origins origins
thewomen who founded greenpeace
Susi Newborn
Taeko Miwa and Carlie Trueman sailed on the first Greenpeace whale campaign. Trueman, an avid diver, was the first Greenpeace Zodiac specialist, and trained the crews in the operation and maintenance of the inflatable boats that would become a Greenpeace icon. Miwa was a student and environmentalist from Japan who had witnessed the devastating mercury poisoning in Minamata Bay. She ran campaigns against air pollution in Japan and served as Greenpeace’s Japanese translator. Bobbi Hunter (Innes) helped launch the first whale campaign, managed the first public Greenpeace office in Vancouver, and raised much of the money for the first whale and seal campaigns. As project manager for a cable company, she had tracked the workflow of hundreds of technicians, and she applied these skills to Greenpeace; Bobbi became a key figure in organising a disjointed Greenpeace group that was running three campaigns with modest income. In 1976, Bobbi and Marilyn Kaga were the first women to blockade a whaling ship, the Russian Vlasny harpoon boat.
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Bobbi Hunte
von Koettlitz to help them restore the ship to life. In the spring of 1978, the ship set sail with an international crew representing the Netherlands, France, the UK, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, the US and Canada. They confronted Icelandic and Spanish whalers and exposed the UK ship Gem, illegally dumping nuclear waste into the ocean. Newborn wrote a personal account of the Rainbow Warrior story, A Bonfire in My Mouth. The Rainbow Warrior name came from a small book, Warriors of the Rainbow, by Aleut elder William Willoya and Vinson Brown. This story inspired the Rainbow Warrior tradition in Greenpeace and to this day, the Grandmother - Eyes of the Fire – continues to shed her powerful light and vision over Greenpeace.n
By the time of the whale and seal campaigns in the 1970s, women were regularly serving on the front line of Greenpeace actions. Eileen Chivers, Henrietta Nielson, Bonnie MacLeod, Bree Drummond, Mary-Lee Brassard, Susi Leger and other women served on the whale and seal campaigns during that era. Meanwhile, in London, Susi Newborn and Denise Bell acquired and outfitted the first ship that Greenpeace ever owned, the Rainbow Warrior. Newborn and Bell, who wanted to confront Icelandic whalers in the North Pacific, found the 134-foot trawler Sir William Hardy, raised the money to purchase it, and drafted Newborn’s childhood friend Athel
16 THE GREENPEACE chronicles
Denise Bell