2020-08-31
Born just before nuclear weapons, haunted by them through life, but dream to see them dismantled in my lifetime
By Chris Johansen, Green Issue Co-editor
I landed on the planet when it was in a real mess. World War 2 still raging and, within a few months of my arrival, atomic bombs unleashed on humanity ‒ Hiroshima 6th August 1945 and Nagasaki three days later. Of course, I wasn’t aware of these events at the time, let alone contributing to them, but for the rest of my life I have been haunted by them, even to the extent of bearing guilt.
My first inkling of the existence of WW2, I guess at age 4 or 5, was hearing stories of the glorious victory. My father, who had served in the Royal Australian Navy, had purchased a commemorative set of volumes of WW2, with mainly full page black and white photos of the war. These volumes were placed on a high shelf, supposedly meant to be out of my reach, but I did manage to get hold of them when about 5 or 6. They contained numerous horrific photos of the state of inmates of Nazi concentration camps as found on their liberation. They also contained horrific photos of the instantly roasted victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
All rather horrifying for a little kid – no wonder they were intended to be hidden from me – and many of those very pictures have been imprinted in the photo album of my mind ever since. I guess that experience sowed the seeds of me doubting that wars, and the British Empire for that matter, were indeed glorious. And, further, set me out on my quest to really try and find out what on earth is going on on this planet, or, in other words ‒ “so where the bloody hell am I?”.
From early school days we were told of the glories of the British Empire, occupying more area of the globe than any empire before it. And how lucky Australia was to be part of it, even though at that stage we were turning to the USA as our protector, if not overlord in most aspects of life. But my first disillusionment with the Empire was a rather selfish one. It came in 1954, with the visit to Perth of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth. Our teacher informed us that we were about to have the treat of our lives. On one day of the visit we were marched from Mosman Park State School down to Stirling Highway, lined up along the road and handed either a British or Australian flag on a stick. However, the limited space allocated for our school meant that two or more rows had to form. Being relatively shorter than the older kids I was pushed into a back row. When the Queen’s car drove past, at an estimated 50 miles per hour, I hardly got even a glimpse of the car, let alone its occupants. Although I was probably too young to swear then, I probably would have said something like ‒ “and who wants to see the bloody Queen anyway”.
The real basis of me questioning meaning of war came a few years later. I then used to attend a Methodist church, which produced a newsletter. This carried stories of the exploits of the likes of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King, stories which didn’t seem to feature much in the main media of the day (radio, “The West Australian” and, towards the end of the 50s, black and white television). I was rather gob smacked at the realization that Gandhi had effectively demolished the British Empire, the greatest empire of all, by using non-violent tactics.
Meanwhile, the cold war was ramping up, with the Soviets and the major NATO countries busily testing nuclear devices and building up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, to the extent of being able to wipe each other out several times over, and indeed lay waste to the entire planet. I thought then that this was rather stupid when the real crux of the argument between the two sides was – which is the better system to live under, communist or capitalist. Surely such differences were negotiable and could be given time to play out to objectively assess which one is better (time has shown that each is riddled with flaws).
Things got really serious in 1962, with the Cuban missile crisis. The US gave the Soviets an ultimatum to remove missiles, presumably nuclear capable, from Cuba. Local media ramped up the anti-communist rhetoric and thoughts of a global nuclear conflict were widely contemplated. We knew this would involve Australia because of the military treaties that Australia had with the US and the US military facilities in Australia. It was claimed that these facilities were there to protect us but to me it seemed they were more like first strike targets. Stupider and stupider I thought, cementing my anti-war sentiments. Senior folks on the US and Soviet sides also must have thought it was getting stupid as they eventually each backed down from the Cuban missile standoff.
My anti-war credentials were tested in the mid-60s when I was conscripted to go and kill Vietnamese people. I refused and my trial as a conscientious objector failed, with threats of indefinite imprisonment and “never getting a job with the government” after I graduated from university. All very traumatic but one day I got a letter saying I was medically unsuitable – strange as then I used to run about 5 km along the beach and go for a cooling off swim though the surf about three times per week. The thought of having stared down the war mongers turned out to be self-empowering and gave me the confidence to go out into the world and pursue my career in agricultural development, including Vietnam agriculture as it turned out.
I did my post-doc in Germany and at the initial German language course, one of the themes we followed was “pros and cons of nuclear reactors”. The main issue then, in the early 70s, was heated effluent water used for cooling reactor cores being released into rivers and disrupting the ecology. It was not “safety” of those reactors as the major reactor accidents of Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) had not yet occurred. Then, I had a favourable view of nuclear reactors for electricity generation, considering them an example of how to use knowledge of radioactivity for peaceful purposes. However, that view changed over the years, with increasing information about the cooling problems, the unfolding disasters, difficulties of disposing of nuclear waste and dismantling reactors and, recently, their plummeting economic viability with the rise of renewable energy.
However, not wanting to throw out babies with the bathwater, I do want to give a plug for how knowledge of radioactivity has been a boon to humanity. In my initial field of specialization in plant physiology where radioactive tracers are used to follow the movement of elements in and around plants. We simply wouldn’t know what we now know about plant functioning without this tool. And use of neutron moisture meters to monitor soil moisture in drought research. And not to mention the contribution of nuclear medicine to human well-being. I can assure that users are given comprehensive training in the safe use of such techniques (my hair would have gone white in any case, I had a gene for it donated by my grandmother).
I ended up living and working for 25 years in what was formerly British India (in India and Bangladesh) – was this a natural consequence of being enlightened about Sri M.K. Gandhi in the 50s? Although this sojourn in South Asia was the highlight of my existence, I had one enduring sadness that continues to this day – the fact that India and Pakistan are pointing nuclear weapons, as well as conventional ones, at each other. Although based in India, working in an international institute, I had projects in Pakistan and travelled there accordingly. Knowing the people and places on both sides of the border, and the crushing rural poverty on both sides which was our mandate to address, my temperature often rose at the thought of all the money being spent on this military posturing when it could have been directed to poverty alleviation in both countries.
It was not until I returned to Australia in 2006 that I learned the details of Australia’s contribution to nuclear weapons. Had not even heard of the exploits of Jo Vallentine et al. until then. In the 50s and early 60s it was reported in the media that nuclear weapons tests were being conducted on Australian soil (e.g. Maralinga, Monte Bello Islands) but this was wrapped up in the rhetoric about defending against the threats of the Soviets and China. We were told that these tests, by the British, were being conducted in absolutely “nullius” regions of “Terra Nullius”. However, only in recent years did I learn that indigenous peoples were indeed in the vicinity of the explosions, and of the high rates of cancer that they subsequently suffered. And of the land contaminated with radioactive isotopes, that would take thousands of years to decay to “safe” levels. And of the dilemma of where to bury the now accumulated “nuclear waste”. And of the ongoing fight to stop uranium mining, to be used as further feedstock for nuclear weapons (but please spare a little bit for plant/soil research and nuclear medicine).
Soon after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some nuclear scientists had second thoughts about the Pandora’s Box they had opened. They initiated the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”, a journal aimed at restoring sanity to the use of nuclear knowledge. They set up the “Doomsday Clock” as an indicator of how close humanity is to nuclear disaster. It got down to 2 minutes to midnight in the early 50s, as the cold war was ramping up and more nations were acquiring nuclear weapons, and reached its furthest from midnight (16 min) with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Today, the Doomsday Clock indicates 100 seconds from midnight, the most precarious risk of nuclear war ever. This is prompted by the narcissistic, nationalistic, irrationally compulsive set of leaders with fingers on nuclear buttons that we have around the world today (I won’t go into the personal details). With this existential threat sitting alongside those of climate change and pandemic. But we don’t hear too much about the Doomsday Clock these days, especially with COVID-19 grabbing the headlines, even though mushroom clouds are just a twitch of the finger away from any one of a number of buttons.
Nevertheless, there are community-based organizations carrying on regardless to inject some sense into all of this. Like the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which has carried forward the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and for which ICAN was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. This treaty requires 50 countries to sign up for it to render nuclear weapons illegal, alongside landmines, cluster munitions, and chemical and biological weapons. There are currently 44 signatories, and the promise of six more at least in the pipeline.
Perhaps thinking back to Dr M.L. King: “I have a dream”. My dream is that just as I entered the world when nuclear weapons did not exist, I will leave it when they have all been dismantled. Go, go, go ICAN et al., I’m not getting any younger.
Header photo: No, not fireworks celebrating my birth 3 months earlier, but the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico, 16th July 1945, in preparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By United States Department of Energy - Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63457849
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]