The nuclear issue hardly features in today's political discourse, but it should.
Growing up in Hawke's Bay, I remember The Hawke's Bay Herald Tribune, the predecessor of Hawke's Bay Today, publishing reports on the level of strontium 90 in our milk.
This nasty isotope was part of the atmospheric fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the South Pacific.
Ingesting it, we were told, could mean bone cancer or leukaemia.
The US and France conducted atmospheric tests in our South Pacific backyard from shortly after World War II until 1996.
During this time the anti-nuclear movement grew to the point that in 1973 the Kirk Labour government sent the HMNZS Otago, a navy frigate, into the French nuclear testing area off Mururoa Atoll with a Cabinet minister on board.
Labour was defeated in 1975 and National saw the nuclear issue as a matter of fringe politics.
In the '70s and '80s, New Zealand had regular visits from American nuclear-powered (and presumably nuclear-armed) warships - Texas, Truxtun and Long Beach - and submarines Pintado and Haddo.
Sir Robert Muldoon's National government saw these visits as an important expression of New Zealand's support for the Anzus Alliance and the country's relationship with the US.
But opposition was growing.
At one stage, nearly 80 towns and cities had declared themselves nuclear free and you could see a billboard proclaiming Wellington to be nuclear free on the road to the airport.
By 1980 these ship visits were greeted by flotillas of protest boats and the David Lange Labour government, which was elected in 1984, brought with it a policy of a nuclear-free New Zealand.
In February 1985, the Americans tested this policy by requesting a naval ship visit by the USS Buchanan, a guided missile destroyer. Buchanan was not nuclear powered, but could have been carrying atomic depth charges.
The American policy of "neither confirm nor deny" regarding the presence of atomic weapons meant that the Lange Labour government refused entry to the Buchanan.
The US suspended its relationship with New Zealand through the Anzus Treaty, which meant we remained allied with Australia but not the US.
Vice-President Biden's offer to send an American Navy ship closes this chapter of our history and it is a credit to Labour and National governments that we have stuck to our anti-nuclear guns for these many years. In 1984, when New Zealand became nuclear-free, we were on our own. Since that time all but five countries have signed the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which seeks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
We should be proud of New Zealand's leadership on this issue, and thankful for the progress made since our courageous stand in 1985.
Recent publications have demonstrated just how close the world came to the unthinkable catastrophe of an all-out nuclear war.
Former US Defence Secretary William J Perry was a key US government adviser during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and, at the age of 90, has published his memoirs.
He argues compellingly that it was a matter of the purest luck that this crisis did not erupt into a nuclear holocaust.
The Americans had imposed a naval blockade on Cuba to stop the transfer of further Russian nuclear missiles to that island, only 180km off the coast of Florida.
Perry writes that the Russian ships approaching the blockade were escorted by submarines armed with nuclear torpedoes. Poor communications meant that the Russian submarine captains were automatically authorised to fire these weapons without further permission from Moscow.
When an American destroyer attempted to force Russian submarine B59 to the surface, the submarine's captain and the political officer decided to fire a nuclear torpedo at the destroyer.
An American warship vaporised could have easily meant nuclear war and a planet destroyed.
Under normal circumstances, these two officers could have authorised the use of the nuclear weapon.
By sheer fluke, the overall commander of the Russian flotilla, Vasili Arkhipov, happened to be on board.
Arkhipov also had a say and refused to allow the launch.
Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the US National Security Archive, said that "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world". Whew!
¦Mike Williams grew up in Hawke's Bay. He is CEO of the NZ Howard League and a former Labour Party president. All opinions are his and not those of Hawke's Bay Today.
