My name is Anthony Kennedy. I was born in the small settlement of Whataroa in South Westland on the West Coast. I joined the Royal New Zealand Navy in January 1970 and after basic training I spent the rest of that year training to be a Radio Operator. My first sea draft was to HMNZS Otago in 1971, which was at that time deployed as part of the Far East Strategic Reserve based in Singapore. We were also part of the Royal Navy’s Far East Fleet. On our return to New Zealand the ship had a refit which was completed in 1972 and we deployed to Pearl Harbour for a workup and exercise RIMPAC. I completed an Electronic Warfare Course at the end of 1972 and at the beginning of 1973 I joined HMNZS Canterbury. After showing the new ship around New Zealand, we were to be deployed to the Far East via a work up in Pearl Harbour. However, at the completion of our workup we were called back to New Zealand instead of heading to South East Asia.
There was a certain amount of secrecy surrounding our next deployment but because everyone knew where we were probably headed, it was given the title “Norm’s Mystery Tour” by the ship’s company. In Auckland we were fitted with extra communications and monitoring equipment, and departed for the French atmospheric nuclear test zone at Mururoa Atoll. The French had set up an exclusion zone around the Atoll however, we went inside that zone. HMNZS Canterbury was a new ship and had been designed for the cold war environment to operate in a Nuclear Fallout environment. I don’t recall any training specific to our deployment except we exercised a bit more with anti-flash gear and went to shelter stations, which were in the mess decks below the waterline.
Everyone wore a blue badge the same as you often see worn by nurses and hospital staff when you go for an xray. When we were on our way home, I remember these badges being collected into a plastic bucket. I imagine that they are still at the bottom of the ocean somewhere between Auckland and Mururoa, no one seems to know what happened to them. So there was never any link between any specific dose rate and an individual sailor. It was a bloody joke.
I was part of the Electronic Warfare branch and we moved into two watches quite early in the deployment. Which meant we were either on watch, eating or in our bunk. Our job was to monitor French and other radio communications, the regularity of French weather forecasts and the local picture with regard to the other nations who had ships in the test zone and to fingerprint radar intercepts of ships and aircraft that came within range of our equipment. We had to try and establish when the test was going to happen based on the frequency of the weather reports and as much other information as we could gather.
The thing that left the greatest impression on me was the environment around Mururoa Atoll. It seemed like we were steaming through a marine desert. It was like nothing I had seen in my experience at sea. There wasn’t a bird or a fish in sight anywhere, at any time. When the bomb was detonated we were all wearing our anti-flash gear and had our gas masks with us. I had never worn anti-flash gear for real until that day. After the detonation I had a quick look at the cloud and went back on watch.
I would like the public to know that when we were deployed on Operation Pilaster by our Government, we all had to volunteer. If you didn’t want to go you could opt out. I don’t think I volunteered out of some sort of patriotic duty. It was probably because we were all shipmates and we couldn’t let one another down. We had been drafted to the ship, it was our home, and, whatever happened, happened to us all, we were all in it together. Admiral Thorne visited our ship, “cleared lower deck” and said to everyone with regard to the volunteering option, that we had volunteered once, when we joined the Navy. I thought that probably summed things up.
While the government might have described it as a protest voyage, I believe we, on the other hand, treated the deployment seriously. We were, after all, serving in a Warship. We did not know what was going to happen when the bomb we observed exploded, how big it was going to be etc. If anyone else knew, they certainly didn’t tell us. Much comment after the event, especially from official sources, has been at pains to say that we were in no danger.
The Mururoa Nuclear Veterans Group is in existence because the Government, indeed the Prime Minister himself, promised they would look after us, but they have not been true to their word. Our group has, for more than 50 years, been asking questions of Government departments to obtain information relating to our deployment. For example, we didn’t have an accurate crew list for HMNZS Otago, a nominal list of the crew deployed on Operation Pilaster. We asked many and various Defence employees who promised to look into the matter, but without success. “It wasn’t available”. In 2024, we finally received a list, a copy of the original nominal list signal. It was obtained because a serving Officer took the time to look for it on our behalf.
I feel fine as a result of the deployment but I didn’t spend much time on the upper deck, my place of work was in a compartment inside the citadel. However, my eldest child contracted encephalitis and has brain damage. By doing a google search, it seems there could be a link between radiation exposure and encephalitis, but I can’t see Veterans Affairs being interested in finding out if such a link is possible. I know many of my shipmates died young, younger than me, of cancers of one sort or another and their family members have been affected by their service. But of course no detailed comparative study was ever done to see if our mortality rate was any different to other sailors who were in the RNZN at the time but not deployed on Operation Pilaster. Veterans Affairs is an organisation where staff are under-resourced and over-worked. They are tasked with supporting veterans and their families by providing various forms of assistance, including health, rehabilitation, and financial support related to service-related conditions. However, it would appear they try and take every opportunity to abdicate their responsibilities and prevaricate, rather than take a positive stance where there is doubt and act on behalf and in favour of the veteran. But this has not been the case, and in many cases we have had to go through the appeal process when claims have been turned down.
As far as we know, Veterans Affairs has not worked with veterans regarding research involving Operation Pilaster veterans. Professor McBride’s 2020 study at Otago University involving 83 sailors, Veterans of Operation Pilaster and 65 children, published research in the New Zealand Medical Journal finding they were at higher risk of transferring genetic illnesses across generations than the normal population. Our organisation is trying to work with Veterans affairs to organise a process for obtaining genetic counselling but this is proving difficult and slow. Misinformation is also part of the situation when Ministers say the Government has arranged for genetic testing when in fact it has arranged for genetic counselling, there is a difference. It’s very frustrating. As well as this, Professor Al Rolland’s work at Massey University with the Operation Grapple Veterans is an example of research specifically to do with New Zealand Sailors. Veterans Affairs cites a Brunel University Study with British Armed service personnel to counter this research. It’s like saying let’s compare these sailors in New Zealand with some random unidentified British service personnel. It’s so bloody frustrating.
Personally, I believe that because Prime Minister Norman Kirk died prematurely, the link between us and the man who had the vision to draw the world’s attention to what was going on at Mururoa Atoll and what was happening to the environment in the South Pacific, and who personally made a promise to look after us was lost. For a long time we were the “forgotten deployment” and we were referred to as taking part in the Mururoa Protest instead of being deployed on Operation Pilaster. If Mr Kirk had been alive, I am sure he would have been an advocate for us when dealing with Government Departments given his ability to talk with and advocate for ordinary people.
The use of nuclear weapons is of course to be avoided, because it is the weapon that keeps on giving. Casualties occur at the time but continue long after the explosion has died down.
When the Government issued the Special Service Medal, Nuclear testing, to the Operation Grapple and Operation Pilaster Veterans they were criticised in some quarters. On the following ANZAC Day I was talking with an old merchant seaman, whom I had known all my life. He was usually a man of few words. He had survived the Atlantic convoys of WW2 and had been sunk once by a mine. We were having a beer and he looked at my newly minted medal and said he was pleased the Government had issued a medal for our deployment, and in his opinion, we deserved the recognition. I looked at his medals and mentioned that it hardly compared with his experiences. He said to me that it was a different time and situation. He said that he and his shipmates knew what they were in for every time they sailed but that my shipmates and I had no idea what might happen to us on our deployment, but we had volunteered anyway and that deserved recognition. The support of what we had done on Operation Pilaster by a man of his experiences was the single most affirming comment I had heard then or since. The old sailor was my Father.