-Operation Grapple
May 25, 2024.
Shimasaki:
Can you please share your husband’s name and what he was doing during Grapple?
Cowan:
My husband’s name is George Bryce Cowan, he was on the HMNZS Pukaki for the full nine tests. He was a Leading Mechanical Engineer, and his actual job – he was making water by condensing the saltwater from the sea for the daily use of the crew.
Moore:
To his colleagues his name was Hank. Everybody knew him by Hank, even mum called him Hank. She was introduced to him as Hank.
Cowan:
And he wasn’t called George ever, he was always called Bryce by his family.
Moore:
But even some of his family ended up calling him Hank didn’t they?
Cowan:
Yeah. [Laughs]
Shimasaki:
How did that name come about?
Cowan:
I think all Cowans in the Navy were called Hank…
Moore:
Yeah, so he was called ‘Hank.’ His mother never called him Hank but his siblings did.
Shimasaki:
Do you know how he got involved with the Navy in the first place?
Cowan:
He was living on the West Coast at Greymouth when he joined the Navy and he had a huge desire to see the Pacific Islands and he joined the Navy to do that.
Shimasaki:
A lot of men have actually said that travel and seeing the Islands was a key part of them signing up.
Moore:
Just a young lad from the West Coast.
Shimasaki:
How old was he when he joined?
Cowan:
18.
Shimasaki:
18, wow.
Moore:
Was brought up on a farm, a country boy really wasn’t he mum?
Cowan:
Yes.
Moore:
He was no city slicker.
Shimasaki:
Was he originally from the West Coast?
Cowan:
Yes, he was born and bred there.
Shimasaki:
Is that where you met him?
Cowan:
No, I met him in Christchurch when he was on the HMNZS Black Prince which called in at Lyttelton. I lived in Christchurch and I met him at a dance in Christchurch, Just met him, was introduced to him, and he said he was going home to Timaru for Christmas. I said that I was going to Timaru for Christmas and New Year too, with some friends.
Moore:
By this stage his mum had moved to Timaru, she had remarried.
Cowan:
So he was going there, and we sort of parted, ‘see you there!’ Well, I came down to Timaru for my holidays, to Timaru because I had known I was going to Timaru.
Moore:
For Christmas, New Year.
Cowan:
Yes, and we were in a caravan, me and my three friends. We arrived here in Timaru and decided to go to the midnight dance at Caroline Bay- started at midnight. So, we walked into the Caroline Bay hall and the first person I saw was Hank. We were hardly in the door and he walked over.
Moore:
Must have been looking for you, wasn’t he?
Cowan:
Might have been.
Shimasaki:
That’s so sweet! From there you just kept in touch?
Cowan:
Yes, that’s right.
Shimasaki:
At this point, had he already witnessed the tests?
Cowan:
No.
Shimasaki:
So this was before?
Cowan:
Yes.
Shimasaki:
So when he went and witnessed all nine of the tests, did he talk to you about what he experienced when he was there?
Cowan:
Not very much at the time. I had letters from him while he was away and he would say a bomb was going off, but he never really described it or spoke about it very much.
Shimasaki:
Following the tests did he talk about what his experiences were or what he witnessed?
Cowan:
Yes, he had a little but not a great deal. He knew about how the bomb tests could cause radiation.
Moore:
I think mum, as he got older he talked about it, didn’t he?
Cowan:
He had a friend, Brian Stewart (Bubbles), who was also at the bomb tests. I’m not sure if he was on the Pukaki or the Rotoiti, and he died in his 40s of bowel cancer. I think that might have been the time when he became more concerned about it and spoke about it more. He was very, very upset about that and blamed it on being in Operation Grapple.
Shimasaki:
As his family [to Hank’s wife Carole], did you notice much difference from before he witnessed the bombings to his attitude after, and what kind of man he came back as?
Cowan:
He came back just the same really as he went away.
Moore:
How old was he then mum, in 1957? Born in 33, so he would have been 24 or 25.
Shimasaki:
So he had a bit more experience than some of the other men.
Moore:
Yes, he wasn’t 18 or 19, he had been in the Navy a while and he had travelled, he had been to England, Japan, you know. We were just talking about it before you came here, he was even there for the Korean War, part of the Korean War. It wasn’t like this was his first trip.
Cowan:
He was a leading mechanical engineer at this time.
Shimasaki:
In regards to earlier when you said he had been collecting water through condensation, do you know what happened following the bombs with him collecting that water?
Cowan:
I imagine it would have continued the same as before the tests.
Shimasaki:
When I was speaking with some men up North they were saying they would collect it in the ships sails and then they would be drinking that water and it wasn’t until much later that they realised there was the radiation in what they were drinking.
Cowan:
Oh, it would have been! But we never discussed this. Because he outlived a lot of them he used to tell us that he never went swimming in the waters, and a lot of them fished in their spare time and ate the fish they caught.. He never did that, he said.
Moore:
I remember saying to dad, “Why didn’t you dad?”
And he said, “I don’t know.”
Maybe he thought that something just wasn’t right. That’s unusual for dad with the fishing because he liked fishing and eating fish but he said he never did that or went swimming in the water.
Shimasaki:
That’s interesting.
Moore:
He felt there was something just not right about it. But I’ve never thought about the water, that they were all drinking it.
Cowan:
And showering in it and everything.
Shimasaki:
Yes, and cleaning the ship.
Moore:
And also, the food they were eating. Like if it was vegetables it would have been washed in it, wouldn’t it.
Cowan:
They stopped at different Islands now and again and got fresh fruit and vegetables. There were no freezers to keep fruit and veggies on the ships.
Moore:
Dad used to say about the birds that would come back after a bomb went off, they would be flying around and their wings would be flapping and the feathers would be off them; they would shoot them because it was cruel to see them like that.
Shimasaki:
To see them suffering.
Moore:
Yeah, to see them suffering afterwards.
Shimasaki:
Did he talk about much else about what he saw like the birds?
Cowan:
Yeah, the fish, the manta rays, the water was full of them. Hank and I went back there, we went on a cruise and we pulled in at Christmas Island. This would be about 2008 or something. We called in there and we were on this little boat, our cruise boat did not pull up at the wharf because it wasn’t big enough so we had to get a little boat to come into the island and you could see the water was clear, you could see deep into it.
Hank said, “there’s no manta rays like there used to be.” We would have seen them. There was none.
Moore:
But I also remember him saying about dead fish at the time.
Cowan:
There was none of these manta rays there, that upset him I think.
Moore:
That was one of his memories wasn’t it, these huge stingrays. Has anyone talked about that before?
Shimasaki:
No, I haven’t heard about them before.
Moore:
Dad was one of the nineteen in Denise’s exhibition and in his story he mentioned the manta rays. Didn’t he? That must have been something that really stuck with him.
Shimasaki:
Yes. Going back to your cruise because I find that quite interesting, did you intentionally choose to go back to Christmas Island to see that or was that just part of the stopover.
Cowan:
We chose that particular cruise because it was to visit Christmas Island.
Moore:
On that trip mum, you were with another couple, and one of the men had also been on Operation Grapple- they both had. Had Mike Hewson been on Rotoiti or?
Cowan:
I think he might have been on Rotoiti.
Moore:
So dad and mum were good friends with them and they did a few cruises, and they both went to Christmas Island on this one.
Shimasaki:
What was it like when you visited there? What was his reaction to going back?
Cowan:
Well, his first thing was these manta rays. It was very different, the people were different, he thought it wasn’t the same people.
Moore:
Different race. Islanders were living there. They were shipped out weren’t they? [Cowan, ‘yeah’]. I remember dad saying that they didn’t look the same, that they were of different race or different island.
Cowan:
So Hank and Mike talked about where they had this big camp. It was like a canteen, that when Pukakai was at Christmas Island they would all get off and go to the canteen. He knew where all that was but he was surprised, we went for a big walk there.
Moore:
You will have some photos mum, won’t you? That you took on Christmas Island.
Cowan:
Yeah, I’ve got a couple I think.
Shimasaki:
That must have been very interesting for him.
Cowan:
For him, yes, and Mike.
Moore:
It would have bought back a lot of memories.
Cowan:
And these people, all the children and some adults, sang to us and everything.
Shimasaki:
Were the things like the canteen still on the island when you went back?
Cowan:
No, that was all gone. I think the British had cleaned it all up, taken all the stuff away.
Moore:
Cleaned it all up but left the radiation there.
Cowan:
Yeah. Beautiful beaches because it’s just a coral island.
Shimasaki:
Thank you, that has been really interesting hearing what you thought Hank’s perspective has been. I would love to hear a little about your perspectives as Hank’s wife and daughter, on what it was like having a husband [and father] who had been to Operation Grapple and the Navy. What was that like for you?
Cowan:
Well, I suppose I was proud of Hank for that. But I never talked about it a great deal with people, people didn’t seem to think it was that important I don’t think; like you probably know, like a lot of people know about it.
Moore:
I guess it was probably something they talked about amongst themselves. But I wonder even with his siblings and his mother, it was probably a world away from what they knew. They never really completely understood what he did because it would have been so alien coming from their life in the little West Coast, you know.
Cowan:
They didn’t really talk about it.
Moore:
And not until recent years when people started talking about it and it made more headlines.
Cowan:
I don’t know what year it was (in the 1990s) that a meeting or a reunion was called for the veterans. Might have been just to start off, a club for all the veterans who had been on this trip. By this time, we had a son, Tony, who was sick and we became more aware of all this after Tony got sick. He was sent down to Dunedin hospital and we were told he had cirrhosis of the liver. He was 13. He was questioned and we were questioned about if he had taken drugs or was drinking alcohol, he’s 13. We were certain he hadn’t, and Tony would have told us. He went on to have pulmonary hypertension of his lungs caused by the cirrhosis of his liver, something to do with the blood not circulating properly. As a result, it affected his heart.
Moore:
He actually needed a liver transplant, a double lung transplant, and a heart transplant.
Cowan:
This was quite a long time ago now. He went to Auckland hospital and the heart transplant unit in Greenlane but they made a decision not to do this operation. If they had made a decision to do it he would have been the first one to have the three in New Zealand, but the doctors decided not to.Later on he could have gone over to Melbourne and so the doctors there would look at him and decide whether or not to operate, but it was getting too late really. Tony himself decided he didn’t want to do that because he had two children and his young family would have had to shift to Melbourne. So he died in 2000.
Moore:
He was 31.
Shimasaki:
I’m sorry.
Cowan:
It was in the year 2000.
Moore:
At that stage Annabelle was three years old, his daughter, and his wee boy was six months old.
Shimasaki:
I’m so sorry to hear that.
Moore:
Dad always blamed himself because they could never give a reason why Tony had all these issues, it was unexplained.
Cowan:
And we told the doctors that he [Hank] had been away to Operation Grapple and they said it was a possibility.
Moore:
But they would never say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but dad would say, “I know why.”
Cowan:
He blamed himself. Getting back to this meeting we went to.
Moore:
It would have been when we got back from Singapore I think, so it would have been in the early 90s, I came back in ‘92. Yeah, they had a meeting.
Cowan:
And when somebody mentioned about their children’s health and if anybody had had problems, I think it would be 90 percent of the room that put their hands up. It was terrible. I don’t think they even expected that.
Moore:
We were completely surprised.
Cowan:
Yeah, everybody was amazed because I don’t think that is really why they got back together.
Moore:
It was just a reunion but this subject came up and I was like, ‘wow, something is going on here.’ …It was like woah, something is very wrong here; it can’t be a coincidence that so many of the veterans have problems with their health, as well as their children and grandchildren’s health.
Cowan:
That was before Tony died.
Moore:
Yeah, Tony was still alive but he was sick. He was sick of course then, but he was still alive. That is when I think Roy and Ruth started gathering their data, they thought this wasn’t right.
Shimasaki:
Did you participate in what I believe was a questionnaire?
Cowan:
I don’t know whether it was a questionnaire.
Moore:
You had to put information, you know, all this information had been gathered and you had to answer.
Cowan:
[Cowan showed Shimasaki paperwork].
I wrote, they wanted a rundown of our children’s health [showing Shimasaki paperwork].
Moore:
That’s all changed now, since then. It said that I had a miscarriage and wasn’t able to conceive but we ended up having- I was a week off 42 when we ended up having our son Patrick but he was our only one. We ended up bringing up Annabelle [one of Tony’s children] because very sadly four years after Tony died his wife died.
Cowan:
She took her own life.
Moore:
It was very sad. The children were actually split up [Tony’s children]. We were living in Wellington at the time and we had little Patrick who was two and a half by that stage. We moved back down to Timaru because Jack was going to be staying in Timaru with the other side of the family. So we moved down so they could stay together. Yeah, the whole thing was very, very sad. But the other thing is, mum it won’t be on there [the sheet] either.
Shimasaki:
The ‘Allan born 1958’ comment; good health but suffers migraines? [Reading about Cowan from the paperwork that was shared with Shimasaki].
Cowan:
It has changed with him [Cowan’s other son Allan] because when he was 63, this was two and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, it’s a blood cancer, and it is one of the cancers that is recognised.
Moore:
You go through chemotherapy. So dad had died by this stage. In fact my brother only found out a month or so after dad died, and thank goodness he didn’t know about that because once again he would have blamed himself, wouldn’t he? We know he would have. He had a year of chemo and then he had a stem cell transplant. That’s a year ago now, over a year ago. He is doing well but it has been quite major… There has been, well dad would say, both of his sons have had ill health because of him. We know dad would say that.
Cowan:
He lived with it really.
Moore:
After Tony got sick yeah, dad really lived with the guilt. We used to say it’s not your fault dad. “Yes it is,” he would say.
Cowan:
Even Tony said,
Moore:
Yes, even Tony said to dad, “it’s not your fault dad.”
Cowan:
He told me too; he didn’t blame dad.
Moore:
But because it was a very unusual thing that. But Allan, now having the blood cancer, that would have been the final straw for dad.
Cowan:
Oh yeah.
Moore:
I’m glad he never knew about it.
Shimasaki:
Unfortunately that is such a sad part of what I have discovered from talking with the men and their families is if there have been issues with their children or grandchildren, often they have got that sense of guilt or blame when it’s not them who made the decision or choice [to be exposed to radiation].
Moore:
Yes, because they were never given a choice. Dad told us they didn’t know where they were going until they got to Fiji where they were told this is where we are going and this is what we are doing. So, yeah the whole thing, very sad really. I think there would be very few families that have been affected by the sounds of things, [Cowan, ‘that haven’t] that haven’t been affected in one way or another.
Shimasaki:
Is your father’s experience at Grapple part of the reason that you are involved with the RSA now? [Directed at Moore].
Moore:
Yes, it’s the Royal New Zealand Naval Association, it used to be called the Ex Naval Men’s Association. Yeah, possibly. I think growing up I knew a lot of dad’s ex naval men friends and when dad was sick, when he got cancer and you know, some of his naval friends were very good to him, weren’t they?
Cowan:
Yes.
Moore:
I felt, I think, an affinity, a closeness with them but I think the whole Operation Grapple, out of dad’s naval career for me, that’s the thing that stands out the most. There is noone else on the committee who was involved with Grapple but, yeah possibly. I was asked to do it, they were looking for a secretary, but the Grapple thing is really the thing that stands out.
Cowan:
And also you’ve been to that Trafalgar Day dinner for years.
Moore:
Oh yes, I know most of the men. It is mostly men but there are a couple of women, of that generation they were mostly men, you know. So, since we moved to Timaru from Wellington, Dave and I, that was, Alison died in 2004 and we came down in 2005 because it took a while to get everything sorted out with what was happening with the children. And then we had to sell, so it was 2005 we moved down and since then Dave and I have been every year to this Trafalgar Day celebration. So I’ve got to know a lot of them. But definitely Operation Grapple is the thing, if there was one thing that stood out for me with dad and the Navy, that is something I would probably think of mostly.
Shimasaki:
How would you describe him [Hank] as an individual?
Cowan:
Very natural. He was a real West Coaster, very friendly. Very friendly, and nice.
Moore:
He got on with everybody, didn’t he?
Cowan:
Yes, he did. He was well thought of by a lot of people.
Moore:
After dad died, so many people said to us that they just thought so highly of him. Some of the younger ones in the Naval Assionation like Wayne Gaby said, “oh, your father was a real mentor to me.” Looked up to him. Yeah, he was very natural, very salt of the Earth wasn’t he… Just so likeable, everybody liked him.
Cowan:
Everybody liked him.
Shimasaki:
He sounds like a wonderful man.
Cowan and Moore:
He was.
Moore:
A lovely, lovely man. All my friends all liked dad.
Cowan:
When Denise came around and took the photos of him, the neighbour popped his head over the fence and yelled out, [Moore recalled] “you’ll never get a man like him, he’s a top bloke!”
Moore:
And Denise has brought it up a couple of times with mum, “you know i’ll never forget the neighbour doing that.” Even mum, you tell Olivia about dad being the leading stoker. He was offered another promotion but he never wanted it did he?
Cowan:
Petty officer.
Moore:
Petty officer [he never took it] because he just wanted to be one of the boys.
Shimasaki:
I feel like what you have said really sums up how I picture him as a person.
Moore:
He didn’t want to be one above them, you know. He was a lot of fun too, a lot of fun; he always had a smile on his face. He could get up to mischief couldn’t he?
Cowan:
When he was younger I think.
Moore:
Yeah, on the coast. He was from a family of six, he was the eldest. Particularly the next brother down, there wasn’t even quite a year between them. That’s another sad thing, my dad lost his father when he was young, 15, and as I said he had five siblings under him. He had an accident on the farm and broke his neck and died. He had hardship in his life, definitely, cause he sort of finished school after that and helped on the farm because he was the eldest. So, there was a lot of hardship.
Cowan:
He left school too because he had polio.
Moore:
Yeah, he had polio when he was younger.
Cowan:
Not a bad case of it, but he did end up with one leg a bit shorter than the other.
Moore:
You could never tell, you know, when he was walking but mum knew when she had to take his pants up there was always one leg that should be taken up a bit further than the other.
He was a lovely, lovely man.
Shimasaki:
To sum up his experience [and yours], what you would like other people to know as the stand out item for those who come and read what you have said today.
Moore:
He was brave. These men ought not to have been used the way they were. It would not happen today.
Cowan:
I would say he wouldn’t have gone if he had known.
Moore:
I don’t think he would have either if he knew these long-term implications. But, he never really had a choice, he would have been told. I don’t think he would have, if he knew what he knew later on in life.
Cowan:
Especially as it affected us like it did. Tony was a dentist.
Moore:
He was the first in family to go to university.
Shimasaki:
That’s a big achievement.
Cowan:
And he had the world at his feet really.
Moore:
Dad always felt bad about that. He did have his own practice up at Papamoa.
Cowan:
I think overall, joining the Navy was a real brotherhood and once they’ve been in the Navy, they are always Naval people.
Moore:
I find that with the Association, once they have been in the Navy it is with them for life, and I think most of them would say that with Operation Grapple. I don’t think he ever regretted joining the Navy, he loved it, but Operation Grapple turned out to be a terrible thing. At the time I think he thought of it as being an adventure. He loved his time in the Navy. But even at the time when he was there, because they didn’t know the long-term implications and they were young, I think dad said at times, ‘this isn’t quite right- the fishing and the swimming.’ He said he can remember the planes coming back from dropping the bombs with all the paint being stripped off the planes.
Shimasaki:
I haven’t heard that before.
Cowan:
Daily orders on the ship [shows me paperwork]. This one’s for the day of the first bomb and it tells you exactly what was going to be happening there, what they were going to be wearing.
Moore:
I remember dad telling me several times that the planes came back stripped of paint.
Shimasaki:
Yeah, I think you are physically there to witness it, it is so hard to imagine what it would have been like.
Moore:
Does it say there [on the daily order’s paperwork] about the plane, mum?
Cowan:
No, but something must have triggered that thought about this. Oh, it says here, “H-hour can be any time after 10:10, the Valiant will make several runs and on the first satisfactory run.”
Moore:
The plane, Valiant.
Cowan:
[Continues reading] “The bomb will be released, therefore, there may be several countdowns before the real one. It is most important that the eyes-closed order should be followed each time.”
Moore:
As if closing your eyes is going to do anything. Back turned.
Cowan:
I don’t even remember Hank saying that they had practice runs or anything so they wouldn’t know exactly. They would be all sitting there and would not know when it was going to drop. And, it was 15 seconds, bomb plus 15 seconds, approximate release met balloon. 15 seconds after the bomb went, the weather balloon had to be released.
Moore:
Then, the plane comes back stripped.
Shimasaki:
Those poor men in the plane.
Moore:
Yeah, dad said the pilots, he said he heard that they died very early on.
Shimasaki:
Were they New Zealanders as well?
Moore:
They might have been British, the ones on the plane.
Cowan:
They were British. I think one of the pilots that did that did not live a very long life either. Yeah, [reads from daily order paperwork again] “15 seconds after the bomb, open eyes, stand up and face burst. Plus two minutes, cameras may be used.”
Moore:
The other thing about dad, he was a real gentleman wasn’t he mum? He always treated women so well.
Shimasaki:
Is there anything else that you would like recorded? Your own perspectives or experiences, or anything you would like to see in the future?
Moore:
I think it is heading in the right direction. Denise started a really good thing, I mean, my work colleagues went up to Christchurch and a lot of people became more aware of it. Like my work colleagues, they can’t believe they had never heard about it. That is what people are saying. Because I have lived with it all my life knowing my father had taken part in it, but it wasn’t something that I really talked about either to my friends. It has only been in recent years that we have realised the implications of it, that actually it wasn’t just another exercise the Navy were doing, it was more than that. That’s the common thing people are saying, ‘we didn’t know about this.’
Cowan:
Poor Denise was the same.
Moore:
That’s why she started it [the photographic exhibition].
Cowan:
She was shocked.
Moore:
She was up at the naval base museum. Remember she said her family had gone up ahead and she was stuck there looking at this thinking, why did people not know about it.
It was kind of swept under the carpet really. Well even when the group started investigating and finding out, the government denied it even happened, didn’t they? They said, “we have no records of it.” The Defence Force. But no, there were plenty of photos and men that could say it happened alright.
Shimasaki:
I have seen various photos, but it is quite interesting because every man seems to have slightly different images captured at the time.
Moore:
Because cameras weren’t a thing in those days. Everybody seems to have one in their hand nowadays, dad never had a camera.
[Shows official images plus others of Hank]. There will be the general ones that were handed out to them all.
[Spends time looking at the photographs and having a cup of tea together].
Shimasaki:
Where is Philomel? I hear so many men talk about that.
Cowan:
It’s in Auckland, the naval base.
Shimasaki:
Did he finish quite soon after Grapple or did he stay in the Navy for some time after that?
Cowan:
He went to HMNZS Tamaki on Motuihe Island, a naval training base in Auckland Harbour, for a few months and then he was transferred to HMNZS Philomel from where he was discharged from the Navy on 20 September 1959.
[Continue chatting.]
Moore:
Have you ever been to London, Olivia?
Shimasaki:
I have been to London, yes.
Moore:
You know on the river Thames there is the HMS Belfast. Did you see that?
Shimasaki:
No, I didn’t see that.
Moore:
It’s a naval ship, well, my daughter Annabelle, last Saturday she left for London. So this time last week we were at the airport. First day, she was walking up by the Thames.
I said, “well, a little bit further up you’ll see the HMS Belfast and dad was on that for a time during the Korean War.”
Cowan:
He did a course on the HMS Belfast. Had an exam, a course.
Moore:
At the time of the Korean war. So she took a photo from the London Bridge looking down on the HMS Belfast because it’s open for display for tourists.
Shimasaki:
That’s so exciting and lovely that she had the opportunity to see somewhere her grandfather had been.
Moore:
She sent the photo to me and I said, “he would have loved to see you were there.” He would love to hear that she was travelling and doing things.
Cowan:
Another thing, Linda’s son Patrick, he suffers from eczema very badly.
Moore:
When he was born he came out with rashes…
Cowan:
When you said about Japan, and [implications for] third generations, it makes me wonder.
Moore:
That’s another reason, with Patrick, his dad’s side had a little bit of eczema, our side don’t, not like he’s been, it’s major. When he was a baby I had to wet wrap him. He’s had to go on this drug because we have tried everything and nothing seems to work.