Picture show a H-Bomb Tests souvenir. Peter Hallewell RAF British Nuclear Test Veteran holding a old original souvenir flag from the time and place of the event, outside the, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, in a lunch brake from the, Hearing of Application for Permission to Appeal. He is making one of ten lead cases against the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Hallewell Royal Air Force veteran describes what it was like to unwittingly witness first hand a Hydrogen Bomb test on Christmas Island (Kiritimati) in 1958. He, as instructed, put a boiler suit on over his RAF uniform, covered his closed eyes with his hands, faced out to sea away from the atomic explosion. As the bomb detonated he could see through his eye lids the bones in his hands as the radiation passed through his body. The islanders had been removed from the island for the duration of the tests and trusting British service personnel were brought over to Christmas Island, setting of from home in good faith and under military discipline with no initial knowledge of how they were being used and many with no apparent tasks to perform other than to be around in the vicinity at the time of Nuclear experiment. Between October 1952 and September 1958, the British Government carried out 21 atmospheric nuclear tests in both Australia and on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. A group of 1011 claimants ( a increasing number have died in the very long struggle for fairness and decency from the MOD ) claim damages for adverse effects to health understood to have resulted from exposure to ionising radiation. Health problems cited include cancers, skin defects, fertility problems, genetic birth defects in their descendants. The Ministry of Defence, has spent millions in its legal defence, money that could have been better used to compensate the veterans. The MOD has challenged proven causality, denies liability and seeks to rely on the Limitation Act 1980. Later the Supreme Court justices Lord Phillips, Lady Hale and Lord Brown granted the veterans application for permission to appeal. London, UK, 28 July 2011
Date: 28/07/2011
Location: London, UK
Photographer: Richard Keith Wolff
