All language subtitles for Murder.in.the.Pacific.S01E01.WEBRip.x264-ION10[eztv.re]

In 1985, I was 25 years old.

On the night in question, I remember
feeling absolutely shattered.

I'd been out drinking for five days and
nights with all these detectives, and I

was pleased to get some sleep.

Two o'clock in the morning, phone rang.

It was my detective sergeant. He said,
there's been an explosion on a boat. Can

you come in?

I'm like, oh, my gosh.

So I was called to Auckland Central
Police Station.

The flagship of the environmental group
Greenpeace was sunk today at the harbour

in Auckland, New Zealand.

One crew member was killed. There were
two explosions on board the ship, and

police call them suspicious.

It became apparent we were dealing with
a serious crime.

Police in New Zealand say it was a bomb
which sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow

Warrior. They're treating the death of a
crewman as murder.

Someone had been murdered.

The boat had been deliberately
destroyed.

It started to wash over us. This was
going to be one of the biggest police

inquiries of the century.

In New Zealand tonight, police are
launching a major investigation into the

explosions aboard the Rainbow Warrior.

We consider this to be a scandal of the
nuclear age.

This was no accident.

Somebody, somewhere, decided they wanted
to blow up our boat.

Things like this just don't happen in
New Zealand.

When you're powerful, you don't have to
pay for your crimes.

Murderers can't go unpunished. They've
got to be exposed.

have characters if you like almost like
personalities and they have

smells as well you know how evocative
smell is

well the warrior had that smell her deck
had that smell in the heat when the tar

would be melting a bit between the seams
of the planks

but she was not

just a boat that was tangible, she also
carried the intangible too.

What we could do with her and what kind
of hope she would carry and what kind

of, all of that was part of what the
warrior was as well.

She was really, she was really a lovely
ship.

1985 was our year of protesting nuclear
testing in the Pacific.

We were eager to go out and try to
change the world to someplace better.

But before we took the Warrior halfway
across the world, we found ourselves in

Jacksonville, Florida.

We had to get the Warrior ready to take
on this campaign.

We were turning the Warrior into a
sailing boat.

We had to put two masks on her.

It was this really long, huge bit of
steel that they were picking up with a

crane.

And we had put Rosemary and Danster
Hooley around the collar and everything

before we dropped it onto the deck just
to make sure she was going to, you know,

have the right mojo to carry us across
the ocean.

Doing this work on the warrior.

It was what joined us at the hip as a
crew, making her a boat that we would

sail together.

She was a North Sea trawler, and that's
like saying she was built like a tank.

You couldn't find a better boat to send
a bunch of crazy hippies out with in the

ocean.

The warrior was a place of good energy.

Everybody was there because they wanted
to be.

They were there because they believed in
what Greenpeace was trying to do.

Martini was the first mate.

He looked a little bit like Keith
Richards.

Davy Edwards was the first engineer.

Hannah Sorensen was the second engineer.

She already had a lot of history with
Greenpeace.

Just a beautiful worker.

Hank Hasen was the third engineer.

Hank and I were already a couple when we
joined the Warrior.

And then there was Pete, one of
Greenpeace's best skippers.

And then we had a photographer.

Fernando Pereira was a wonderful
laid-back guy, brilliant photographer.

We had a darkroom on board, which was
just really a cupboard.

And he would be in there developing the
photograph as we were going.

That was part of the way of getting the
story out there.

And then we had Deccan's Grace
O'Sullivan from Ireland, Andy Biederman,

a Swiss doctor, and there was Bunny
McDermott.

She was a hard-working crew member.

When I was in my 20s, I was traveling
around the U.S.

trying to figure out how to explain the
world to myself.

You know, I liked music, I liked
dancing, but what was my role and

purpose in being in the world?

And then I fell in love.

Hank and I, we met in New Orleans.

We both had, I think, quite a strong
sense of what was fair and unfair.

And then one day, we ran into a friend.

He was telling us about the Warrior and
what the Warrior was going to be doing

and we thought, oh my God, that sounds
wonderful.

It was going to do the anti-nuclear
campaign through the Pacific, which is

where I was from.

That's how I ended up on the Warrior for
my first ever Greenpeace campaign.

On the Warrior in 85, we were going to
go to the Marshall Ions, where the U.S.

tested nuclear bombs for many, many
years.

In less than a minute, you will see the
most powerful explosion ever witnessed

by human eyes.

The U.S. started nuclear testing in the
Pacific in 1946.

They tested 67 nuclear bombs.

Some of them larger than the ones that
blew apart Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the

Second World War.

Five, four, three, two, one.

And they chose a place that they thought
that nobody would care about.

And that was the Marshall Islands.

The U.S. government told the Marshallese
that it was for the good of all mankind.

They said it was safe to detonate these
horrendous things out in the middle of

nowhere, but it's not out in the middle
of nowhere for the people who live in

the Pacific Islands.

In 1985.

The testing in the Marshall Islands was
over.

But the legacy of those tests, the
contamination of both the people and the

land, was still very much alive.

There was one test called Bravo in 1954.

The nuclear fallout.

Like all the stuff that got sucked up in
the explosion.

The wind blew it all on these inhabited
islands.

One of the inhabited islands was
Rongelap.

The tremendous yield resulted in a
serious fallout situation on Rigelap

Atoll.

These people.

They were like guinea pigs, basically.

. .

.

. .

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

The U.S. were awarded the Marshall
Islands after the Second World War

to look after.

And what they did was set up a nuclear
testing program and bomb the shit out of

people and then take no responsibility
for what they did to them except to

study them.

The Marshallese caught by fallout got
175 wrenchings of radiation.

These are fishing people, savages by our
standards.

So a cross-section was brought to
Chicago for testing. The first was John,

the mayor of Rongelap Atoll.

We did not know the extent of the damage
that was done by the nuclear testing in

1954 until recently.

From the beginning, the United States
has been telling these people that there

is nothing wrong.

They can cover up the wrong thing they
did.

John, as we said, is a savage, but a
happy, amenable savage.

The Iron Room.

is a radiation detector for human
beings.

One dot, one gamma ray.

If we are okay, why are they coming
twice a year to monitor our health?

We know something is wrong.

Even though we love this small island.

It is highly contaminated by
radioactivity.

Every time I ask for assistance from the
American government,

seeking a better place for my people, I
have

never get any assistance.

So we got in contact with the people of
the Greenpeace organization.

In 1985, the Rongelap Islanders appealed
to Greenpeace to move them off

Rongelap to another atoll.

So of course we agreed making their
story heard was important

to all of us.

We wanted to get press involved, and so
we invited journalists

to come with us.

I had written about Greenpeace before,
so I signed up.

But this was perhaps the most ambitious
thing they had ever done, and it was a

huge risk.

They were going to go and interfere with
American affairs on a completely

contaminated island.

I became Secretary of State for Defence
in January of 1983 and remained in that

position until 1986.

I was answerable to the Cabinet for the
policies of the nation's defence.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Prime
Minister.

At that time particularly, nuclear
deterrence was essential.

We face in the Soviet Union...

A power whose declared aim is to bury
Western civilization.

In the 1980s, the USSR was a very real
threat.

The Russians had deployed a modernized
nuclear deterrent system in large parts

of Europe.

There was no doubt whatsoever that
democracy did need defending.

The appropriate response was for us to
have an equivalent of deterrence, which

took the form of the American cruise
missile system.

Based upon the partnership with America,
our capability was real and up-to-date

and effective.

The cost of keeping tyranny at bay is
high, but it must be paid.

Greenpeace? Oh, of course. We all knew
about Greenpeace. And I think some of us

might have felt that there was a sort of
legitimacy about the arguments they were

deploying.

But we might have hesitated about the
techniques that they adopted.

People thought we were crazy.

This is pre-internet, pre-mobile phones.

We were doing something about issues
rather than just talking.

Doing nothing is part of the problem.

We didn't care who we angered.

We swung right in front of the harpoon.
Whale-killing boat stopped dead in its

tracks.

Greenpeace was notified that the Rainbow
Warrior could be arrested if she was

found in Spanish waters.

I mean, I've been arrested about a dozen
times.

And I was not willing to stay home and
watch the world go to hell.

Nuclear weight tipped overboard by a
British ship.

Corporations and governments were always
threatening them.

And they were just putting up two
fingers and getting on with it.

That meant they had a lot of enemies.

I don't think any of us were worried
about safety, but

we were in it to live, not to die.

sailing across the Pacific as an
American, thinking about what we had

done.

The role the U.S. government played
there, for me, the sense of

responsibility was profound.

I grew up in Connecticut, on the water.

My family were sailors.

There was a time when I might have
become a professional yacht racer but i

was number one in the draft lottery in
the 1970s i was expected to go to

vietnam to fight but vietnam war is
nothing i wanted to get involved with

and i was the ceo conscientious objector
wasn't going to happen

i read about greenpeace in a book and i
just fell in love with it i fell in love

with

sailing for a purpose.

And so I joined in 1981.

I was told they would take me on as a
possible deckhand.

Within three months, I was captain of
the boat, and I never wanted to get up.

Sailing into Rongelap was quite
extraordinary.

Because it is extraordinarily beautiful.

And you know, you can't see nuclear
contamination.

We arrived on the beach.

They were singing to us, welcoming us to
Rongelap.

It felt warm.

and welcoming, and kind of sad, too.

They were sad.

It was hard for them.

You know, they were leaving their home,
their ancestral land.

When we first arrived, we were just
shocked by realizing what we had

volunteered to do, taking 350 people and
their housing.

across the open ocean to another atoll.

That's a huge operation.

We loaded the warrior to the gunnels.

It was unbelievable how much we put on
that boat.

We also had all these plastic buckets on
board, and I remember having a fight

with... Martini, the first mate, when we
left Jacksonville, Florida, because we

were given all these plastic buckets
there and I was being all righteous

about, no, we cannot take plastic to the
Pacific.

And he was like, load the buckets,
Bunny. I'm the first mate. Like, put

them on board. And I go, OK, we're
loading the buckets.

And I was so grateful because some of
the Rongelap people got really seasick.

So those buckets came in really handy,
just dishing them out all over the

place. Thank God he's the first mate,
not me.

We became aware that some of their
children were quite ill as a result of

the radiation.

It was frightening to discover every
person on Rangalap had a scar on their

throat where their thyroid had been
taken out.

I think we actually did four trips.

It was 11 days of us going backwards and
forwards all the time.

Fernando, our photographer, he took lots
and lots of photos.

He was a wonderful photographer.

The island we moved them to was an
island called Majato.

It was about 150, 180 miles away from
their contaminated atoll.

No other community lived there.

So they could stay intact as a
community.

But there was also a reason why there
was no community living on there.

It wasn't great for growing and wasn't
great for fishing either.

But it wasn't contaminated.

And we got them there and we got them,
all their stuff landed.

And that's where they sit today.

I had never experienced anything like
that before in my life.

It affected us all, I think, to see

What had happened to these people?

It wasn't so much as a political event
as just helping a group of people out.

It was really one of the best things I
ever did in Greenpeace, for sure.

That was quite... hard to say goodbye to
them.

But we had a campaign that we were on,
and another part of the Pacific, nuclear

testing, was still going on.

That summer, the French were going to
conduct a nuclear test out in French

Polynesia.

After we'd moved the Rongelap people, it
certainly made us ever more determined

to do whatever we could to stop that
from happening.

hidden in the vast expanse of the South
Pacific Ocean.

Murowa is situated on the outward
reaches of an area known as French

Polynesia, a cluster of tiny Pacific
islands under the colonial rule of the

government of France.

The French had been nuclear weapons
testing in the Pacific since the mid

-60s. They mostly tested at Murowa Atoll
in French Polynesia.

And they tested the buff ground until
the early 70s.

And then they started doing underground
nuclear tests.

Holes were bored underneath the center
of the atoll, deep into the coral.

And that's where they set off their
bombs.

And of course, coral shatters very
easily.

The explosions caused cracks in the
reefs.

It was widely believed that all these
cracks were letting the radioactivity

out.

The French were endangering the health
of the Polynesians.

But of course, the French said it was
perfectly safe.

They were still testing when other
people had given up.

I was in the army when the first French
nuclear tests took place in the Sahara.

Some of them almost got contaminated
because I knew they were in the Sahara.

And unfortunately, or fortunately,
fortunately for the nuclear capacities

of France, unfortunately for the French
energy policy, it was decided to conduct

submarine tests, or at least in areas
where we lived, where we could not live.

That's how it was chosen.

The Warriors

of

the Rainbow, heroes of many famous
campaigns, are now in Auckland on a new

campaign to try to stop French nuclear
testing in the Pacific.

So the plan was that we'd be in New
Zealand for about two weeks so that we

could resupply and then we'd leave for
Muroroa.

Now, Bunny, I think you're the only Kiwi
member of this crew. What's it been

like, the trip? You haven't got bored or
desperate?

No, not yet.

Are you going back to Muroroa? Yes.

Well, not going back. It'll be the first
time I've been there.

Our plans were to stop them from
testing.

And we were going to do that by sailing
into Moreroa.

We were going to go into territorial
waters without permission and get as

close as we could to the nuclear testing
site.

So they would be too nervous to test
while we were there, or they would have

to remove us. But this was a military
base, which was off limits.

We are ready to be arrested.

But we also had the capacity to take
photographs, send them out and tell

a story about what was going on, and
then add that to the opposition that we

were trying to build globally with
others to drive more nuclear

disarmament.

for the abolition of nuclear weapons was
very largely run by people on the

left of politics.

That's not to say that it was
exclusively of the left. The

organisations and the leaders of the
campaign were all

associated with left-wing organisations.

I have not the slightest doubt that
there were people who were sympathisers

with the communist cause.

I was, at that time, a junior minister
in the Foreign Office.

I was given responsibility for our
relations with the Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe, all the communist
countries.

People really did believe that
Greenpeace were infiltrated by the KGB.

Well, they might very well have been. Of
course they would want to encourage

organisations of that kind. It was a
very tense period.

The people who would get most
satisfaction if Greenpeace had had its

way... would have been the guy sitting
in the Kremlin.

Yeah, that's a factor that can never be
ignored.

I don't have the information as to who
was a Soviet student, who was not, but

I'm sure they existed.

I mean, infiltrating Greenpeace is like
trying to infiltrate the YMCA.

But we weren't protesting anything that
was against the U.S. or against France

or that wasn't against Russia.

I mean, they had a perfectly legitimate
right to make their views known.

But from the government's point of view,
they'd obviously created problems of a

kind that we could well do without.

That night, the sun sets about 5.30 in
the afternoon.

Our campaign manager, it was his
birthday that night, so we had a party.

We all sang him happy birthday and had a
piece of cake, some wine,

and then danced.

People just burned off steam.

Everyone loved dancing, loved music,
yeah.

It was fun.

People were really excited about the
next stage of the campaign.

We were eager to go out and try to
change the world.

Sometimes change can happen when you
least expect it.

Hank and I left around 10 o'clock.

We were going to stay with my parents
that night.

The party, it went on and on.

Some of the crew members, they went off
into town that night.

I went to bed at 10 o'clock.

I hanged my glasses up on the bookshelf
that was right there, and they stayed

there through any kind of weather.

I went to sleep, feeling like there was
not a problem in the world.

All of a sudden, I was awake.

My first thought was, have we hit
somebody? Is it my fault?

I looked out my forward porthole.

I could see the lights of the dock,
which meant we were tied to it.

And I lay back down, relieved.

Then I realized I could hear the
generators had gone off.

Something's not right.

So that's when I got up.

Everything in my room was upside down.

My glasses were gone.

Ten meters down the hall, there's the
engine room door.

That's where I saw Davey looking at the
water rising.

Then I realized that that space was now
underwater, and that was full of people.

Maybe 15 people were sleeping back
there.

And then the second explosion happened.

The whole boat jumped up.

There's really something bad going on.

So that's when I shout, abandon ship.

We have to get people out of here.

I crawled up on the dock and stood there
looking at the boat sinking into the

water.

The whole boat sank in 40 seconds.

As a captain, your biggest concern is
the safety of the crew.

When I was standing there on the dock, I
realized Hannah and Fernando, they were

missing.

And I thought, Fernando always goes into
town.

But Hannah...

She never went off the ship at night.

She was one of the people who just
didn't go out partying.

The phone rang around 2 o'clock in the
morning, and it was

Martini calling.

He told us that the boat had sunk.

It wasn't believable.

And so we both went straight down to the
harbour.

It was dark still, but we could see the
warrior laid

on her side against the dock.

That's the only thing I remember of
seeing her.

At this point, we're just stumbling
along in the dark.

We were worried and upset about Hannah.

As second engineer, she would have gone
down and been checking something.

That's what we were convinced of.

We shined a light down into the engine
room, and

all we saw was thick, greasy black water
six feet from the surface.

Figured my chances of jumping down 10
feet into freezing water, finding scuba

gear and going down into a cabin where I
might find somebody, they were just

not very high.

And I chickened out.

I wished I had tried, but I didn't.

She was just a real infectious, happy
young woman.

Brilliant and beautiful.

It was just devastating to think that
she was gone.

And about 10 minutes later, the Ockham
police showed up.

Everybody was taken across to the police
station that was right across the

street.

And that's where I found Hannah.

She had gone off for a walk, which we
were incredibly

glad for.

I've never been that relieved.

And I put my arm around her, and we
walked back into the rest of the crew.

And that's when Davey came up to me and
said, Fernando's down there.

He didn't go out into town that night,
and he was missing.

Hank and I, we went straight away to
where the crew were staying to find out

from them what was going on.

They told us there was a strong
possibility we'd lost Fernando.

Police divers came.

Of course, we spilled a whole shipload
of fuel into Auckland Harbour.

So much they couldn't get down through
the fuel.

When the Navy dive team came three hours
later, they were able to get through it

and find Fernando dead in his cabin.

And they brought him up out of the
water.

There was stuff coming out of his mouth
from the decomposition of the lungs.

It was all so unreal at that point.

I was pretty stunned.

I mean, everybody was just disbelieving
that

that happened and that he was gone.

And we were just realizing that we had
lost one of us.

You know, and not knowing why or how.

After the first bomb, he went down to
get his camera gear, of that I have no

doubt, and when he was down there, the
second bomb went off, and that's what

trapped him in his cabin, and it flooded
probably instantly.

Being a part of Greenpeace was something
that he was willing to dedicate his life

to.

But he wasn't willing to give up his
life for it.

Rainbow Warrior now lies sinking in New
Zealand's Auckland Harbour after two

explosions on board.

Two explosions killed one crewman.
Police said no cause has been

determined.

In the morning, everyone was trying to
figure out what could have happened.

Like, was it us?

Some of the crew members were concerned
about the possibility of something in

the engine room.

And it could have exploded like that.

But I knew there was nothing that could
have gone off like that on board.

I felt sure.

that it wasn't us.

That night, I was told that a boat had
blown up in the harbour.

The initial police thoughts were that it
perhaps had been a gas explosion on

board the boat.

However, they were putting together a
team just in case it was

more serious.

Throughout the early hours of the
morning, we got a chance to look at the

damage that had been caused to the boat.

It became apparent that it wasn't a
simple gas explosion.

One of the divers came up.

I was standing right there when he did.

He said, all the plates are going angled
in.

That indicates an explosion.

occurred from the outside of the boat.

After that, their attitude changed
significantly.

It became apparent we were dealing with
a serious crime.

There was a hole the size of a truck on
the side of the ship.

Bombs had actually been fitted to the
hull and propeller.

The boat had been deliberately
destroyed.

The next morning, things really started
to ramp up into a full homicide inquiry.

The indications are that whoever planted
such a device, and we're assuming they

did, that they did know what they were
doing.

It started to wash over us just how
serious this was.

We never had a crime like that.

We had a phone call to say, those people
you're looking for are in our office

now. We were like, keep them there.

So I was starting to feel pressure.

You could clearly see they were anything
but tourists.

And gradually you start to wonder, who
the hell am I dealing with here?