Brian and Patricia [wife] Harnor
New Zealand Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association
-Operation Grapple
February 10, 2023.
(Introductions prior to this)
Shimasaki:
You’re Patrica Harnor?
Patricia Harnor:
Yes.
Shimasaki:
Nice to meet you.
Patricia Harnor:
And we have been married for 50 years, but we’ve never had children. Because, I don’t know why, it’s not through abstinence [We all laugh]. Since we’ve never had children, and a friend of ours who was at Grapple, his wife had 8 miscarriages. You know… That’s my life.
Shimasaki:
How did you both meet then?
Patricia Harnor:
We met in England because I’m English and he’d been married before and he split from his wife and I met him at the YWCA. And we met, and hit it off, and I’d had a boyfriend previously who had been to New Zealand and I was interested in New Zealand… We met and we got married.
Shimasaki:
And came back to New Zealand after?
Patricia Harnor:
Yeah… and we came out here and got married here.
Shimasaki:
Are you located in Palmerston North?
Patricia Harnor:
No, in Mt Maunganui.
Shimasaki:
It’s lovely that you are here tonight.
Patricia Harnor:
And, we happened to come down for the reunion.
Shimasaki:
What have you heard about Brian’s time at Operation Grapple?
Patricia Harnor:
Well, he will tell you himself.
Brian Harnor:
Well, like most of us were very young. I mean like most of us were, well I was a teenager at the time but i would say probably half the crew were teenagers. That’s a fact of life in the Services. But, I mean at the time the experience was just another adventure. It was another trip to somewhere in the world we hadn’t been to, the Pacific. H-bomb testing, well, we didn’t know anything about it really, it was just something we were going to do and you didn’t think about it. You certainly didn’t think about consequences, or twenty-years later or ten-years later or any amount. It was just part of our lives at the time and we all carried on and did it, and like most of us, nothing happened until a bit later in life, maybe ten years later and all of a sudden people found there was issues like people having stillborn children, stillbirths, and some early cancers. But, this is ten years later, and a lot of us had left the Navy by then and just got on with life and you never really linked it with anything, it was just life. But as you get older and get to talk with old mates from way back and you realise, like I was talking only a couple of years ago with an ex-ship mate I hadn’t seen for many years at the RSA in Mount Maunganui and we were chatting away and he says, “well, what consequences were you?” And I said, “Well, I’ve had a good life, healthy, well, but I’ve never had any kids. I mean I had a stillborn child and that was it, after that, nothing.” They said, “Oh, I had 9. My wife had 9 miscarriages and could never hold a child and so we adopted two.” And that was just two of us, just getting together and just finding out, we were survivors, we haven’t had cancers. But, who knows if that was part of the, but it makes you wonder. Neither of us had kids really, of our own. I don’t know. Al Rowland probably knows more about it because he’s done the genetic testing and he’s found a lot of genetic abnormalities were passed around or happened, but who knows if it affected me or not. I don’t know, I wasn’t part of the sample, I’ve never known. But, I’ve had a good life and I don’t hold any real issues about it. I got on with life, and a lot of them didn’t make it, they had real problems. So, it’s good to get together, I mean we’re all in our mid-eighties now, the youngest I would think. Another ten years, we’re not going to be around. But people like you and younger, there is issues to be pursued maybe, the question of any genetic damage that might have been, has it been passed down genetically through the children? No one knows, those studies have been taken and maybe that would be a wonderful thing to happen if it could be funded by somebody. But hey, maybe this Conference will talk about it and maybe some younger people will take a leadership role, and maybe if there’s a cause worth fighting, mainly with Al Rowland’s knowledge- that gives it credibility… Roy Sefton is gone, he was the life and soul and the leader and a very driven man and he did a wonderful job but he was a one-off and he’s gone now. And so, no disrespect to the current leadership who have just sort of tried to pick up what’s left, we do need a new direction if we have a direction, and maybe a younger leadership, maybe from the children of some of the Vets. If people think there’s a cause to fight for and go for- and mainly with the children’s side of it, that’s how I feel. But, I’m not bitter and twisted, it’s fine. There’s one thing, in your line of work maybe, we do lack a Facebook page that communicates with us all with the berth of what’s happening. It would be wonderful if somehow someone could sort of activate, I believe there is a page, but it is sort of dead, and it’s hard to get to and it’s just not working. It would be nice to have that going. But hey, I don’t know.
Shimasaki:
I could work on it. I’ve got the website where the oral histories will be going.
Patricia Harnor:
When you said you were sitting on the floor on the ship.
Brian Harnor:
Oh yeah, well it’s common knowledge that the testing, when we used to be on the upper deck, I think except for the very first one a lot of us were below deck, but then they used to have us on the upper deck. But there was no real, I thought part of the test was to prove there was a bomb, and it was a clean bomb, but they didn’t know it was clean or not. That is one of the problems. And so, we were on the upper deck and you could hear over the tannoy that the bomb would be dropped, and ‘thirty seconds to detonation’, and then you would get the sense of the flash, and later on the rolling thunder would come across the water, but at the time we used to stand there with our, we had dark glasses on, like plastic glasses and hands over our eyes, faced away from the bomb, and you could still sense the bones in your hands. You see. And you think later, did it really happen? And you ask any of them, and they go, “yeah.” It’s common, it is. And I thought, nah you can’t, you know, it doesn’t sound right. And, it happened like that. But there’s so many people that said ‘yes’ they all, well everyone I know said, ‘yeah, and so you see the bones like an X-ray.’ You know. And your eyes are closed, dark glasses, your head is back to blast, it’s amazing.
Shimasaki:
And what was your role on the frigate?
Brian Harnor:
I was a young nineteen year old electrical mechanic. And my job was just part of the team of, there’s four electricians, a Petty Officer electrician like Sergeant, and then an Electrical Artificer, and we just maintained electrics on the ship, like a lot of ventilation fans, the power and lighting, batteries generators, that’s what we did.
Shimasaki:
What made you want to join as well?
Brian Harnor:
To see the world.
Shimasaki:
To see the world.
Brian Harnor:
As simple as that. I wasn’t very academic at school, I just wanted to see the world and I never got school cert, I passed a couple, English and something else but I wasn’t academic. But, I joined the Navy and I really, it was what I wanted, and when I, cause you do a lot of courses there and you’re under training for about a year or so and then you can do other courses later as you progress, but I loved it because there was a reason to learn, and you really got into it and you really wanted to learn! I ended up with a trade, I got to Petty Officer, and I got a trade as an electrician, and I got married about a year before my term was up, and I had to weigh up, ‘was the Navy my life, would a marriage life co-exist with a sailor’s life being away for most days- you’d go away for a year and not see you wife and family’ and I just tossed up I was about 26 then, ‘no I’ll leave the Navy.’ I had a future there and I loved it but, you had to weigh up marriage, or maybe a good marriage maybe not, but I just decided to get out. That’s life though, and so, it’s a good life for a young lad. And of course you’re willing, and you don’t want to buck the system, you’ve got to comply, it’s a very disciplined service, you can’t just do what you like or tell the boss what you think because it doesn’t work that way. So, yeah. It’s a bit different now, it’s a different generation and they are treated differently now, probably better, I don’t say it’s a better system, because I found it easy to communicate where you stood with that system, you’re either fine or you’re in trouble. So, up to yourself, but hey, that’s alright.
Shimasaki:
And looking back at your experience of Operation Grapple, how do you feel about it now in retrospect?
Brian Harnor:
Well, it’s something that had to be done, I guess. The age of the nuclear bomb had to be tested, and the Brits had trouble finding somewhere to do it because they had been testing in Australia, and Australia said, “Nah, enough, get out of here.” And so, they ended up in the middle of the Pacific. I don’t have any real issues with what happened, it had to be done, but I think there was a lack of, what will I say, not accountability, well it was in the end, but we didn’t really know what we were risking. We just thought it was another job we were going to do, and we just did what we were told and we did it. I think everybody was assured it was safe, but who knew? And so, it was just another operational thing that we did in the Service. And at the time, that’s fine, and even now I just think maybe there should have been a little bit more awareness put out there. They didn’t really do, after the tests, I mean on the ships they had metres to measure radiation and a lot of the crew had what they call roentgen metres like tags on them that are supposed to measure accumulated, but none of that, as far as we know, none of that was ever measured and tested- it certainly wasn’t reported, it’s been hidden. So, it’s been a lack of disclosure of what really happened by the authorities, mainly the British because they had all the information, everything went back to them. and they’ve been a closed shop, they’ve hid behind the bureaucracy and if any bit of this comes out, I mean there was a claim taken to the, got as far as the European Appeal Courts, that’s about it, and we lost it three votes to two, the judges. But, all along the British would never disclose, they just sort of, ‘you prove it,’ we won’t disclose anything. And so, they were hiding, they weren’t open and that’s probably the only question we’ve got is that they were a bit, at the end of the day they wouldn’t own up and even now the Brit’s after all these years have finally, the Prime Minister who’s just gone, Boris, Boris Johnson, he acknowledged that he felt there had been an injustice done after what, 65 years. And, he’s decided to recognise it and award them a medal for the service. Well it’s 65 years ago. And our government acknowledged it had been something that needed acknowledgement many years ago, and our government has really been quite good as far as offering medical care if you can prove your condition has come about by Operation Grapple. But they’ve never really said, ‘sorry, we shouldn’t have sent you there,’ ‘you were damaged but we’re not, ok maybe you were but we’re not acknowledging.’ They don’t want to say, ‘sorry.’ I’m not too bothered about it, some people are saying, ‘oh, we should be acknowledged, apologised, we should get a hand out of money.’ I think that’s silly. Acknowledgement, and maybe an apology that we shouldn’t have sent you there without more information, but any money that might be due should go towards research for our children’s possible problems- That’s how I feel. So, I’m not bitter and twisted about it. Some people here are a bit cranky about it, maybe they’ve had health issues that made them like that, maybe they’ve lost children, maybe they’ve got deformed kids, I don’t know. Maybe this is why. The big picture, you probably know more about it and you’ve talked to more people. I’ve been one of the lucky ones. That’s my feeling.
Shimasaki:
How do you feel about what’s happening in the world today in terms of nuclear weapons and technologies?
Brian Harnor:
I think it’s a good thing that we’ve got it, as a deterrent. It certainly stopped world wars, because no one dare risk it. Even Putin keeps threatening, but he knows if he did it he’d get wiped out too so it takes away that world war scenario or it has for many, many years. So that, I don’t have a problem, I think it’s good. I’m not anti-nuclear, I still am not anti-nuclear. I think it’s done more good than harm in keeping world peace. You know, without it we could have had many wars. So, yeah, I’m not twisted about that either, you know. I wouldn’t have a problem with nuclear. I think Nuclear-Free New Zealand was a, you might say it’s a, it’s a nice thing to have, but I don’t think it’s real. I think when [inaudible] to say, ‘oh we can stand up against it, we’re going to be nuclear free.’ No one is threatening us, no one is; we can afford to stand back and they can fight all they like, they won’t touch us. I think it’s almost a coward’s way out of paying your way in the world. In defence, it’s like an insurance company, you’ve got to spend some money on insurance cause when the crap hits the fan if you haven’t got insurance, you’re in trouble- same with if you haven’t got armed forces that can do something, you know what I mean? That’s what I feel. I’m not pro-nuclear but I’m not anti-nuclear, and I don’t have an issue with nuclear, I think it’s very well controlled now. We don’t have incidents. It’s something that has to be strictly controlled, sure, and probably the main problem is any rogue nations getting hold of them and threatening, well that’s an issue because if they start threatening with nuclear the world is in a problem area. Nuclear is a lot of good but there is also a threat there from these others, the smaller cranky nations.
Shimasaki:
Just a final question. Why did you feel comfortable sharing your story today, or what would you like to see from sharing your story with me today? Both of you.
Brian Harnor:
I’m happy to. You don’t talk about it much but it’s something that is part of my life, younger life. Looking back it was quite a big part of my life in its way, at the time it’s just a small part but of life gone on you realise there was more to it than you thought at the time. It was just another job you were doing, and I’m happy to talk about it, I don’t have any issues, and you are a very appealing person to talk to, you’re very approachable, you’re you know, soft, easy to talk to, no issues. Yeah.
Shimasaki:
Anything you would like to add? (Directed at Patricia)
Patricia Harnor:
I sometimes wish I had kids. But, only sometimes.
Brian Harnor:
A lot of it maybe stems from the fact that in my previous marriage, I had a stillborn child; went full-term and it died when it was born. And, at the time it was just, it happened. It meant my process of having kids was too painful, a lot of pain, and a couple of years later that marriage broke up, then I met Pat and I said, ‘I’m not really interested in kids. Too much pain involved.” That’s how I think it affected me, in that sense. I’m not blaming that on Operation Grapple, but it could have been looking back at why it was a stillborn child- You never know. But we never had kids… We just didn’t go there. My mate back in Mt Maunganui had miscarriages, he adopted two children. I actually adopted a son later but that’s another story again. So, I’m not really damaged, just a little bent in a couple of places.