'Whangamomona war memorial ', URL: /media/photo/whangamomona-war-memorial, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 15-Jul-2013
RELATED TO WHANGAMOMONA WAR MEMORIAL
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1 comment has been posted about Whangamomona war memorial
What do you know?
Clive Gifford
Posted: 28 Apr 2008
The following document gives a bit more information on the history about this memorial plus has additional photos:
http://www.stratford.govt.nz/files/HeritageInventoryPages56to110.pdf
Here is a copy of the main text from that document:
Kohuratahi was a reasonably prosperous settlement, with a post office, dairy factory, school, railway station, store, hall, and billiard rooms by the end of the First World War.
Combined with Whangamomona and Tahora, the total number of men who sacrificed their lives during WWI was 51, which had a huge impact on these communities. For this reason, in 1921 Mr. A.H. Perry (the secretary of the Kohuratahi War Memorial Committee) applied to the Whangamomona County Council for permission to erect a memorial monument to these men.
The site requested for the proposed monument was near the entrance to the Kohuratahi Railway Station. Solicitors advised the Council that the memorial could not legally be placed there (as it was on road reserve) unless the council itself erected the monument. Following this, an Order in Council was published in the NZ Gazette #82 (8 September 1921) that authorised the “Whangamomona County Council to erect a Monument on Ohura Road as a Permanent War Memorial”.
The Kohuratahi War Cenotaph was duly erected, and is a permanent commemoration to the young men who enlisted from the districts of Whangamomona, Kohuratahi and Tahora."
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