Effort to give relatives of Māori Battalion vets the medals they never received
Friday, 4 September 2020
An Auckland lawyer has embarked on a mammoth effort to help descendants of Māori Battalion veterans receive medals their tipuna were never issued.
The journey is a personal one 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 (Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti 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.’”
**READ MORE:
* Do Treaty of Waitangi settlements lead to better social outcomes? And should they?
* Families commemorate Anzac Day together in Waitara
* Lost memorials for Kiwi WWI diggers unearthed
**
He requested the files for soldiers from Muriwai and Manutuke and discovered 10 per cent of Māori Battalion volunteers from those Gisborne villages did not receive medals they were entitled to.
Further enquiries revealed the proportion was even higher for soldiers from other areas, such as Ōpōtiki, Te Teko and Motukaraka.
Of the 103 soldiers’ files he reviewed, 17 per cent never got their medals.
Given more than 3600 men volunteered for the battalion, Stone believes about 540 soldiers may never have seen 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 themselves.
Stone said that was a problem for some battalion veterans, who believed there was no mana in receiving their medals in the mail.
“You had to do things face to face. That’s our tikanga, our way of doing things properly.”
As a result, many went to their graves without their medals. Another issue was they did not want to be seen as whakahīhī (boastful) by wearing their medals when so many had died, Stone said.
“When they came back, the nannies were pretty ruthless, and said ‘who do you think you are wearing those, do you think you're somebody? You're not the hero, you're still alive. The heroes are the ones buried over in Italy.’”
But as they aged, they began to want their mokopuna to know what they had done in the war, he said.
“When you look at when the majority of the Māori Battalion got their medals, they were all old men.”
Those old men included Nolan Raihania, who was among the last surviving battalion veterans when he died in 2016, and who Stone said was “there from day one” on his journey.
Raihania was issued his medals in 1993, while others got theirs much later.
Only two battalion veterans remain and none of the soldiers 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 Māori land law, went to the Waitangi Tribunal to ask the Crown to continue his research effort. He was unsuccessful.
“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’.”
Stone said he was disappointed, but not surprised.
“But then I just said, ‘oh well’.
“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.
“Their response was completely different. They said first and foremost this is our job to do.”
Anyone wanting to apply for the medals of deceased family members must fill out a NZDF statutory declaration form.
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 and on which it has already done a great deal of work.”
The Defence Force was considering issues around preserving files, especially those of the Māori Battalion, she said.
Whanaunga of Māori Battalion veterans can reach Stone via david@tematalaw.co.nz