Chapter 41

Georgina McWalter ensured that she had the last of the returned documents she had sent off to Sarge. She knew he would have read them. Who wouldn’t have, especially as there was that family connection? He could have made copies of course but she was confident that he wouldn’t have without her permission. She bundled all the documents up and using her position and authority took them down to the secret vault where they had to be returned. She could of course have not worried about them being missed because only five people could access the part of the building. The Prime Minister was busy doing what Prime Minister’s do and the heads of the armed forces never showed an interest in past history. Only she had been in there in the last two years. As head of the NZSIS, she had free range over any documents on file and even the Prime Minister would ask her first before delving into the number of state secret files. That was just a practical way that things worked.

Sarge probably had a number of questions that he wanted to ask but she couldn’t answer them. That’s not quite correct she thought. She could answer them, but one or two of them she wouldn’t. They had to remain secret until five countries all agreed that information could be released……… and that was never going to happen. Britain, France, the US and Australia all had copies of one particular piece of the puzzle of the Pacific. The US certainly wouldn’t make it known, after all, it was their fault. The other countries wouldn’t as that would reduce their leverage on the US. It all came down to what happened on the island of ***** long after Sarge’s grandfather had left it, long after the incident with the Japanese.

In the belief that the US were the new rulers of the world and they could do as they pleased, further testing of nuclear devices took place by them in the Pacific Proving Grounds which was a stretch of islands from the Marshalls through to Micronesia and the Caroline Islands. The US were really gung-ho trying to improve their devices because of the Cold War against Russia. There were also other countries trying to get hold of nuclear technology. It was such a new science and the US military wanted the biggest and best as soon as possible almost regardless of the consequences so the pressure was on so much that they rushed things through. As a result, a huge amount of compensation was paid to islanders who hadn’t been removed to a safe distance and suffered the effects of radiation from above ground testing. Many islands became uninhabitable because of radioactive fallout. Some people just saw that as collateral damage, however by the end of 1962 the US decided against using the Pacific Proving Grounds and brought all testing back to mainland USA in Nevada.

There were supposedly great scientific and geological minds behind all this, but the controls were not in the hands of the scientists. Mistakes were made and in 1962 a huge one was made and some say that was the reason why testing ended in the Pacific by the US. Few people knew about it at the time and it has remained a secret almost like no other ever since. It took place on the island of *****.

When conducting tests, it is important that the geological structure of the location has been thoroughly checked. Any instability can cause horrendous outcomes. What took place on the island of ***** was catastrophic and it was all down to human error. The island looked like any other atoll. It had the added benefit of being out on its own. No-one had lived there since the Japanese had invaded it. The original islanders had never returned, claiming that the island was haunted. Sadly, there was no airstrip but it was decided that the scientists and military people could be easily transported there by naval vessel and taken ashore by a landing barge. Detonation of a nuclear device could be done remotely, so there appeared to be no problems. With the world focusing on the Cuban Missile Crisis, an opportunity and need was there to test one of the biggest nuclear devices almost without anyone knowing.

The team arrived on the island and began setting up for the detonation. A brief exploration of the extinct volcano showed that there were a few small caves on the south eastern slopes. It was decided that rather than dig a series of holes for the device down on the flat lands, the small caves would do perfectly. Time would be saved; the bomb would be tested and everyone would be home for Christmas. It didn’t quite work out that way. Any proper survey of the site would have taken weeks but the scientists were overruled by the military. In the end no-one would need to take the blame anyway as the euphoria of what had taken place off the coast of the US in the Atlantic swept everything else aside. The island of ***** was just a blip in the ocean half a world away from anywhere.

The structure of the volcano was inherently unstable. It was actually honeycombed with fissures, some of which were caves, others just small cracks where the magma had receded very quickly when it last erupted. The extra tunnelling by the Japanese to build their submarine base merely added to the fragility of the site. Safely, many, many miles away, a button was pushed and everyone on the naval destroyer waited. It was fortunate that they were on a destroyer as it was an extremely fast ship. It was also providential that they had a brilliant captain at the helm with what eventuated.

The bomb ripped through the volcano, triggering a massive seismic shock wave. A huge amount of rock was hurled by some quirk almost vertically amid the mushroom cloud. When the cloud cleared there was literally nothing there. The whole mountain had collapsed in upon itself and returned itself to the ocean from where it had risen centuries before. Beneath the island there also ran a fault line which didn’t help one little bit. The sea rushed in to fill the void but in doing so created a huge and deadly tsunami that radiated from the epicentre, the island of *****. It was no normal tidal wave because it carried with it radioactive particles.

The captain of the destroyer heard the word, “Damn” muttered by one of the spooks and nutters as he called the guests he had on board. He now called them something else far worse as he watched the radar screen. He saw the shape forming and sent orders flying around the ship. Full ahead the ship plunged through the calm waters as they tried to outrun the chaos that was forming behind them. Had his engineers been a bit slower, had he not made fine course corrections, they might have been the first casualties. As it was, they survived but many others well away from ***** didn’t have a chance. Islanders out fishing, some on small unnamed islands died instantly. Ocean life was devastated and the after effects of radiation would be felt for eons by sea creatures. The people of the area had a massive rise in cancer related illnesses that somehow doctors found quite hard to account for in years to come.

The tsunami’s cause was put down to an underground seismic event as these were a regular occurrence in the area. Far fewer people would have known the awful truth had there not been a joint British, New Zealand and Australian oceanographic study being done north of the Bismarck Sea hundreds of miles off the coast of New Guinea. How France found out became quite a mystery that was never solved.

Georgina realised that Sarge’s grandfather probably went to his grave still living in fear that what had happened to the Japanese on ***** may be discovered. There was no blame that he needed to take on board for what he did. His efforts probably saved hundreds of lives. He wouldn’t have seen it that way by all accounts. Only a few people knew what happened on that island during the Second World War and by the end of 1962 there was no evidence left. Instead there was evidence of careless men making stupid mistakes on behalf of a government trying to win a false war. But the chances of anyone revealing that truth were remote. That truth had to be kept in a safe place. In New Zealand’s case it was deep down under the NZSIS offices in Wellington. The world wouldn’t handle what had happened if they knew and they would find the coverup absolutely abominable.

In her world Georgina saw such things every day. And everyday she asked herself why good men and women had to pay such a heavy price for the deeds of bad people.