Dear Editor,
I read with a mixture of joy and heartbreak your report on the possibility of compensation for British nuclear test veterans (news, Sep 6). Joy that Britain may join France and the US in recognising the long-term impact on health caused by nuclear testing.
Heartbreak because it fails to cover one key group: people living on the islands over which Britain tested its bombs. I first learnt this part of the story when I travelled with the World Council of Churches to meet Pacific islanders in 2021. Before flying, I read interviews that Dr Becky Alexis-Martin had conducted with Kiritimati islanders. It was the small details that stayed with me: islanders told to lie beneath a tarpaulin while bombs were detonated overhead or suffering stomach cramps after eating fish they caught, leading to servicemen being ordered not to eat local food.
Britain’s history is complicated. Paying compensation to people whose health and futures were forever changed by nuclear testing is urgently required, but that should include the people whose island paradise was forever changed by their colonial masters.
John Cooper
Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Oxford
