Prisoners of War
Related Book
This exhibition, based on the book Inside Stories: New Zealand Prisoners of War Remember, Megan Hutching (ed.), Auckland, HarperCollins in association with the History Group, Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2002, presents a small sample from the experiences of the approximately 8800 New Zealand servicemen who were taken prisoner during the Second World War.
The book is based on sixteen oral history interviews recorded with men who became prisoners of war between 1939 and 1945, and one with Kitty Wood, who worked for the YMCA in Geneva sending parcels of recreational material to prisoners. The History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage began by publicising the project and asking men who had been POWs to contact me. There were 130 responses— from former POWs, from their wives and children, and sometimes from their grandchildren or other relatives. These people were sent a lengthy questionnaire asking about their experiences, and these were used when deciding who to interview for the book.
All of the questionnaires and other accounts received will eventually be deposited with Archives New Zealand in Wellington so that they will become available to researchers in the future. The recordings of the interviews and accompanying material will be archived at the Oral History Centre at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, where they will be available to researchers subject to any conditions placed on them by the interviewees. The words which appear in the book are just a small proportion of those recorded in the interviews. I have concentrated on presenting each person's story about being a prisoner of war, but the interviews cover much more in most instances.
Megan Hutching
10 September 2002
Sources
The main account is the official history, W. W. Mason, Prisoners of War, Wellington, NZ, War History Branch, 1954. Many former POWs have written memoirs about their experiences during the war. See Further reading for more sources.
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