In September 1971, a group of twelve people left Vancouver, Canada, on an old fishing boat called the Phyllis Cormack. They were going to the island of Amchitka, off the west coast of Alaska. Amchitka was home to a lot of wildlife, but no people lived there. It was also in a part of the world new hing where earthquakes often happen. The people on the Phyllis Cormack were worried because the United States was using Amchitka for nuclear tests. "Perhaps they will not do their tests if we are staying on the island,' they thought. Perhaps other people will hear about our protest and tell the United States that they don't want the tests either.
The United States did not stop the tests immediately, but this group of people continued to protest, and in 1972 the tests stopped. Then the group took a new name Greenpeace. They wanted to make a world that was green, with no violence between people or countries. Now, over thirty years later, Greenpeace has offices in forty-one countries, and