French Tests Bring More Than Mushroom Clouds

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31030, 9 April 1966, Page 5

French Tests Bring More Than Mushroom Clouds

(By

GERALD LYONS,

producer and comnientator with the A.B.C. in Australia, formerly

Reuter correspondent in Australia and South-east Asia.)

day they will come with a crucifix in one hand and a dagger in the other—to cut your throats or force you to accept their customs and, opinions. One day under them will make you as unhappy as they are.” What is happening in French Polynesia today reminds me of Diderot’s sentimentalised case against the impact of European penetration in these islands.

Although the French have never confirmed or denied responsible reports that the tests would begin in July this year, recent Reuter reports from Papeete say the first test will now be held late in Mav.

This means the first test explosion will now precede President de Gaulle’s highly publicised visit to the Soviet Union in June.

Whether or not France continues to ignore world opinion and international protests on the hazards of increased radioactive fallout and goes ahead with her scheduled nuclear tests high over Mururoa Atoll 800 miles south-east of Tahiti in July, Tahiti will never be the same again.

Whatever is happening behind the clouds of secrecy surrounding the test intentions, President de Gaulle’s nuclear task force is slowly but inevitably changing the face of the Tahitian capital and the lives, attitudes and economy, of the easy-going copper-skinned islanders.

The arrival of a ship here a few years ago before the naval and military build-up was an event calling for a celebration among Europeans and Tahitians who came into town from outlying districts to collect, answer and despatch their mail. Today the newly deepened harbour is crowded with grey warships, depot ships, fleet tankers, landing craft and workboats, part of the tremendous logistic operation supporting the nuclear task force. Ashore, the clatter of military trucks and personnel carriers along the Quai BirHakeim disturbs the picturesque tawdry charm of the waterfront. Beauties Rare Trucks, jeeps, cars and motor-scooters ridden by Chinese-Polynesian girls black hair streaming in the wind charge past with an apparent disregard of public safety. Around tbe tables on the pavement newly rich Polynesian construction workers drink themselves into a stuper. Here they sit until their money is exhausted, interrupting the serious business of drinking every now and then to talk to the fat and toothless women of the waterfront. There are many attractive girls in Tahiti, but in spite of over-sentimentalised romantic literature of the islands, really beautiful women are rare. Other waterfront pavement cafes and bars are filled with bearded young French conscripts, matelots and engineers of the Foreign Legion. There are nearly 5000 of them in Papeete. In spite of their numbers and because of the French atmosphere, one is seldom aware of them. The drinkers overlook a few battered American yachts owned by adventurous families, who, in most cases, sold all their possessions to bring themselves, their wives and small children to a paradise that they found did not exist. Too Much To Take The American yachtsmen seem to spend most of thear time aboard playing poker with visiting crews under drying washing. Their children alone look happy as they play naked on deck, while their parents wonder how soon they can make it home again. The truth is that of the thousands who have sought an earthly paradise in Tahiti few remain for more than a few months, fewer still can find happiness here. Paradoxically one of the main reasons for this is that the sheer physical beauty of this island away from shabby Papeete is too enchanting. So much so, that after a few months visitors are satiated, then, unable, to stick it out any longer, become sickened by the island’s overwhelming beauty. It is as if one gorged from sunrise to sunset on the raw flesh of luxurious tropical fruit. Few Successes Thi only Europeans who are really happy are those who take the natural beauty of the island in their stride and find spiritual and intellectual satisfaction in their work. Men like author and anthropologist Bengt Danielsson. of Kon-Tiki fame, the Chilean philosopher Carlos Garcia-Palacios, and Tahiti’s only Australian resident. “Buster" Burke, a tall gangling overgrown schoolboy of a man. “Buster” came to Tahiti 12 years ago, was captivated with its beauty and stimulated by the business opportunities. He married a charming French-Polynesian girl from one of the island’s leading families, built a prosperous business, and today has a finger in many lucrative pies.

Each of these in his individual way has created his own paradise, responding to the spirit of the island with a spontaneity seldom experienced by the tourist who speeds around the island in a hire car, or the would-be beachomber who passively waits for the island to do something for him.

Little wonder that against this exotic background with

the economic boom in full swing Tahitians display few apprehensions about the forthcoming nuclear tests. They accept the H-bomb without bothering to understand it with the same casual friendliness that they accept the military invasion. “The Hell With It” All you will get if you question the average Tahitian persistently is one of. his favourite remarks: “Aita pea pea" —“the hell with it." Which may also be the most appropriate. French Polynesia comprises more than 130 islands scattered over an area larger than Europe. Because of the wide area whose inhabitants are difficult to control some scientists are of the opinion it is vulnerable to fallout hazards polluting the sea. One of the few Tahitians who has voiced his concern is Teariki, French-Polynesian representative in the French Parliament. Teariki told parliament of his fears that whatever checks were made they could not guarantee Polynesia complete security from health hazards.

“Fish constitutes nearly 90 per cent of the basic nourishment of Polynesians outside Tahiti." he said. “I am told that all the precautions will be taken and that after the explosions fish will be examined in the markets. But what comtrol can there be of all the thousands of fishcatching and selling points in this vast area?

“In some parts the only water people have is rainwater collected in tanks. What guarantee will they have against radioactive contamination of their water.” French Assurances Protests from Australia, Chile, New Zealand and Peru have all been met with assurances from Paris that radioactive contamination of the blasts will not reach dangerous proportions. New Zealand protests have so far been made in the strongest terms with the threat of refusing facilities for French ships engaged in the tests. Last December the Prime Minister, Mr Holyoake. announced that he was seeking to get wider support than previously for a New Zealand-led protest in the United Nations. In Australia Professor J. H. Green, professor of nuclear chemistry at the University of New South Wales, said that Australia would probably be dusted by fall-out. The contamination would in his view be more intense than from previous American. Russian and the more recent Chinese tests. This, however, did not automatically mean the French tests would be more harmful. Professor Green pointed out that the amount of harm depended on the size of the bombs, the altitude at which they were detonated and wind direction. Late in December, an Australian scientific delegation visited Paris at the invitation of the French Government but failed to get the French to alter their plans to explode their first nuclear weapon in July. The leader of the Australian delegation was Professor E. W. Titterton, professor of nuclear physics at the Australian National University, Canberra. Professor Titterton returned to Australia with a report which, Mr Holt announced recently, supported the conclusion of the Australian National Radiation Advisory Committee that the French tests would be unlikely to lead to a significant health nazard in Australia. France's H-bomb test base, j the tiny Pacific atoll Mururoa. is a 15-mile strip in the ocean SOO miles south-east of Tahiti Sea Control Since 1962, the French have landed and' installed more than 100.000 tons of costly equipment and built two huge blockhouses at opposite ends of the island. The blockhouses were completed at a cost of about £4 million. Each has sloping walls more than 30ft thick, pierced with loopholes. Inside, the equipment is in readiness to measure the effects of the blast. When the big blast goes off the orders will be issued to the island command post from a cruiser at sea. There is an airstrip on the atoll and aircraft come skimming over the palms several times a day from Tahiti and the advance base at Hao,

about 300 miles from Tahiti. Nearly all personnel will be withdrawn to Hao when the actual blast occurs in July. Today, nearly 3000 Frenchmen and Polynesian workers are on Mururoa putting finishing touches to the base. According to some French sources, all major installations are now completed ready for the first test when prevailing winds are expected to carry the fall-out 4000 miles south to the Antarctic. French precautions include a chain of meteorological stations on atolls and ships across thousands of miles of ocean.

The military spokesman in Papeete, Major Lancien, said that the experiments would continue for the next six to eight years. As military personnel and Polynesian Workers complete military installations they are being phased out into civil engineering projects for the modernisation of the island under the French Five-Year Plan.

The plan’s main objectives are to provide continuity of employment and so continue the present boom for thousands of Polynesians who have flocked to Tahiti to work with the military, from their gardens and fishing grounds, in France’s scattered island empire. Only Tourism The other important objective is to modernise Papeete and to open the islands to more tourists on a grand scale. For tourism is seen as the island’s only viable industry, and may even one day lead to Tahiti becoming selfsupporting. At present the French have to subsidise the island’s economy, apart from the military and naval installations, to the tune of about £BOO,OOO a year. There is no tax on Tahiti, although the local Assembly is free to introduce it. It once did, with chaotic results. The only source of income for the Government is derived from import tax on everything brought into the island, which contributes to the high cost of living. It is, the French say. two and a half times as dear to live there as in France. The French are anxious for foreign capital for development, there are so many restrictions, however, that few investors appear interested. Investors are not permitted to own land unless they are Tahitian born—or marry a Tahitian girl with land. Plans for hotels and other major buildings must not only be approved by the local assembly but then must go for formal approval, with support from the assembly, to the French Parliament.

One of the good things about this is that get-rich-quick speculators have been effectively prevented from exploiting the islands. Some of the projects under the Five-Year Plan include: Two new hotels; the transformation of Papeete into a modern city within the next five years; a House of Culture for the Pacific area: a secondary technical college: and conversion of the military airport at Hao to civil use.

Further, the deepening of Papeete h’arbour means that soon it will take five large ships instead of two at present. The course of the plan

and speed at which it will be completed is partly dependent on the nuclear experiments. The Five-Year Plan will go some way toward solving the problem of providing continuing employment as Polynesmilitary sites. But this soluians become redundant on the tion contains the seed of new and serious problems for the French to face with the growth of a new politically conscious proletariat in the islands for the first time in history. There is evidence of the existence of such a proletariat already and, easy going as the Poynesians are, they will demand an increasingly bigger say in the islands’ affairs before 1970.

An example of pressure used against the French is the Five-Year Plan. It was some members of the assembly together with other local “bigwigs” who used their acceptance of the tests as a lever to put pressure on the French to modernise the island.

In sharp contrast with a fev' politicians and the new industrial proletariat undergoing the novel experience of working regular hours for wages, there are still a few superstitious islanders who are convinced that if something goes wrong with the tests it will be due not to scientific miscalculations but to stored-up vengeance within the giant female tiki Moana-hei-Ata. Moana is a grotesque stone monolith or demigod, which crouches on its stunted legs on a foundation of stones in the garden of recently completed Musee Gauguin 15 miles along the coastal road from Papeete. Erect against the shimmering emerald waters of Motu Ovini lagoon, the tiki is a reminder not only of the mysterious past of the races who preceded the presen-day Polynesians, but through its traditional functions of protecting the spirits of its descendants has become in the minds of the superstitious few a symbol of vengeance. The sunken eyes, broad flat nose and fleshy lips in the tiki’s disproportionately large head give it a malevolent expression which keeps alive yet another superstition—that of all the tikis in the islans this one is alive. Even to touch it means death. Mysterious Death Although the French are hardly likely to allow native superstitions to interfere with their plans, their sensibilities were stirred last year when the tiki had to be moved from where it had lain undisturbed for the last 33 years near Papeete. No Tahitian, even those who laugh off the myths, would touch it. In a quandary, the museum authorities appealed to the admiral commanding the task force for help from the Foreign Legion. The admiral, mindful of local superstitions, refused point blank to allow the military to touch it.

Eventually it was moved, at a price, by some Marquesan Islanders who could not have cared less for local superstitions.

Shortly after the tiki was installed in its final resting place one of the Marquesans died, stricken by a mysterious disease. The classic mushroom shape which hangs apocalyptically over France’s far-flung Pacific empire reflects the paradox of this exquisite island undergoing an irrevocable transformation by that which the world fears most —the atom—by special decree of President de Gaulle.