Author David Robie left his cabin on the Rainbow Warrior three days before it was blown up by the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency

The ship was destroyed at Marsden Wharf on 10 July 1985 by two limpet mines attached
below the waterline.

As New Zealand soon learned to its shock, the second explosion killed crew member and photographer Fernando Pereira as he tried to retrieve his cameras.

“I had planned to spend the night of the bombing onboard with my two young sons, to give them a brief taste of shipboard life,” Dr Robie writes. “At the last moment I decided to leave it to another night.”

He left the ship after 11 weeks documenting what turned out to be the last of her humanitarian missions — a voyage which highlighted the exploitation of Pacific nations
by countries who used them to test nuclear weapons.

Dr Robie was the only journalist on board to cover both the evacuation of the people
of Rongelap Atoll after their land, fishing grounds and bodies were ravaged by US nuclear fallout, and the continued voyage to nuclear-free Vanuatu and New Zealand.

Eyes of Fire is not only the authoritative biography of the Rainbow Warrior and her
missions, but a gripping account of the infiltration of Greenpeace by a French spy, the bombing, its planning, the capture of the French agents, the political fallout, and ongoing
challenges for Pacific nations.

Dr Robie corrects the widely held belief that the first explosion on the Rainbow Warrior
was intended as a warning, to avoid loss of life. No, it turns out, the French state really
did mean to kill people.

“It was remarkable,” he writes, “that Fernando Pereira was the only person who
died.”

The explosives were set to detonate shortly before midnight, when members of the
crew would be asleep. (One of them was the ship’s relief cook, Waihekean Margaret Mills. She awoke in the nick of time. The next explosion blew in the wall of her cabin).

“Two cabins on the main deck had their floors ruptured by pieces of steel flying from
the [first] engine room blast,” writes Dr Robie.

“By chance, the four crew who slept in those rooms were not on board. If they had been,
they almost certainly would have been killed.”

Eyes of Fire was first published in 1986 — and also in the UK and USA, and has been reissued in 2005, 2015 and again this year to coincide with the 40th anniversary
of the bombing.

If you are lucky enough to own the first edition, you will find plenty that is new here; updated text, an index, new photographs, a prologue by former NZ prime minister Helen Clark and a searing preface by Waihekean Bunny McDiarmid, former executive director
of Greenpeace International.

As you would expect from the former head of journalism schools at the University
of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific, and founder of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, Eyes of Fire is not only a brilliant piece of research, it is an absolutely
fascinating read, filled with human detail.

The bombing and its aftermath make up a couple of chapters in a book which covers an enormous amount of ground.

Professor David Robie is a photographer, journalist and teacher who was awarded an MNZM in 2024 for his services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education. He is founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review, also well worth seeking out.

Eyes of Fire is an updated classic and required reading for anyone interested in activism
or the contemporary history of the Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

President Donald Trump issued the “Unleashing America’s offshore critical minerals and resources” order on Thursday, directing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to allow deep sea mining.

The order states: “It is the policy of the US to advance United States leadership in seabed mineral development.”

NOAA has been directed to, within 60 days, “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.”

Ocean Conservancy said the executive order is a result of deep sea mining frontrunner, The Metals Company, requesting US approval for mining in international waters, bypassing the authority of the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

US not ISA member
The ISA is the United Nations agency responsible for coming up with a set of regulations for deep sea mining across the world. The US is not a member of the ISA because it has not ratified UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

“This executive order flies in the face of NOAA’s mission,” Ocean Conservancy’s vice-president for external affairs Jeff Watters said.

“NOAA is charged with protecting, not imperiling, the ocean and its economic benefits, including fishing and tourism; and scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” he said.

He said areas of the US seafloor where test mining took place more than 50 years ago still had not fully recovered.

“The harm caused by deep sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

REVIEW: By Giff Johnson in Majuro

As a prelude to the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein in 1985, Radio New Zealand and ABC Radio Australia have produced a six-part podcast series that details the Rongelap story — in the context of The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, the name of the series.

It is narrated by journalist James Nokise, and includes story telling from Rongelap Islanders as well as those who know about what became the last voyage of Greenpeace’s flagship.

It features a good deal of narrative around the late Rongelap Nitijela Member Jeton Anjain, the architect of the evacuation in 1985. For those who know the story of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini, some of the narrative will be repetitive.

But the podcast offers some insight that may well be unknown to many. For example, the podcast lays to rest the unfounded US government criticism at the time that Greenpeace engineered the evacuation, manipulating unsuspecting islanders to leave Rongelap.

Through commentary of those in the room when the idea was hatched, this was Jeton’s vision and plan — the Rainbow Warrior was a vehicle that could assist in making it happen.

The narrator describes Jeton’s ongoing disbelief over repeated US government assurances of Rongelap’s safety. Indeed, though not a focus of the RNZ/ABC podcast, it was Rongelap’s self-evacuation that forced the US Congress to fund independent radiological studies of Rongelap Atoll that showed — surprise, surprise — that living on the atoll posed health risks and led to the US Congress establishing a $45 million Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Questions about the safety of the entirety of Rongelap Atoll linger today, bolstered by non-US government studies that have, over the past several years, pointed out a range of ongoing radiation contamination concerns.

The RNZ/ABC podcast dives into the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test fallout exposure on Rongelap, their subsequent evacuation to Kwajalein, and later to Ejit Island for three years. It details their US-sponsored return in 1957 to Rongelap, one of the most radioactive locations in the world — by US government scientists’ own admission.

The narrative, that includes multiple interviews with people in the Marshall Islands, takes the listener through the experience Rongelap people have had since Bravo, including health problems and life in exile. It narrates possibly the first detailed piece of history about Jeton Anjain, the Rongelap leader who died of cancer in 1993, eight years after Rongelap people left their home atoll.

The podcast takes the listener into a room in Seattle, Washington, in 1984, where Greenpeace International leader Steve Sawyer met for the first time with Jeton and heard his plea for help to relocate Rongelap people using the Rainbow Warrior. The actual move from Rongelap to Mejatto in May 1985 — described in David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior — is narrated through interviews and historical research.

The final episode of the podcast is heavily focused on the final leg of the Rainbow Warrior’s Pacific tour — a voyage cut short by French secret agents who bombed the Warrior while it was tied to the wharf in Auckland harbor, killing one crew member, Fernando Pereira.

It was Fernando’s photographs of the Rongelap evacuation that brought that chapter in the history of the Marshall Islands to life.

The Warrior was stopping to refuel and re-provision in Auckland prior to heading to the French nuclear testing zone in Moruroa Atoll. But that plan was quite literally bombed by the French government in one of the darkest moments of Pacific colonial history.

The six-part series is on YouTube and can be found by searching The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

Scientists conduct radiological surveys of nuclear test fallout
A related story in this week’s edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.

Columbia University scientists have conducted a series of radiological surveys of nuclear test fallout in the northern Marshall Islands over the past nearly 10 years.

“Considerable contamination remains,” wrote scientists Hart Rapaport and Ivana Nikolić Hughes in the Scientific American in 2022. “On islands such as Bikini, the average background gamma radiation is double the maximum value stipulated by an agreement between the governments of the Marshall Islands and the US, even without taking into account other exposure pathways.

“Our findings, based on gathered data, run contrary to the Department of Energy’s. One conclusion is clear: absent a renewed effort to clean radiation from Bikini, families forced from their homes may not be able to safely return until the radiation naturally diminishes over decades and centuries.”

They also raised concern about the level of strontium-90 present in various islands from which they have taken soil and other samples. They point out that US government studies do not address strontium-90.

This radionuclide “can cause leukemia and bone and bone marrow cancer and has long been a source of health concerns at nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima,” Rapaport and Hughes said.

“Despite this, the US government’s published data don’t speak to the presence of this dangerous nuclear isotope.”

Their studies have found “consistently high values” of strontium-90 in northern atolls.

“Although detecting this radioisotope in sediment does not neatly translate into contamination in soil or food, the finding suggests the possibility of danger to ecosystems and people,” they state. “More than that, cleaning up strontium 90 and other contaminants in the Marshall Islands is possible.”

The Columbia scientists’ recommendations for action are straightforward: “Congress should appropriate funds, and a research agency, such as the National Science Foundation, should initiate a call for proposals to fund independent research with three aims.

“We must first further understand the current radiological conditions across the Marshall Islands; second, explore new technologies and methods already in use for future cleanup activity; and, third, train Marshallese scientists, such as those working with the nation’s National Nuclear Commission, to rebuild trust on this issue.”

Giff Johnson is editor of the Marshall Islands Journal. His review of the Rainbow Warrior podcast series was first published by the Journal and is republished here with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Steve Sawyer, Rongelap campaigner with the original Rainbow Warrior which was bombed by French secret service agents in July 1985 in Auckland, aboard the new Rainbow Warrior during the ship’s first visit to New Zealand. © Nigel Marple/Greenpeace

A tribute to STEVE SAWYER by former Rainbow Warrior captain PETER WILLCOX, who was skipper at the time of the Rongelap evacuation and the bombing in 1985.

I MET Steve in 1981 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on the first Rainbow Warrior. I was answering a job advert he had placed in the National Fisherman. We spoke in his cabin for a while, and then went to the mess to meet the crew.

One of the things Steve liked about the manager’s job on the RW was that he got to do real physical work as well as intellectual organising. The crew was all giving him a hard time about his painting technique. It seems the day before, Steve, while climbing down into an inflatable (not a rhib by a long shot), had stepped directly into a five-gallon bucket of paint.

That he took the ribbing good-naturedly and laughed with everyone else was to me an excellent sign of life on board that ship.

Steve was the first guy I ever worked for who was younger than I. I was 28, and he 25 in 1981. But I learned fast not to mess with him. He could argue you into a corner quickly, and he did not suffer fools.

A few months later, we were up in Maine, replacing the motor and generators with new diesels. And Steve was right in the thick of it. One time he was underneath the new 16-cylinder GM diesel, I think drilling a hole in the steel engine bed to run a fuel line. I can safely say that it was not an OSHA approved work site.

Steve was sitting on a 2 x 12 plank over a ton or so of diesel and motor oil, the engine room bilge. He was drilling with a 120-volt drill, and it was tough work. Then the drill stopped. He looked by down the electric cord, and saw that he had pulled the plug and socket into the oil. He quickly pulled it out and it burst into flame. He dropped it back in the diesel, and squirmed his way out from under the engine with rather a serious expression on his face.

First big campaign
Steve studied philosophy in college, and was a near All American baseball pitcher. I will explain the significance of this in a minute.

The first big campaign we did was a Canadian seal campaign. I mentioned Steve had studied philosophy in college. The campaigner, a Canadian whose name I will not mention (but his initials are P.M.), threw the I Ching many times during the campaign, mostly as a way to get me back to the bridge to push further and further into the ice. The first RW had no kind of ice class, or any kind of class for that matter. The year before with a fancy ice pilot on board, they had bent the propeller.

Every time the Canadian would throw the I Ching he would claim it said, “Go forward”. This would drive Steve crazy. I could see him cringing. And I know he never forgave the Canadian campaigner.

I’m sure Steve was the one who convinced the organisation to put sails on the first Warrior. I am not sure how he did it. But we built the masts, got the sails, cut the bridge wings off, made a bowsprit, did a lot of work in the engine room all for around $120,000 US. This was in the days when we did 90 percent of the work ourselves, before we would just pull into a ship yard and tell them to get busy.

The next campaign we did was also organised by Steve. It was the evacuation and resettlement of the people from Rongelap. Our mission that year, 1985, was to protest against nuclear testing in the Pacific. The first part of the trip was in the Marshall Islands, and Steve went out there in 1984 to see what we could do.

“Give us a ride”, he was told. And that’s how we moved 350 people 120 miles across the ocean with everything but their church and livestock. I am sure that many of my shipmates would agree that it was probably the most significant thing any of us ever did. I certainly feel that way. Thanks to Steve.

Fastball folly
It was during this campaign that I received a batch of Sports Illustrated magazines from home. I got into an article about a young baseball pitcher for the Mets named Sidd Finch, who could throw a fastball at a ridiculously high speed. After finishing the article, I ran down to the mess to show it to Steve.

Steve got about a quarter of the way through it, closed it, looked at the date, chuckled, and threw it back to me.

“Total bullshit” was all he said.

Steve immediately knew that no one could throw a baseball at 168 mph. He also caught that the article was written by George Plimpton, a founder of the Paris Review and a literary critic, not a sport journalist. The other clue was the date on the cover: April 1st, 1985. But that was Steve. Way smarter than the average bear.

It was a year to two before that that Steve met Kelly. They became, I think the best couple I have ever met, outside of Pete and Toshi Seeger. Both terrifically hard working and dedicated, to the environment and their family.

Steve went on to become an ED of both GpUSA and International, and I saw him less and less.
When I think about it now, he had an absolutely huge impact on my life.

Thank you, very very much, Steve.

• Republished with permission from Pete’s Facebook page. 
• Read tributes about Steve and his shipmates at David Robie’s Eyes of Fire : Thirty Years On

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

This undercover footage by Greenpeace shows bulldozers destroying Indonesian rainforest. HSBC, one of the biggest banks in the world, is accused of lending millions to palm oil companies in the Salim group, which is claimed to be behind this destruction.

British-based group HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, has been accused of being a “dirty banker” by funding companies alleged to be destroying forests in a new Greenpeace report.

HSBC is currently one of the largest providers of financial services to the palm oil industry, according to the report.

HSBC has detailed policies on forestry and agricultural commodities (including specific sections on palm oil), Greenpeace says.

An unprecedented legal case has been filed this week against the Norwegian government for allowing oil companies including state-owned Statoil to drill for new oil in the Arctic.

The legal case was filed by Nature and Youth, the largest environmentalist youth organisation in Norway and Greenpeace Nordic. Both agencies argue that Norway is violating the Paris Agreement and the people’s constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment for future generations.

The case comes only days after Statoil pulled the plug on its New Zealand operations in Northland, and just before a visit by Norway’s indigenous Sámi parliment, who are meeting with iwi around the country to discuss Statoil’s presence here.

‘Stiff resistance’

The Sámi visit follows a Māori delegation to Norway last year, who met with Sámi people and attended the annual Statoil shareholders meeting to put the owners on notice that their investment in Aotearoa would be met by stiff resistance.

Greenpeace New Zealand climate campaigner and lawyer, Kate Simcock, said the case could have implications around the world.

“With the success of the Urgenda climate case against the Dutch Government, and now this, we’re seeing that it’s possible for ordinary people and smart legal tactics to hold governments to account on their plans to tackle climate change.”