Remembering Māori Battalion veterans through family kōrero

Sunday, 31 October 2021

Feilding woman Lorraine Searancke displays a photo of her father Tom Searancke.

Whānau of the 28th Māori Battalion have shared historic family kōrero to commemorate the veterans.

Wairarapa man Dick Smith of the Ngā Uri O Te Rua Tekau Ma Waru organisation is part of a group looking for family of men from D Company from the 28th Māori Battalion.

The 28th Māori Battalion was part of the 2nd New Zealand Division during World War II. D Company was made up of men from across the central and lower North Island, and the South Island.

Smith held a rūnanga, a meeting, at the Te Rau Aroha Māori Battalion Hall in Palmerston North on Saturday for veterans’ family members to bring in documents and photographs.

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Dick Smith, left, watches an interview from the 1990s with the late Charles Bell, one of 72 interviews Smith has. He hopes the family members of the interviewees will be able to identify them.

He is collating information about veterans so it can be uploaded to the Māori Battalion website and be made into a book to preserve the information for future generations.

Smith said they had 72 interviews with Māori Battalion members taken in the late 1990s, but they needed help to identify many of the people in the videos and permission from the families to publish the information.

“Initially we were trying to find out what did they do before the army and what did they do when they came home.

“Obviously we know a lot of them went as young boys, the youngest was 14, and they still came back as young boys in 1945.”

He said the interviews with the men were fascinating.

“There’s some real stories to tell. They are grassroots people, and whānau and family.”

Smith said there was only one person from the battalion left alive now, who is in Rotorua.

Palmerston North's Eru Timu brought a photo of his late father Matiu Mataira.

Feilding woman Lorraine Searancke had a photo of her father Tom, who died in 1995 aged 74.

Lorraine remembered spending time with her father and his friends who were also in the battalion.

“They were strong, very lovely, and had a lot of mana.”

Tom never spoke to her about the war, but she said the Germans could tell soldiers in the Māori Battalion were different with their culture, singing and cooking.

“Obviously they saw hell. The Germans wanted to know them before they killed them. They wanted to know these Māori fellas.”

Tom was originally from Kawhia in coastal Waikato, but when he returned to Wellington after the war, another Māori Battalion member from Feilding, Edward Hauturu Lawton, asked him if he wanted to work at the meat works in Feilding, where he stayed.

Palmerston North man Eru Timu had brought a photo of his father Matiu Mataira, who was from Nūhaka in northern Hawke’s Bay and died in 1965 aged 41.

Timu said his father had been a great singer and American soldiers had told him to go to the United States after the war and become a star, but he declined, returning to New Zealand to look after family.

Smith has twice had to cancel a rūnanga in Feilding due to Covid-19, but he held one in Pahīatua in September.

The next one is planned for Kauwhata Marae in Feilding on November 27.