GIFF JOHNSON*
A podcast about the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll, the multi-decade fallout from the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test, and the last voyage of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior has been shortlisted for a major radio award in the United States.
The jointly produced six-episode story from Radio New Zealand and Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been shortlisted in the documentary/history section of the New York Festivals radio awards.
“The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior” was written and narrated by James Nokise, who works with ABC.
Nokise was in Majuro recently covering the latest edition of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior — the third flagship vessel bearing this name — visiting the RMI to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1985 evacuation that its predecessor vessel carried out before being blown up in Auckland harbor by French secret agents.
The New York Festivals “is the most prestigious radio award globally,” Nokise told the Journal. “It’s like the Oscars of radio.” The New York Festivals will announce the winners on May 22. The six-episode story is heavily focused on the Rongelap story.
Nokise believes that the podcast was shortlisted for a number of reasons, including its uniqueness as a story and the fact that films like Oppenheimer and TV mini-series Chernobyl have made western audiences more aware of damage from nuclear weapons and power so that a story about the Bravo test sounds believable and less like science fiction.
“It’s a very powerful story,” he said of the Rongelap’s over 70 years of ongoing problems from US nuclear tests. “The documentary shines a light on this powerful story. In the Pacific, many stories have not had a light shone on them.”
Nokise said he hoped this joint Radio New Zealand and ABC program would encourage others to produce more documentaries for the Pacific.
Although the nuclear test legacy affects multiple islands and populations, the radio show producers decided to zero in on Rongelap. “It’s about the Rongelap experience, about Senator Jeton Anjain and the US government,” Nokise said. “While we can acknowledge other injustices that need to be addressed, for this one, we needed to focus on Rongelap. I hope it will make people more curious about the Marshall Islands.”
A key element for Nokise and the production team was to make it so the story connected with the listener “human to human.” The nuclear legacy is a challenge because it is an “extraordinary story for people not connected to it and can seem unreal.”
He and the production team did their best to deliver the story in a way that would connect with any listener, even those with little knowledge of the Pacific. “We’ve had a great response to it,” he said. “We hope it makes people pay attention and (to ask) why didn’t they know about it, especially for those in countries allied with the Pacific.”
He recognized Justin Gregory, the Podcasts team leader at Radio New Zealand, and ABC freelancer Sophie Townsend for their collaboration on the program.
Nokise added about his involvement: “I don’t claim to be a great writer, but I have a knack for finding myself in interesting places.”
Listen to the six-episode series: https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/the-last-voyage-of-the-rainbow-warrior
*This article was written by The Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson and is republished with his permission. It first appeared in the Journal on April 18, 2025.
