Family finally gets Viet vet’s medals
A Kawhia veteran’s family has closure after 47 years.
The New Zealand Army has presented Barry Wahanui’s family with the medals he earned while serving in Malaya and the Vietnam War.
Wahanui died in 1969, aged 29, in a car accident in Malaysia while recuperating from malaria.
The long-running medal quest started when his family investigated getting Wahanui in the National Book of Remembrance, but discovered he didn’t meet the criteria.
Instead, their work uncovered that the former soldier had medals that hadn’t been claimed.
The medal situation was a bit of a no-man’s land, said Wahanui’s niece Maxine Moana Tuwhangai.
‘‘When we were told about the medals, we had to apply for them, and while doing that we found out that two medals that he was to originally be presented with were now in the hands of a collector in America.
‘‘We couldn’t get them back, so we had to apply for replacement medals. The Defence Force granted the application, but it was a bit touch and go as we couldn’t prove that they had been stolen. Then we couldn’t confirm that they had been lost. All we knew was that they weren’t in our possession,’’ Tuwhangai said.
Just over three months later, the army came and presented the medals to the family on the Mokai Kainga Marae on August 18, with 300 to 400 people in attendance.
Wahanui was adopted into the Tuwhangai family when he was 7, after his father returned from World War II after serving in the Maori Battalion. He couldn’t handle his son, who ran away, and that is when the Tuwhangai family stepped in and raised him as one of their own.
Wahanui served with Whiskey Company in Vietnam. He was then promoted to corporal and posted to the Mortar Platoon at Terendak camp before falling ill.
The family are glad he could finally get official recognition.
‘‘It was an emotional day for the family,’’ his brother Nick Tuwhangai said. ‘‘It brought back memories of our brother who went away as a young man and got killed over there. We were fortunate to get his body brought home and he lies in the urupa in Kawhia.
‘‘You see these medals and where he fought and we also saw what it did to him when he came home from Malaysia and went back to Vietnam and then came home. We saw the change in him, we saw the wreck he became.’’
The family are yet to decide what they will do with the medals but will display them on certain occasions. Awarded to Barry Wahanui were:
New Zealand Operational Service Medal (instituted in 2002)
General Service Medal 1962 with Clasps ‘‘Borneo’’ and ‘‘Malay Peninsula’’ (instituted in 1964 and 1967, respectively)
New Zealand General Service Medal 1992 (Warlike) with Clasps ‘‘Malaya 1960-64’’ and ‘‘Vietnam’’ (Wahanui became eligible for these clasps in 2002 and 2008, respectively)
Vietnam Medal (instituted in 1968)
New Zealand Defence Service Medal with ‘‘Regular’’ Clasp (instituted in 2011)
Pingat Jasa Malaysia medal (issued since 2005 by the New Zealand Defence Force on behalf of the Malaysian Government)
South Vietnamese Campaign Medal (instituted in 1965 by the South Vietnamese Government)