‘So many people have cancer’: Living with the French nuclear legacy in the Pacific

For 30 years, France exploded nuclear bombs in Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia, as part of its weapons testing programme.  

The last one was detonated in 1996, when Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross was seven and living in Tahiti with her family. Years later, like thousands of other locals, she developed a cancer that she believes is linked to the radiation from France’s nuclear weapons experimentation.  

Here, Hina talks to Teuila Fuatai about confronting the French nuclear legacy in her home islands, and how it’s spurred her anti-nuclear work and path as a politician. 

 

I was 30 years old and working as a lawyer in Papeete when I learned that France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in my home islands for its weapons experiments.

It was 2018, and there was a newspaper report about Oscar Temaru, the former president of French Polynesia. He’d laid a complaint against France at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against humanity. Temaru wanted any French presidents still alive from the 30 years of nuclear bomb experiments in Mā’ohi Nui to be held accountable for the harm they caused to our people and environment. France detonated its nuclear bombs on our islands between 1966 and 1996.

When I read about Temaru’s complaint, I thought it was ridiculous.

The “crimes against humanity” I’d learned about at school were extreme cases of harm, mostly linked to colonisation and genocide in Africa. They always occurred in wartime, and many people were killed.

How could France’s nuclear tests in Mā’ohi Nui be compared to those horrors?

Still, I wanted to know what Temaru was talking about, so I did my research.

Even now, it’s hard to describe the devastation and hurt that came with learning the reality of France’s nuclear bomb experiments on our islands.

All 193 nuclear bombs were detonated at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 1200 kilometres southeast of Tahiti.

One of the most notorious was the Canopus bomb, detonated in August 1968 at Fangataufa. Canopus was 150 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Declassified French military records show 41 of the 193 bombs took place above ground. These above-ground, atmospheric bomb detonations are significant because they’re believed to be more dangerous than underground bombs due to the increased risk of exposure to high levels of radiation.

For example, the Centuare bomb, which was exploded over Moruroa atoll in 1974, spread radioactive material to Tahiti, our most populated island. The radioactive cloud from Centaure took 42 hours to reach Tahiti, with smaller inhabited atolls also exposed to it. No precautions were taken to protect our population, and recent research, based on declassified French military documents, estimated that 110,000 people — almost the entire Tahiti population at the time — were exposed to radiation from the bomb.

I was shocked. I simply had no idea of the scale of the bombing, even though I went to school and university. I had assumed there’d been just a handful of bombs detonated — not 193. I said to myself: “How come you don’t know this? You’re 30 years old. You’re educated and smart.”

I went on to read about the environmental and health consequences of the nuclear bomb experiments. I discovered the list of diseases recognised by France as potentially caused by radiation exposure from its nuclear weapons testing.

That list exists under France’s Morin Law, which in 2010 established a compensation process for victims of France’s nuclear weapons experimentation. It includes thyroid cancer, which both my grandmother and aunt had. That same aunt also had breast cancer, which is also on the list, along with leukaemia, which I’d been diagnosed with and treated for five years earlier.

(Despite the list, pursuing compensation through the Morin Law process is notoriously difficult because of the strict criteria governing whether someone’s cancer can be linked to nuclear weapons testing. I have yet to make a claim.)

Both my mother and my sister also have thyroid problems, which have been linked to radiation exposure.

And it’s not just our family. In Tahiti, so many people have cancer. In 2023, a wide-ranging health research project on French Polynesia found that we have some of the highest cancer incident rates of all Pacific Island nations (267.9 per 100,000 for males and 214 per 100,000 for females). All our families have loved ones affected by cancer, and we’ve all lost people, including some who’ve died very young. I was just 25 when I was diagnosed with leukaemia.

I also learned that the next generation could be affected. Even though I was only a child when France detonated its last nuclear bomb, I could have passed whatever made me sick to my son. I wondered how many of us had suffered because of France’s actions.

It was a lot to process, and to be honest, I was very hurt. I couldn’t believe France would be so violent and destructive towards our people and islands. We were the guinea pigs who’d been poisoned so France could test its weapons.

I started to see that our cancers and illnesses in Mā’ohi Nui are linked to the radiation our people have been exposed to from the bombs. It is not just “bad genes”.

However, getting hard data that links the impact of radiation from the bombs to our cancer rates hasn’t been easy. For example, in 2023, a study focused on 41 nuclear bombs detonated between 1966 and 1974 in Mā’ohi Nui found they could be responsible for 2.3 percent of thyroid cancer cases. That 2023 study used French military documents, declassified in 2013, to examine radiation exposure from detonations. Crucially, the research is ongoing.

My lack of knowledge and awareness around France’s nuclear legacy was one of the reasons I became an anti-nuclear activist. I knew that there would be others like me who simply didn’t know the extent of harm inflicted on our islands.

In 2019, a year after Oscar Temaru’s appearance at the Hague, I gave my first big international speech at the United Nations in New York. I talked about French president Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Tahiti in 1966 and how he sold the nuclear “tests” as a major development for our people. According to him, they were a good thing, and all Tahitians should be proud.

A lot of our people took what he said to heart. They were proud to be chosen by France to be at the centre of their experiments. Our people had danced in front of the French officials, welcoming them and giving them flower crowns to wear.

We now know that the claims made by Charles De Gaulle and France were false. The only “development” that happened in our islands was sickness. The health consequences and cost of France’s nuclear actions continue to be borne by our people, yet France still refuses to take responsibility for them.

Our government in Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia spends millions every year to cover the health system costs of radiation-induced disease. France doesn’t contribute anything to that. And because our hospitals aren’t well-equipped, some people need to go to France or other countries for proper diagnosis and treatment. For example, we don’t even have a PET scan machine, which is often critical for diagnosing cancer. Anyone who needs this scan has to go overseas, often to New Zealand, and that’s only if they get funding through the government to cover the cost.

I remember one occasion where I spoke about my experience of leukaemia. There were a few French officials present, and they told me that leukaemia was everywhere in the world and that I shouldn’t say I’d become sick because of the nuclear bombs.

I was angry and didn’t know how to respond. I felt like the French officials were minimising my experience and dismissing what had happened

Unfortunately, that interaction reflects France’s attitude towards its nuclear legacy in Mā’ohi Nui.

France has never owned up to the consequences of its nuclear bomb programme in the Pacific — and that lack of accountability and truthfulness sits at the centre of what I’m trying to achieve as a member of the Assembly of French Polynesia.

But it’s an ongoing journey, especially for our people. We don’t really talk about what happened because it involves confronting a lot of misinformation and pain over generations.

I see that in my own family.

For instance, I can’t talk about the bombing with my grandma, who lived through 30 years of it, because it’s just too painful for her. When I became sick with leukaemia, I hardly saw her in the first month because she couldn’t be around me without crying. She felt guilty. Later, she told me: “Maybe I should have fought more against what [France] did. Maybe it’s my fault because you’re sick today.”

Bear in mind that during France’s nuclear bomb experiments, the French state ran a huge propaganda campaign. The people of French Polynesia were told repeatedly, for example, that while the bomb in Hiroshima was poisonous and highly radioactive, there was no need to worry as the French nuclear tests were “clean”.

Today, we’re still trying to undo these lies and messages of misinformation.

Since I was elected to parliament in 2023, I have found the biggest barrier to achieving change around nuclear issues is the lack of interest and awareness from people.

Many people believe that because the bombing finished in 1996, it’s no longer relevant. Others haven’t had a chance to learn about what happened. And that’s rooted in our country’s colonial history. We don’t learn about France’s 30 years of nuclear bomb experiments at school because it’s not part of the curriculum.

Another challenge is the narrative around our health issues in Mā’ohi Nui. There is a lot of propaganda about the overall health of our people. We’ve been told for decades that Tahitian people get sick because of our Pacific Island bodies and lifestyles — that we’re fat, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, and that’s why we have high rates of cancer and diabetes.

That narrative minimises and absolves France of any role or responsibility because it fails to acknowledge radiation harm.

It also totally disregards the societal changes that happened as a result of the nuclear bomb experiments. When the bombing started, we saw a huge increase in food imported from France. At the same time, many local farmers left their homes and went to work in Moruroa because they could earn a lot more from the jobs created to support the influx of people working on nuclear experiments.

These factors — the decline in our fishing and farming practices and the increase in imported food, often tinned with low nutritional value — contributed to the overall decline in the health of our people.

It’s a scenario that’s familiar to other parts of the Pacific, too.

For example, when I met Benetick Kabua Maddison, another anti-nuclear activist from the Marshall Islands, which also suffers high rates of diabetes, he linked it directly to the nuclear legacy of the US.

Benetick said before the US nuclear bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetak, their people used to fish a lot and eat crops from the land. That stopped when the nuclear bombs started in 1946 because the ocean and land were poisoned. As a result, the US imported a lot of canned food, like spam, which is highly processed and has little nutritional value. As happened in Tahiti, the resulting shift in diet and lifestyle in the Marshall Islands has had significant and ongoing health consequences.

As an affected community, as people who’ve been poisoned from 30 years of nuclear bomb experimentation, we have to be more vigilant about our health. To start with, our health system must be better developed so our people can be properly treated for all the radiation-induced diseases we have. As a matter of justice, that should be resourced by France.

I detest the fact that each year, France pours billions of euros into the development of its nuclear weapons regime. France only has nuclear warheads because it used Mā’ohi Nui as its laboratory. And before that, it was Algeria. Yet today, we’ve been abandoned.

I want it recognised in our laws that French Polynesia has suffered health and environmental consequences because it was used in France’s nuclear bomb experiments. All the impacts of France’s nuclear bombs on our islands and our society need to be recognised. France must take responsibility for that harm and pay its share of the cost.

I also want us to stop using the term “nuclear test”. I believe that phrase minimises what France did. When someone mentions a “nuclear test”, they probably aren’t expecting that it refers to a nuclear bomb that is 150 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

We also need to make the connection between all the cancers we suffer and France’s nuclear weapons legacy very clear. I want our people to know that we are at high risk of radiation-induced diseases. My leukaemia was identified early because my doctor noticed that I had missed some blood tests and urged me to get them done. I was so grateful because it was picked up and treated.

Raising awareness and understanding among our people is fundamental to achieving nuclear justice. And until we face and understand what we’ve been through as people of Mā’ohi Nui, France will always find a way out of its responsibilities.

 

Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is a nuclear justice advocate and politician from Mā’ohi Nui/French Polynesia. She was elected to the Assembly of French Polynesia in May 2023 as a member of the Tāvini Huiraʻatira party. Hina lives in Tahiti with her husband and two sons.

As told to Teuila Fuatai. Made possible by the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

E-Tangata, 2025