Vietnamwar experience woven into Ma¯ori cloak
Stories of hardship and brotherhood woven into ama¯ori cloak have helped amaster weaver make peace from his experience of war.
Rangi Fitzgerald reflected on a long-ago journey, at the age 19, boarding a plane for South Vietnam, as his kahu huruhuru, or cloak, was displayed at Te Manawa museum in Palmerston North for Anzac weekend.
It took Fitzgerald, 69, of Rangita¯ne decent, more than five years to weave the kahu huruhuru, named Te Hononga o Tu¯matauenga o Vietnam, for the brothers and sisters with whom he experienced the war and the many struggles they faced when they returned home.
Fitzgerald worked the radios in the 16th Field Regiment. Vietnam veterans’ stories were all different, but their experience was the same, he said.
Thousands of feathers from birds such as albatross, kiwi, pu¯keko, Hawaii geese, takehe¯, and ko¯kako were woven in layers to tell the timeline, suffering and hope of those who fought.
‘‘I believe I went there to follow in their footsteps, to come home and tell their story.
‘‘We are pretty quick off the mark to make a joke and muck around. We’re pretty sharp. All of us Vietnam vets. But look in their eyes. All the s ... is there, it’s just that we use jokes, laughter, to cover up.’’
His hurt was clear in his eyes as he spoke about the treatment soldiers received when they returned home. ‘‘The hardest for me was not being proud to wear my uniform.’’
‘‘The RSA wouldn’t let us join, they used to scoff at us and say, ‘what war?’ They wouldn’t accept us into their ranks.’’
Flown home in darkness, he and his comrades were told not to tell anyone they fought in Vietnam.
They felt rejected by society and without support, but in the subsequent decades they found each other, Fitzgerald said.
In the eight years since he completed the kahu huruhuru, it has featured at the funerals and tangi of 88 comrades.
‘‘I’ve lost a lot of mates between the last 30 years that we’ve been out in the open, but we know who we are now. Something I’mdoing now is something our Vietnam vets do, is come together and hug. There’s no such thing as shaking hands.’’
Fitzgerald was presented with a badge from the Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2008 when veterans received an apology from the Crown.
He has forgiven the ill treatment.
But as the years go on his health has been declining which he attributes to Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam jungles that has been attributed to several types of cancers.
‘‘You’ll find that a good percentage of us have all passed with the same disease.’’