REVIEW: By Lee Duffield

The journalist, professor and peace activist Dr David Robie, was one of a media party on the ill-fated voyage of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before its sinking by French security operatives in Auckland Harbour.

He wrote a definitive book about the lead-up in the region to the fatal sinking of the ship with limpet mines; unmasking of the plot made in Paris; attempts to obtain justice and a long aftermath with demands for empowerment by former “colonial” people to prevent such outrages in their island homelands.

The book is Eyes of Fire, first published in 1986, then successively updated as the story unfolded, with new facts and consequences of the outrage coming to light.

It ran to three revised editions, the latest out now to commemorate 40 years since the attack took place. It therefore marked 40 years since the death of the Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch national, aged 35, father of two children, Marelle and Paul, drowned on board after the second of two blasts that hit the ship.

Eyes of Fire is a highly professional work of journalism, built out of investigation and documentation of facts, then fashioned into an accessible read; illustrated also with easy-to-comprehend maps and diagrams, showing where the ship travelled and where the bombs were planted against its hull, plus photographs from a copious accumulation built up as the Greenpeace movement generated publicity for its actions worldwide.

Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
One section describes the Rainbow Warrior, appreciatively and affectionately: a former fisheries research vessel, a trawler type, 50-metres in length, with some difficulty converted for sail as well as power, made into a “proud campaign ship”, painted a strong green with a long rainbow-emblem along the sides.

“The wheelhouse was rather lumpy and unattractive but the rest of the ship was appealing. She had a high North Sea prow, graceful sheerline and round-the-corner stern.”

For the record…
The Rainbow Warrior sailed from Hawai’i on the Pacific Voyage — taking on board seven journalists and some leading figures from the Pacific communities, to the Marshall Islands — where it evacuated the inhabitants of a nuclear afflicted island, Rongelap, to an uninhabited island Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll.

Pacific distances are great. They transported 350 people — with house lumber and belongings — in four trips, 250 km there and back.

The islanders were suffering from contamination by the infamous upwind explosion of the experimental thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in 1954 — causing thyroid disorders, cancers and constant miscarriages and birthing disorders.

Dissatisfied that health officials sent by the United States administration were more interested in research than care, they decided to leave. The key instigator was the late Marshall Islands legislator Senator Jeton Anjain. He was one of two Pacific Islands leaders with prominent roles in Robie’s narrative.

The other was Oscar Temaru, a nuclear-free town mayor in Tahiti, also elected as the territory’s President on five occasions.

Temaru, now 81, spoke for many when he said:

“The sad truth is that the only ones who tried to help us are the Greenpeace ecologists…”

According to folklore among Greenpeace founders, a native American woman named “Eyes of Fire” told of a legend that where there was dispossession and despoilation of the land and culture, in time mythical warriors — deliverers — would come, who would mend and restore both. So the peaceship offering aid would be a “Rainbow Warrior”.

The author, Robie, in his news despatches for Radio New Zealand and other media (for which he was awarded the 1985 NZ Media Peace Prize, judged the evacuation project a change for Greenpeace towards humanitarian work connected with environmental destruction:

“This isn’t a game or the sort of action publicity stunt that Greenpeace would do so successfully.”

But the next part of the journey was another dramatic action, in Marshall Islands, at the US missile testing base on Kwajalein Atoll. A party from the ship went ashore, got through perimeter wires and hoisted a banner inscribed “Stop Star Wars” onto a space tracking dome, escaping before the arrival of security guards.

The banner was a reference to the American Strategic Defence Initiative, “Star Wars”, testing for which had increased the heavy traffic of missiles of different levels at the Kwajalein range (dubbed by the empire as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site).

The scene was then being set for the tragedy as the vessel made its way 5000 km to Auckland through friendly territory, calling in at Kiribati, the country hosting the former Christmas Island base for British nuclear tests (1957-58), and Vanuatu, where the leader of the then five year-old Republic, Father Walter Lini, a champion for a nuclear free Pacific, organised a big public welcome.

The strike
Celebration fitted the mood of the “Warrior” crew a lot of the time, in this account; a group of 11 skilled and idealistic younger people, sharing a mission they considered important to the world, and enjoying it as an adventure. They wanted to protect nature and promote peace, never violent, but charismatic, given to direct action, often enough dangerous.

They had others on board — in the case of David Robie, for an extended time, 11 days, time enough to get to know the characters and introduce them to readers in his book.

A further leg of the voyage was intended, to take them to Moruroa Atoll — where France was continuing with underground nuclear testing — as flagship for a flotilla of protest boats. In the event, the flotilla sailed, led by another Greepeace ship, Greenpeace III. One boat was arrested penetrating the 12-kilometre territorial limit around the atoll, where a series of tests was about to begin.

The planned disruption of activities on Moruroa may have been the death warrant for Rainbow Warrior — a solution to the riddle of what purposes its destruction was supposed to serve.

As the ship made its way towards Auckland, two French infiltrators got to work in that City, penetrating the Greenpeace operation. A group of military divers from a training base in Corsica was en route to New Zealand on a charter boat and two officers of France’s security service, DGSE, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, flew in under cover as a honeymoon couple.

Rainbow Warrior came in on Sunday, 7 July 1985, surrounded by an escort of small boats and was sunk at the dock in shallow water just before midnight on 10 July.

Divers using an inflatable boat set off the two explosions. Prieur and Mafart were spotted picking up one of the divers on a beach by men doing night watch at their boat club, who got the number of their vehicle, enabling the police to apprehend them, and begin a tortured process to try and secure justice.

Aftermath
Updating of the book takes in the negotiations over holding Prieur and Mafart, their eventual transfer to France and subsequent early release; the fate of other conspirators spirited home, promoted, decorated, “looked after” in early retirement; intensive and large scale work by the New Zealand police to find out about the charter boat carrying some of the divers, said to have transferred them onto a submarine, the Rubis; and investigative work by the French press to sheet home responsibility for the attack.

Very soon after Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, was sacked and the head of the DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste resigned. The book has a positive impression of the replacement Minister, Paul Quiles and the Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, who admitted the obvious — that it had been done by French agents and was apologetic.

Subsequent negotiations between New Zealand and France, under United Nations auspices were made very difficult; a formal apology was avoided for some time; eventually both New Zealand and Greenpeace received financial packages in compensation and exemplary damages.

After the 1996 death of François Mitterrand, French President at the time, an investigation by Le Monde turned up circumstantial evidence that he knew of the attack in advance and a statement by Lacoste that he had approved it. Fabius evidently had not known.

Mitterrand’s motive was said to have been realpolitik — to support nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union in tandem with the US, which supplied France with highly strategic computer technology.

Reviewer intercession…
Mitterrand, as a highly equivocal and manipulative politician, walked a tightrope, always watching his soft electoral margins — in this case knowing there was 60 percent support for nuclear testing in France.

In office for four years in 1985, it may have been a new government still failing to face down entrenched security identities, undisciplined, considering themselves to be “deep state”, attached to violent solutions, with potential to go rogue.

Most of Robie’s work here is a narrative, a strong true story, but it has space for analysis, and in particular registers the correlation between devastation brought by the nuclear testing, and colonial management and manipulation of islands affairs.

The post-war wave of independence had come to the Pacific, though not to French Polynesia nor New Caledonia. In addition, the United States still held its Micronesian dependencies in trust or, for Sovereign states, via signed compacts of free association, accompanied by substantial aid payments.

France’s position against independence is incentivised by maintaining colonies of more than 200,000 settlers; and in New Caledonia, the nickel deposits, around 15 percent of world resources, as well as the 200 kilometre territorial zone off the long coast of Grande Terre island, opening onto as yet unsurveyed undersea resources.

For the Americans, the priority has been both weapons testing and maintaining a strategic barrier against Russia, then China.

Old problems, future challenges
These considerations help to address the always unanswered question of what the plotters thought they had to gain. The book suggests a clumsy and excessive attempt to stop the ship leading a flotilla to Moruroa Atoll as most likely.

It goes on to identify same-old patterns of resistance in latter-day moves, successful, to get better recognition of the impacts of nuclear contamination and in the moves through international forums — such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Pacific Forum, United Nations agencies, the international courts — to get recognition and action on the impacts of climate change.

Pacific communities mindful of the rising seas, and other problems like impacts on sea-life, have struggled to get a hearing, finding, again, that “great powers” outside the region which hold resources that can help hold off the crisis, hold back their response.

Nuclear testing in the atmosphere was made to stop in 1974; tests underground on the atolls continued to 1996, leaving a very brief interregnum before global warming reared its head.

The current edition of Eyes of Fire has a prologue by Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister from 1999-2008, a staunch keeper of the faith in a nuclear-free Pacific. Saying, “storm clouds are gathering”, she warns against renewed militarisation especially with Australia and perhaps other Pacific states acquiring nuclear submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement.

It is time for “de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific”, writes Clark in her contribution to the new edition. With its peace policy, New Zealand wanted to be “a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering”.

Clark warns withdrawal of funding from the United Nations, led by the US, is a new threat: “Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.”

David Robie reports on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1985 events by Greenpeace, sending the new purpose-built ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, sometimes known as Rainbow Warrior III, to carry out independent radiation research. He follows up the lives and careers of the crew members and the islanders they worked with, several of whom have passed away.

While the writer’s own message, as in much good journalism, emerges from true handling of the facts, Robie does privilege a quotation from the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, Russel Norman, on the crew of Rainbow Warrior, to close the story:

“They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific. Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?”

• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie (Little Island Press), 2025, 225 pages.

Dr Lee Duffield reported on Australia’s dispute with France over atmospheric testing for ABC News in Sydney and then from Paris as the ABC European Correspondent. His work entailed monitoring police actions against Kanak activists in New Caledonia, including the killings on Ouvéa Island; confrontations with French Ministers over the test programme; and negotiations between France and New Zealand, in Paris, on Rainbow Warrior, especially the jailing then early release of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. He later taught Journalism at QUT in Brisbane and was a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. Dr Duffield is also one of the co-owners of Independent Australia, and the chair of its editorial board. This review is republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

The New Zealand government needs to do more for its Pacific Island neighbours and stand up to nuclear powers, a distinguished journalist, media educator and author says.

Professor David Robie, a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), released the latest edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The last voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (Little Island Press), which highlights the nuclear legacies of the United States and France.

Dr Robie, who has worked in Pacific journalism and academia for more than 50 years, recounts the crew’s experiences aboard the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before it was bombed in Auckland Harbour.

• LISTEN: Dr David Robie talks to RNZ Pacific last week
• Crimes NZ: David Robie on the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior — RNZ Afternoons
• Other Eyes of Fire reports

At the time, New Zealand stood up to nuclear powers, he said.

“It was pretty callous [of] the US and French authorities to think they could just carry on nuclear tests in the Pacific, far away from the metropolitan countries, out of the range of most media, and just do what they like,” Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific. “It is shocking, really.”

Speaking to Pacific Waves, Dr Robie said that Aotearoa had “forgotten” how to stand up for the region.

“The real issue in the Pacific is about climate crisis and climate justice. And we’re being pushed this way and that by the US [and] by the French. The French want to make a stake in their Indo-Pacific policies as well,” he said.

‘We need to stand up’
“We need to stand up for smaller Pacific countries.”

Dr Robie believes that New Zealand is failing with its diplomacy in the region.

He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.

However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.

The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.

“New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”

The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region.

Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.

“New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”

They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.

“We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.

However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”

Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.

“We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.

“And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.

“Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.

‘Look at history’
France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.

In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.

“It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”

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

Join us for this guided “virtual tour” around the Rainbow Warrior III in Auckland Harbour on the afternoon of 10 July 2025 — the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original flagship.

The Rainbow Warrior is a special vessel — it’s one of three present-day Greenpeace ships.

The Rainbow Warrior works on the biggest issues affecting the future of our planet. It was the first ship in our fleet that was designed and built specifically for activism at sea.

Virtual tour of the Rainbow Warrior.        Video: Greenpeace

It also represents a continuation of the legacy of the previous two Rainbow Warriors.

On this anniversary day we explored the ship and talked to key people about the current campaign to protect the world’s oceans.

Programmes director Niamh O’Flynn presented the tour, starting on Halsey Wharf.

Thanks to third mate Adriana, oceans campaigner Ellie; author David Robie, who sailed on the original Rainbow Warrior on the 1985 Rongelap relocation mission and whose new anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior is being launched tonight, radio engineer Neil and Captain Ali!

Watch the commemoration ceremony this morning on 10 July 2025.

More information and make donations.

On the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior prior to its sinking by French secret agents in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 the ship had evacuated the entire population of 320 from Rongelap in the Marshall Islands.

After conducting dozens of above-ground nuclear explosions, the US government had left the population in conditions that suggested the islanders were being used as guinea pigs to gain knowledge of the effects of radiation.

Cancers, birth defects, and genetic damage ripped through the population; their former fisheries and land are contaminated to this day.

• READ MORE: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence
• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

Denied adequate support from the US – they turned to Greenpeace with an SOS: help us leave our ancestral homeland; it is killing our people. The Rainbow Warrior answered the call.

Human lab rats or our brothers and sisters?
Dr Merrill Eisenbud, a physicist in the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) famously said in 1956 of the Marshall Islanders:  “While it is true that these people do not live, I might say, the way Westerners do, civilised people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

Total US tests equaled more than 7000 Hiroshimas.  The Clinton administration released the aptly-named Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), report in January 1994 in which it acknowledged:

“What followed was a program by the US government — initially the Navy and then the AEC and its successor agencies — to provide medical care for the exposed population, while at the same time trying to learn as much as possible about the long-term biological effects of radiation exposure. The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment’.

This impression was reinforced by the fact that the islanders were deliberately left in place and then evacuated, having been heavily radiated. Three years later they were told it was “safe to return” despite the lead scientist calling Rongelap “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Significant compensation paid by the US to the Marshall Islands has proven inadequate given the scale of the contamination.  To some degree, the US has also used money to achieve capture of elite interest groups and secure ongoing control of the islands.

Entrusted to the US, the Marshall Islanders were treated like the civilians of Nagasaki
The US took the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944.  The only “right” it has to be there was granted by the United Nations which in 1947 established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, to be administered by the United States.

What followed was an abuse of trust worse than rapists at a state care facility.  Using the very powers entrusted to it to protect the Marshallese, the US instead used the islands as a nuclear laboratory — violating both the letter and spirit of international law.

Fellow white-dominated countries like Australia and New Zealand couldn’t have cared less and let the indigenous people be irradiated for decades.

The betrayal of trust by the US was comprehensive and remains so to this day:

Under Article 76 of the UN Charter, all trusteeship agreements carried obligations. The administering power was required to:

• Promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the people
• Protect the rights and well-being of the inhabitants
• Help them advance toward self-government or independence.

Under Article VI, the United States solemnly pledged to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Very similar to sentiments in New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi.  Within a few years the Americans were exploding the biggest nuclear bombs in history over the islands.

Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands, another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) — which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.

America has a long history of making treaties and fine speeches and then exploiting indigenous peoples.  Last year, I had the sobering experience of reading American military historian Peter Cozzens’ The Earth is Weeping, a history of the “Indian wars” for the American West.

The past is not dead: the Marshall Islands are a hive of bases, laboratories and missile testing; Americans are also incredibly busy attacking the population in Gaza today.

Eyes of Fire – the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
Had the French not sunk the Rainbow Warrior after it reached Auckland from the Rongelap evacuation, it would have led a flotilla to protest nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.  So the bookends of this article are the abuse of defenceless people in the charge of one nuclear power — the US —  and the abuse of New Zealand and the peoples of French Polynesia by another nuclear power — France.

This incredible story, and much more, is the subject of David Robie’s outstanding book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, published by Little Island Press, which has been relaunched to mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack.

A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

Between them, France and the US have exploded more than 300 nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Few people are told this; few people know this.

Today, a matrix of issues combine — the ongoing effects of nuclear contamination, sea rise imperilling Pacific nations, colonialism still posing immense challenges to people in the Marshall Islands, Kanaky New Caledonia and in many parts of our region.

Unsung heroes
Our media never ceases to share the pronouncements of European leaders and news from the US and Europe but the leaders and issues of the Pacific are seldom heard. The heroes of the antinuclear movement should be household names in Australia and New Zealand.

Vanuatu’s great leader Father Walter Lini; Oscar Temaru, Mayor, later President of French Polynesia; Senator Jeton Anjain, Darlene Keju-Johnson and so many others.

Do we know them?  Have we heard their voices?

Jobod Silk, climate activist, said in a speech welcoming the Rainbow Warrior III to Majuro earlier this year:  “Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides.”

Former Tuvalu PM Enele Sapoaga castigated Australia for the AUKUS submarine deal which he said “was crafted in secret by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison with no public discussion.”

He challenged the bigger regional powers, particularly Australia and New Zealand, to remember that the existential threat faced by Pacific nations comes first from climate change, and reminded New Zealanders of the commitment to keeping the South Pacific nuclear-free.

Hinamoeura Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear activist and politician, said in a 2019 UN speech: “Today, the damage is done. My people are sick. For 30 years we were the mice in France’s laboratory.”

Until we learn their stories and know their names as well as we know those of Marco Rubio or Keir Starmer, we will remain strangers in our own lands.

The Pacific owes them, along with the people of Greenpeace, a huge debt.  They put their bodies on the line to stop the aggressors. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, killed by the French in 1985, was just one of many victims, one of many heroes.

A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

You cannot sink a rainbow.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.

Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.

“The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now sits at 89 seconds to midnight,” she says in the prologue to journalist and media academic David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

• READ MORE: 40 years on: Reflecting on Rainbow Warrior’s legacy, fight against nuclear colonialism
• Other Eyes of Fire reports

Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.

The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.

Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.

“North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”

‘Serious ramifications’
Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”

She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.

“There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.

“This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.

“Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development
of more lethal weaponry.”

In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.

Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.

“New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

Chronicles humanitarian voyage
The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.

The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.

His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.

Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.

Eyes of Fire is being published by Little Island Press, which also produced one of his earlier books, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific.

• Greenpeace executive director Dr Russel Norman is launching Eyes of Fire at the Ellen Melville Centre Pioneer Women’s Hall at 6pm on the bombing anniversary, July 10, following a memorial vigil in the morning on board the current flagship Rainbow Warrior III.
• Eyes of Fire microsite (Little Island Press)

We’ve visited Ground Zero. Not once, but three times. But for generations, before these locations were designated as such, they were the ancestral home to the people of the Marshall Islands.

As part of a team of Greenpeace scientists and specialists from the Radiation Protection Advisers team, we have embarked on a six-week tour on board the Rainbow Warrior, sailing through one of the most disturbing chapters in human history: between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs across the Marshall Islands — equivalent to 7200 Hiroshima explosions.

During this period, testing nuclear weapons at the expense of wonderful ocean nations like the Marshall Islands was considered an acceptable practice, or as the US put it, “for the good of mankind”.

• READ MORE: The Rainbow Warriow — synonymous with breaking boundaries and fearless campaigning
• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
• Eyes of Fire – the Little Island Press education microsite on the Rongelap voyage

Instead, the radioactive fallout left a deep and complex legacy — one that is both scientific and profoundly human, with communities displaced for generations.

Between March and April, we travelled on the Greenpeace flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, throughout the Marshall Islands, including to three northern atolls that bear the most severe scars of Cold War nuclear weapons testing:

• Enewetak atoll, where, on Runit Island, stands a massive leaking concrete dome beneath which lies plutonium-contaminated waste, a result of a partial “clean-up” of some of the islands after the nuclear tests;
• Bikini atoll, a place so beautiful, yet rendered uninhabitable by some of the most powerful nuclear detonations ever conducted; and
• Rongelap atoll, where residents were exposed to radiation fallout and later convinced to return to contaminated land, part of what is now known as Project 4.1, a US medical experiment to test humans’  exposure to radiation.

This isn’t fiction, nor the distant past. It’s a chapter of history still alive through the environment, the health of communities, and the data we’re collecting today.

Each location we visit, each sample we take, adds to a clearer picture of some of the long-term impacts of nuclear testing—and highlights the importance of continuing to document, investigate, and attempt to understand and share these findings.

These are our field notes from a journey through places that hold important lessons for science, justice, and global accountability.

Our mission: why are we here?
With the permission and support of the Marshallese government, a group of Greenpeace science and radiation experts, together with independent scientists, are in the island nation to assess, investigate, and document the long-term environmental and radiological consequences of nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands.

Our mission is grounded in science. We’re conducting field sampling and radiological surveys to gather data on what radioactivity remains in the environment — isotopes such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239/240. These substances are released during nuclear explosions and can linger in the environment for decades, posing serious health risks, such as increased risk of cancers in organs and bones.

But this work is not only about radiation measurements, it is also about bearing witness.

We are here in solidarity with Marshallese communities who continue to live with the consequences of decisions made decades ago, without their consent and far from the public eye.

Stop 1: Enewetak Atoll — the dome that shouldn’t exist

At the far western edge of the Marshall Islands is Enewetak. The name might not ring a bell for many, but this atoll was the site of 43 US nuclear detonations. Today, it houses what may be one of the most radioactive places in the world — the Runit Dome.

Once a tropical paradise thick with coconut palms, Runit Island is capped by a massive concrete structure the size of a football field. Under this dome — cracked, weather-worn, and only 46 centimetres thick in some places — lies 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. These substances are not only confined to the crater — they are also found across the island’s soil, rendering Runit Island uninhabitable for all time.

The contrast between what it once was and what it has become is staggering. We took samples near the dome’s base, where rising sea levels now routinely flood the area.

We collected coconut from the island, which will be processed and prepared in the Rainbow Warrior’s onboard laboratory. Crops such as coconut are a known vector for radioactive isotope transfer, and tracking levels in food sources is essential for understanding long-term environmental and health risks.

The local consequences of this simple fact are deeply unjust. While some atolls in the Marshall Islands can harvest and sell coconut products, the people of Enewetak are prohibited from doing so because of radioactive contamination.

They have lost not only their land and safety but also their ability to sustain themselves economically. The radioactive legacy has robbed them of income and opportunity.

One of the most alarming details about this dome is that there is no lining beneath the structure — it is in direct contact with the environment, while containing some of the most hazardous long-lived substances ever to exist on planet Earth. It was never built to withstand flooding, sea level rise, and climate change.

The scientific questions are urgent: how much of this material is already leaking into the lagoon? What are the exposure risks to marine ecosystems and local communities?

We are here to help answer questions with new, independent data, but still, being in the craters and walking on this ground where nuclear Armageddon was unleashed is an emotional and surreal journey.

Stop 2: Bikini — a nuclear catastrophe, labelled ‘for the good of mankind’

Unlike Chernobyl or Fukushima, where communities were devastated by catastrophic accidents, Bikini tells a different story. This was not an accident.

The nuclear destruction of Bikini was deliberate, calculated, and executed with full knowledge that entire ways of life were going to be destroyed.

Bikini Atoll is incredibly beautiful and would look idyllic on any postcard. But we know what lies beneath: the site of 23 nuclear detonations, including Castle Bravo, the largest ever nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States.

Castle Bravo alone released more than 1000 times the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The radioactive fallout massively contaminated nearby islands and their populations, together with thousands of US military personnel.

Bikini’s former residents were forcibly relocated in 1946 before nuclear testing began, with promises of a safe return. But the atoll is still uninhabited, and most of the new generations of Bikinians have never seen their home island.

As we stood deep in the forest next to a massive concrete blast bunker, reality hit hard — behind its narrow lead-glass viewing window, US military personnel once watched the evaporation of Bikini lagoon.

On our visit, we noticed there’s a spectral quality to Bikini. The homes of the Bikini islanders are long gone. In its place now stand a scattering of buildings left by the US Department of Energy: rusting canteens, rotting offices, sleeping quarters with peeling walls, and traces of the scientific experiments conducted here after the bombs fell.

On dusty desks, we found radiation reports, notes detailing crop trials, and a notebook meticulously tracking the application of potassium to test plots of corn, alfalfa, lime, and native foods like coconut, pandanus, and banana. The potassium was intended to block the uptake of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, by plant roots.

The logic was simple: if these crops could be decontaminated, perhaps one day Bikini could be repopulated.

We collected samples of coconuts and soil — key indicators of internal exposure risk if humans were to return. Bikini raises a stark question: What does “safe” mean, and who gets to decide?

The US declared parts of Bikini habitable in 1970, only to evacuate people again eight years later after resettled families suffered from radiation exposure. The science is not abstract here. It is personal. It is human. It has real consequences.

Stop 3: Rongelap — setting for Project 4.1

The Rainbow Warrior arrived at the eastern side of Rongelap atoll, anchoring one mile from the centre of Rongelap Island, the church spire and roofs of “new” buildings reflecting the bright sun.

n 1954, fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear detonation on Bikini blanketed this atoll in radioactive ash — fine, white powder that children played in, thinking it was snow. The US government waited three days to evacuate residents, despite knowing the risks. The US government declared it safe to return to Rongelap in 1957 — but it was a severely contaminated environment. The very significant radiation exposure to the Rongelap population caused severe health impacts: thyroid cancers, birth defects such as “jellyfish babies”, miscarriages, and much more.

In 1985, after a request to the US government to evacuate was dismissed, the Rongelap community asked Greenpeace to help relocate them from their ancestral lands. Using the first Rainbow Warrior, and over a period of 10 days and four trips, 350 residents collectively dismantled their homes, bringing everything with them — including livestock, and 100 metric tons of building material — where they resettled on the islands of Mejatto and Ebeye on Kwajalein atoll.

It is a part of history that lives on in the minds of the Marshallese people we meet in this ship voyage — in the gratitude they still express, the pride in keeping the fight for justice, and in the pain of still not having a permanent, safe home.

Now, once again, we are standing on their island of Rongelap, walking past abandoned buildings and rusting equipment, some of it dating from the 1980s and 1990s — a period when the US Department of Energy launched a push to encourage resettlement declaring that the island was safe — a declaration that this time, the population welcomed with mistrust, not having access to independent scientific data and remembering the deceitful relocation of some decades before.

Here, once again, we sample soil and fruits that could become food if people came back. It is essential to understand ongoing risks — especially for communities considering whether and how to return.

This is not the end. It is just the beginning

Our scientific mission is to take measurements, collect samples, and document contamination. But that’s not all we’re bringing back.

We carry with us the voices of the Marshallese who survived these tests and are still living with their consequences. We carry images of graves swallowed by tides near Runit Dome, stories of entire cultures displaced from their homelands, and measurements of radiation showing contamination still persists after many decades.

There are 9700 nuclear warheads still held by military powers around the world – mostly in the United States and Russian arsenals. The Marshall Islands was one of the first nations to suffer the consequences of nuclear weapons — and the legacy persists today.

We didn’t come to speak for the Marshallese. We came to listen, to bear witness, and to support their demand for justice. We plan to return next year, to follow up on our research and to make results available to the people of the Marshall Islands.

And we will keep telling these stories — until justice is more than just a word.

Kommol Tata (“thank you” in the beautiful Marshallese language) for following our journey.

Shaun Burnie is a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine and was part of the Rainbow Warrior team in the Marshall Islands. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa and is republished with permission.

On 10 July 1985 the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, was sunk at an Auckland wharf.

Two French secret agents planted two limpet mines on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf. The second explosion killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira when he got trapped on board while retrieving his cameras.

Author and academic David Robie, a recently retired journalism professor at AUT University, spent more than 10 weeks on board the ship as a journalist shortly before it was attacked, and wrote about his experience in the 1986 book Eyes of Fire.

• READ MORE: The Auckland event on Sunday mirroring the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete on July 17
• LISTEN TO THE PODCAST: The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• Eyes of Fire, by David Robie – the 30th anniversary book edition

In the Crimes NZ series of RNZ podcasts, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior is described as the first act of state terrorism against New Zealand.

RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan talks to Dr Robie about the Rainbow Warrior, the humanitarian voyage to Rongelap to help islanders suffering from the legacy of US nuclear tests and his 1986 book Eyes of Fire (Little Island Press Ltd).

The interview was in 2020 to mark the 10 July 1985 date and has just been re-released by RNZ as a podcast.

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

• More information – microsite: Eyes of Fire – 30 Years On

New Zealand established its credentials as an independent small nation after the fatal bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, says an author and academic who spent weeks on the vessel shortly before it was attacked.

On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was sunk at an Auckland wharf by two bombs planted on the hull of the ship by French secret agents.

The event is often referred to as the first act of terrorism in New Zealand.

LISTEN: The Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan Crime NZ interview with David Robie
WATCH: Eyes of Fire archival videos
READ: The Eyes of Fire book

Two French agents planted two explosives on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf, the second explosion killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

Dr David Robie, who is an AUT professor of journalism and communication studies, as well as the director of the university’s Pacific Media Centre, had spent more than 10 weeks on the ship as a journalist covering its nuclear rescue mission in the Pacific.

He wrote about his experience in Eyes of Fire, a book about the last voyage of the first Rainbow Warrior – two other Rainbow Warrior ships have followed.

In 1985, Rongelap atoll villagers in the Marshall Islands asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home at Mejato atoll. Their island had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

Environmental journalism
“At the time I was very involved in environmental issues around the Pacific and in those days Greenpeace was very small, a fledgling organisation,” he tells Jesse Mulligan.

“They had a little office in downtown Auckland and Elaine Shaw was the coordinator and she was quite worried that this was going to be a threshold voyage.

“It was probably the first campaign by Greenpeace that was humanitarian, it wasn’t just environmental – to rescue basically the people who had been suffering from nuclear radiation.”

Shaw, he says, was looking for media publicity on the issue and several journalists from Europe and the US had been invited on board as the Greenpeace crew carried out their mission.

“There were about six journalists who went onboard but I ended up being the only one from the Southern Hemisphere.

“It was a big commitment at the time because I was a freelance journalist and it meant joining the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai’i and being onboard until 10-to-11 weeks, right up until the time of the bombing.”

He says the 49m ex-fishing trawler, originally named the Sir William Hardy, built in Aberdeen, Scotland, had been comfortable enough at sea, having been refitted as an environmental sailing ship as well as engines. “It had a lot of character… I guess all of us onboard grew to love it incredibly.”

Moruroa protest planned
The US had carried out 67 nuclear tests at the Marshall Islands. France was also carrying out 193 tests in the Pacific and Greenpeace had planned on confronting that situation at Moruroa Atoll after its Marshall Islands rescue effort.

New Zealand had already voiced disapproval of the testing in the region, with then Prime Minister David Lange in 1984 rebuking the French for “arrogantly” continuing the programme in the country’s backyard.

Dr Robie left the ship when it docked in Auckland after the Marshall Islands stage of the mission. Three days after the ship had docked, a birthday celebration was held for  Greenpeace campaign organiser Steve Sawyer onboard. The attack happened after the party.

Just before midnight on the evening of 10 July 1985, two explosions ripped through the hull as the ship.

Portuguese crew member Fernando Pereira was killed after returning on board after the first explosion.

“I think it was an incredible miracle that only one person lost his life,” Dr Robie says. He was not at the party at the time and joined the crew early it the morning when he heard the news.

He objects to the prominent media angle at the time, which he says focused on suggestions it was not the perpetrator’s intention to kill anyone.

‘Outrageous act of terrorism’
“It was an outrageous act of terrorism and the bombers knew very well, as they were getting information all the time, that there was a large crowd onboard the Rainbow Warrior that night and the chances were very high that there could have been a loss of life.”

Two of the cabin crew were situated immediately above the engine room when the first bomb planted there went off. The second bomb was planted near the propeller to ensure the ship was hobbled.

Dr Robie had been able to visit the ship later after it had been towed to Devonport naval base.

“I was quiet staggered – my old [cabin] floor had sort of erupted, Fernando had a cabin right close to that and he probably got trapped there.”

Thirteen foreign agents were involved, operating in three teams. The first team brought in the explosives, the second team would plant these and the third was on stand-by in case anything went wrong with the first two teams.

“A commanding officer kept an overview of the whole operation. I think there was an element of arrogance, the same arrogance as with the testing itself. There was a huge amount of arrogance about taking on an operation like this in a peaceful country – we were allies of France at the time – and it is extraordinary that they assumed they could get away with this outrageous act.”

Two of the spies were caught. Two General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were arrested on July 24. Both were charged with murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Repression of independence movements
“You have to see it within the context of the period of the time,” Dr Robie says.

He says that the French policy of repression against independence movements in New Caledonia and Tahiti, with assassinations of Kanak leaders like Eloi Machoro, needed to be understood to put the Rainbow Warrior attack in perspective. France was bitterly defending its nuclear force de frappe.

“New Zealand was unpopular with the major nuclear powers and there was certainly no sympathy for New Zealand’s position about nuclear testing. So, there wasn’t really any co-operation, even from our closest neighbour, Australia.

“Had we had more cooperation… we probably would have got agents who were on board the Ouvea, the yacht that carried the explosives, in Norfolk Island. But it is extraordinary we got two [agents] anyway.

“But we did not benefit in any way from [state] intelligence… so I think we were very much let down by our intelligence community.”

The case was a source of considerable embarrassment to the French government.

“They did pay compensation after arbitration that went on with the New Zealand government and Greenpeace. But justice was never really served… the 10 years were never served, both Prieur and Mafart were part of the negotiations with French government.

NZ was held ‘over a barrel’
“Basically, France had New Zealand over a barrel over trade and the European Union, so compromises were reached and Prieur and Mafart were handed over to France for three years. Essentially house arrest at Hao atoll, the rear base of the French nuclear operations in Polynesia.”

Dr Robie said the rear base was widely regarded as a military “Club Med”.

He says they didn’t even spend three years there, but left for France within the time period.

While the attack was on an international organisation rather than New Zealand itself, most New Zealanders saw it as an attack on the sovereignty of the nation

Dr Robie says it left a long-lasting impression on New Zealanders.

“It was a baptism of fire. It was a loss of innocence when that happened. And in that context, we had stood up as a small nation on being nuclear-free. Something we should have been absolutely proud of, which we were, with all those who campaigned for that at the time. I think that really established our independence, if you like, as a small nation.

“I think we have a lot to contribute to the world in terms of peace-making and we shouldn’t lose track of that. The courage that was shown by this country, standing up to a major nuclear power. We should follow through on that kind of independence of thought.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years 0n – a microsite of Rainbow Warrior bombing archival stories, videos and reports made in 2015

Interview: With Dr David Robie
Interviewer: Selwyn Manning
Date: July 8, 2015

Subject: 30 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and

Launch of David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire (fifth edition)

Eyes of Fire publisher Little Island Press: littleisland.co.nz/books/eyes-fire

Eyes of Fire microsite: eyes-of-fire.littleisland.co.nz

EveningReport.nz run sheet and programme:
http://eveningreport.nz/2015/07/08/evening-report-rainbow-warrior-series-video-interview-with-david-robie-on-book-launch-eyes-of-fire/

Welcome to Evening Report. This Friday, July 10 marks 30 years since French DGSE operatives exploded two bombs destroying the Greenpeace flagship…. the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland harbour. And on Friday July 10, journalist and academic Dr David Robie will launch the fifth edition of his book, Eyes of Fire.

The book is a rich account of the events surrounding the Rainbow Warrior affair.

And earlier today he joined me to discuss Eyes of Fire… why he was onboard the vessel on its last journey through the Pacific, his enduring memories of the time, and what lessons the Rainbow Warrior affair offers us now and in the future.

Transcript summary