In Honour project
Only 700 World War II veterans remain alive but there is no comprehensive official record of their names.
To address this gap, Stuff has today launched In Honour ,a publicly searchable database naming as many of those as we could track down alongside some of their stories. It is hoped the database will allow veterans to find a familiar name, and perhaps reconnect with lost mates.
Kiwi veterans returned to our midst carrying their burdens, gratitudes, angers, aching sorrows and hard-earned insights with them to live, quietly for the most part, among us.
Take 98-year-old Henry Taylor, who would rather share stories of the vegetable plot he is cultivating out the back of the rest home where he lives. He ‘‘came under the odd bit of shell fire’’ but that’s about as much as he’ll say about the danger he was in during his time in Italy. He was just down the road when his best friend was hit and killed by shell fire.
The In Honour database took eight months of research, drawing information from agencies and organisations, hundreds of phone calls and emails, and countless hours immersed in war records.
It is a patchwork of information. No organisation has a complete and accurate record of our surviving WWII veterans.
For much of our nation, the whereabouts of our WWII veterans is stored in the minds of RSA welfare officers. This is particularly true in our small rural towns.
Often, there was no documented record of surviving veterans in a region. Those who served in the war were given service numbers in the 1930s and 40s, when record-keeping was harder. Those numbers were often given to more than one person unintentionally, and even war museum records have inaccuracies because of the nature of wartime record-keeping.
Contributing to the incomplete records is this: many veterans came home and wanted to forget and they didn’t want to be celebrated. They will tell you, even today, that they are not heroes.
It is not an exhaustive database. There will be people who haven’t been located, and the fallibility of public records means some on the list may already have died. We welcome corrections and updates although it will not be updated in perpetuity. It is a snapshot at this time.
The New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers’ 2014 Veterans’ Portrait Project provided a visually stunning basis for this database. The institute was generous with information, and offered support for In Honour.
If you would like to suggest additions or amendments to In Honour, please email inhonour@stuff.co.nz.