Wha¯nau hunt for Ma¯ori Battalion missing medals
Returning WWII soldiers had to apply for awards. George Block reports some Ma¯ori soldiers did not.
An Auckland lawyer has embarked on a mammoth task to help descendants of Ma¯ori Battalion veterans receive medals their tipuna were never issued.
The effort is personal for David Stone, whose great-uncle Dooley (Turi) Swann from Gisborne was killed during the Italian campaign in 1944, while serving with the battalion.
Stone (Nga¯i Ta¯manuhiri, Te Aitanga-a-Ma¯haki, Nga¯ti Porou, Nga¯ti Kahungunu, Ngati Toa, Ngai Tahu), whose father and son are named after Swann, said as far as the family knew, he never saw his medals.
‘‘I said to Dad ‘there’s no way he could be the only one from the whole East Coast’.’’
He requested the files for soldiers from Muriwai and Manutuke and discovered 10 per cent of Ma¯ori Battalion volunteers from those Gisborne villages did not receive medals they were entitled to. The proportion was even higher in
po¯tiki, Te Teko and Motukaraka. Of 103 soldiers’ files, 17 per cent never got their medals.
Given more than 3600 men volunteered for the battalion, Stone believes about 540 soldiers may never have their medals.
The battalion served with distinction in Greece, North Africa and Italy, suffering 2628 casualties including 649 killed, nearly 50 per cent above the New Zealand average.
Along the way, they earned 99 honours and awards, the most of any Kiwi infantry battalion.
Soldiers who returned home to New Zealand were required to apply for their campaign medals but Stone said some believed there was no mana in receiving their medals in the mail.
‘‘You had to do things face-toface. That’s our tikanga, our way of doing things properly.’’
Others did not want to be seen as whakahı¯hı¯ (boastful) by wearing medals when so many had died, Stone said. But, as they aged, they began to want their mokopuna to know what they had done in the war. ‘‘When you look at when the majority of the Ma¯ori Battalion got their medals, they were all old men.’’
Those old men included Nolan Raihania, who died in 2016, and who Stone said was ‘‘there from day one’’. Raihania received his medals in 1993.
Only two battalion veterans remain and none of the soldiers seen
whose medals Stone is working to get to their whanaunga are alive.
The first person Stone told was his aunt from the village of Paki Paki in Hastings, whose father died shortly after the war when she was only a year old.
‘‘When I knocked on her door, I hadn’t seen this auntie for decades but I recognised her right away, and I told her, she was like a stunned mullet.’’
Others had similar reactions. ‘‘I had one man ring me up when I was in Aussie, saying that his cousin told him, and he just burst out crying in the main street of Gisborne because his dad died when he was just a kid.’’
In 2019, Stone, the principal of Te Mata Law which specialises in Treaty and Ma¯ori land law, went to the Waitangi Tribunal to ask the Crown to continue his research effort. He was unsuccess
‘‘You had to do things face-toface. That’s our tikanga, our way of doing things properly.’’ David Stone
ful.
‘‘ I said to the judge ‘we’ve looked at 103 files, there’s 3600, I think I’ve done my dash. Can you ask the Crown, because they should be doing this?’ So the judge did, and the Crown came back saying ‘yeah, nah’.
‘‘I rang up and told Dad, and he just said ‘oh well boy, you’ve just got to carry on’. So I did.’’
While he hasn’t had much luck with politicians, Stone said the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) staff at the medals office in Trentham, north of Wellington, were 100 per cent behind the kaupapa.
A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Ron Mark said 85 per cent of those who served, or their descendants, had been issued their medals.
‘‘The issue of service medals across all wars and branches of the New Zealand Armed Forces is complicated, but it is one which the Defence Force is keen to advance.’’
The Defence Force was considering issues around preserving files, especially those of the Ma¯ori Battalion, she said.