyage to Mururoa. "The Government of the day sent us there."

While the ships were initially upwind of the nuclear explosion, afterwards they twice sailed through the radiation cloud. Mr Mitchell said they also ingested radiation-affected water from the ships' desalination plants, with the food lockers also potentially exposed to radiation because they were on the upper decks.

Saturday's reunion saw everyone agreeing to take a stronger stance on the health effects of the French tests.