NZHistory, New Zealand history online - anzac day

War and remembrance activities

War has played a defining role in shaping our nation since we first sent troops overseas to South Africa in 1899. As the centenary of the the First World War (2014-18) approaches, many New Zealanders will reflect on our nation's experiences of war and the impact of conflict on our society.

The First and Second World Wars dominate our history in the 20th century. More than 250,000 New Zealanders served in both of these conflicts, at a cost of 30,000 lives. A further 70,000 were wounded. The impact on the families and friends of those killed and wounded, as well as on their communities, was immense.

Acknowledging those who had served or died was an important way for communities to make sense of the human cost of war. One common expression of this collective grief lay in the building of memorials. Many of the nation’s over 1000 war memorials were built after the First World War. Typically they reflect our historic ties with Britain with references to fighting for ‘King and Country’ or ‘King and Empire’. Others stress the notion of fighting for some sort of ‘greater good’ and how many had willingly ‘lain down their lives’.

Not all memorials are monuments to the dead. Second World War memorials tend to be more utilitarian or practical, as seen with numerous memorial halls, libraries, swimming pools, highways and parks.

Many memorials have implored us not to forget the fallen through inscriptions such as ‘their names liveth for evermore’. Our First World War veterans are long gone and there are fewer Second World War veterans to be seen at the various public commemorations such as Anzac Day. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the number attending dawn parades has increased in recent years. This suggests that remembrance remains important to New Zealanders. Maybe our war dead are not forgotten. But it is worth considering to what extent there is an acknowledgement of our collective loss as opposed to a commemoration of the individual. Who do we have in mind when we acknowledge the sacrifice?

Considering this topic with school students can be problematic. For those with a clear personal or family connection with war, remembrance may be first and foremost a private matter. They may reject such notions as shared grief or collective loss. Others may have no connection with war at all or at least no personal connection with what we might refer to as ‘our’ national experience of war. They may struggle to see the relevance of our memorials and rituals associated with remembrance.

A century on from the First World War, New Zealand is a vastly different country in terms of its ethnic make-up and world view. How we commemorate is largely a tradition imposed in a different era. A discussion point could be what we might do differently if, for instance, our memorials were lost in a natural disaster. What – if anything – would we replace them with? What is the distinction between remembrance and commemoration and patriotism and nationalism?

For teachers and students interested in looking at Anzac Day as part of a current event topic around 25 April, there are a number of activities available in the junior social studies and history section of the Classroom in the NZHistory website. It is worth remembering that as important as the Gallipoli campaign was, far more New Zealanders served and died on the Western Front in France and Belgium. The activities or suggestions which follow are therefore designed to not only reflect this but broaden the study to the experiences of New Zealanders at war. These activities have been designed to provoke thinking as opposed to providing you with a list of tasks to complete in any linear fashion. You are encouraged to adapt these to meet your needs. Through such inquiry students can explore how war has influenced the ways in which different generations of New Zealanders have ‘seen themselves’. It has also clarified ‘their own identities in relation to their particular heritages and contexts’ (NZC statement Social Sciences). The context of war can also be used to examine places, sites and events of local, regional, national and international significance.

Much of the historical thinking and interpretation which follows needs context. The War and Society section of NZHistory is a good place to start for those seeking content on New Zealand’s wartime experiences, ranging from our own internal wars to the major conflicts of the 20th century. For some the New Zealand Wars might represent a 'bridge too far' but it is interesting to compare the memorials associated with these internal struggles and those commemorating overseas conflicts in which we have participated. NZHistory also has a memorials register which has details and images of New Zealand’s public war memorials. This is organised on a regional basis.

There are activities relating to New Zealanders' experiences in Belgium on the Western Front in the NCEA level 2 section of the Classroom. These are easily adapted for a younger group. One task in particular poses the question 'Why not Passchendaele Day?'. It was here, on 12 October 1917, that 845 New Zealanders were killed in one day. This represents the greatest loss of life in a single day in our history – more than the combined total of deaths from the eruption of Mt Tarawera, the Hawke’s Bay earthquake, the Tangiwai rail disaster, the sinking of the Wahine and the Air New Zealand plane crash on Mt Erebus.

Avatele war memorial on Anzac Day, 2001

Wreaths and flowers cover the Avatele war memorial in Niue, Anzac Day, 2001.

Look at the names on the Avatele war memorial

Credit:

Margaret Pointer

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Cook Islands Anzac Day stamps

Set of commemorative Anzac Day stamps issued by the Cook Islands government in 2010.

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Cook Islands Philatelic Bureau

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Cook Islands Anzac Day parade, 1970s

Returned servicemen marching during an Anzac Day parade in Rarotonga, early 1970s. Included in this group are Araitia Tepuretu, Ngarea Titi, Vaevae Tamarua, Reboama, Tamaiva Ironui, Tangiia, J.D. Campbell, and Jim Teruaa’u.

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Cook Islands Library and Museum Society

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The King's Anzac Day message, 1948

King George VI Anzac Day message, 1948. This message was relayed to officials in New Zealand-governed Western Samoa, Niue and Cook Islands by the Island Territories Department in Wellington.

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Archives New Zealand
Reference: IT 1 W2439 15/69/93
Permission of Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Anzac Day service in Rarotonga, 2009

Returned servicemen and community groups lay wreaths at the Soldiers’ Memorial in Avarua during the 2009 Anzac Day service on Rarotonga.

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Anzac Day in the Pacific

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Further information - Anzac Day in the Pacific

This web feature was written by Margaret Pointer and produced by the NZHistory.net.nz team.

Books

Margaret Pointer and Kalaisi Folau, Tagi tote e loto haaku / My heart is crying a little: Niue Island involvement in the Great War 1914–1918, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 2000
Dick Scott, Years of the Pooh-Bah: a Cook Islands history, Cook Islands Trading Corporation, Rarotonga, 1991

Present day commemorations - Cook Islands and Niue

Video: Anzac Day service in Rarotonga, 2009

In the new millennium there has been increasing interest in the story of Pacific Island involvement in the First World War.

In the Cook Islands there have been efforts to rebuild memorials and honour boards. In Aitutaki and Mauke new memorials have been planned or built and on Pukapuka the honour board, damaged in the 2005 cyclone season, has been replaced. A new memorial has been built on Atiu and in Rarotonga the removal of the honour board from the courthouse to the Pioneers’ Lounge in the RSA clubrooms proved timely when the courthouse was gutted by fire in 1991. The National Library in Avarua plans to mount an exhibition on Cook Islanders’ involvement in the First World War.

A resurgence of interest in Niue has been spearheaded by the local RSA. A permanent exhibition at the Huanaki Cultural Centre in Alofi was opened in 1999 but was lost when the museum complex was destroyed by Cyclone Heta in 2004. Included in the exhibition had been the last surviving panels of the honour board constructed in 1926.

In 2000 there were four village memorials in Niue. The Mutalau memorial built in 1947 was followed by Hakupu in 1987, Avatele in 1993 and Tuapa in 1998. By 2010 there were new memorials in Liku, Lakepa, Hikutavake and Tamakautoga, and in Alofi the National Memorial, as it is now called, had been rebuilt.

In each village the emphasis is on displaying the names of all local men who served in the First World War. Such memorials provide a focal point for commemoration and place the names in public view. Niue does not have cemeteries. Burials take place on family land, usually in the bush interior of the island. Even the official headstones that were given to a minority of returned servicemen are not publicly accessible.

In addition to services on Niue, the Niuean men are now commemorated in services in Auckland, the main centre of Niuean population in New Zealand. Organisations linked to the villages of Mutalau and Hakupu hold Anzac ceremonies in Auckland each year. Men from the Niue Contingent lie buried in Auckland cemeteries. A few died there while enlisted and others moved to Auckland in later years. By holding commemoration services for their own people, Niuean elders in Auckland are encouraging younger Niueans born in New Zealand to embrace their history.

In 2002, when a Niuean team participated in the Commonwealth Games for the first time, a unique reunion took place in Manchester. The people of Hornchurch, where the Niuean men were hospitalised in 1916 prior to their return to New Zealand, invited the Niuean team to visit them. After a church service a memorial service was held in the church cemetery where four Niuean men are buried. It was the first such pilgrimage by a Niuean group to a location central to their own war story.

With increasing interest in and focus on the Pacific Island involvement in the First World War, there has been an effort to improve the accuracy of information relating to the Pacific Islanders who served in the NZEF and to correct the misspelling and omission of names. Anzac Day programmes in New Zealand, in particular on Maori Television, and exhibitions at Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland War Memorial Museum, are beginning to highlight the Pacific contribution for the first time.

The growth of Anzac Day - Cook Islands and Niue

Anzac Day in the Cook Islands

Cook Islands Anzac Day parade, 1970s

During the Second World War Anzac Day continued to be observed in Rarotonga with a church service, but there were no ceremonial parades. These were resumed after the war with observances that followed the format in New Zealand. A dawn service at the cenotaph was followed by a mid-morning church service and then a march of returned servicemen and other community groups to the war memorial for a short service and the laying of wreaths. A bus made a circuit of Rarotonga collecting servicemen for the observance.

In 1965 the Cook Islands achieved self government. Early the following year the Premier, Albert Henry, informed New Zealand’s Department of Island Territories in Wellington that his government planned to limit Anzac Day observance to the morning of 25 April and allow sporting fixtures to take place in the afternoon. The reply from Wellington confirmed that this was the pattern being adopted in New Zealand: picture theatres would be open in the afternoon and sports fixtures arranged. ‘Next year much broader liberalisation of Anzac Day has been approved by the RSA. It is now over to Parliament to ensure that this is so by passing the necessary legislation.’

In the Cook Islands a Cabinet minute of 21 April 1966 declared that Anzac Day would be observed as a Sunday until 1 p.m., after which it would be an ordinary public holiday. In 1967 the Cook Islands News reported on an Anzac Day cricket match. Poppy Day was also introduced at this time, on the Friday before Anzac Day.

From the 1960s there were repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain funding from New Zealand for the improvement and upkeep of the servicemen’s cemetery on a plot of Crown land near the international airport. This cemetery was used mainly for New Zealand ex-servicemen who had moved to the Cook Islands in retirement or to work for the Administration. In the 1980s there were requests for help to turn this area into a lawn cemetery and to build RSA clubrooms. Men from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States were also buried here. Cook Islanders from the First World War contingents were buried on family land in accordance with local custom, or in service cemeteries in New Zealand if they had emigrated.

Anzac Day in Niue

Mutalau war memorial in Niue

Anzac Day on Niue in 1947 coincided with the opening of the first village memorial in Mutalau. While the war memorial in Alofi listed the names of the servicemen who had died during the war, the Mutalau memorial began a tradition of naming all the men from the village who had served in the Niue Contingent.

The Anzac service continued to be held in Alofi on the same pattern, with minor changes to fit local conditions. One year the commemoration was delayed by four days so cargo could be loaded on and unloaded from the island freighter Tofua. Boat day was essential to the island; Anzac Day had to wait. Sometimes torrential rain delayed or made impossible the march to the war memorial and the dawn service was held indoors. Following the devastating cyclone in 1959 which destroyed the church in Alofi, the service was moved to the London Missionary Society’s Centennial Hall and umu kai was in short supply.

If a visit from a naval vessel coincided with Anzac Day, the pomp and circumstance of the commemoration was heightened. When the New Zealand Governor-General, Sir Bernard Fergusson, arrived on HMNZS Royalist just before Anzac Day 1964 to unveil a new memorial in Alofi, the returned servicemen gathered and a service was held. A naval saluting party fired three volleys and a bugler played the ‘Last Post’ and ‘Reveille’.

A Niue branch of the Returned Services’ Association was established when Anzac services commenced and received some assistance from the NZ RSA, such as a grant towards the rebuilding of the Alofi memorial in 1964. From the late 1960s poppies sent from New Zealand were sold on Poppy Day, with the proceeds supporting elderly ex-servicemen and war widows. Many of those who joined and helped organise the Niue RSA were descendants of the men of the Niue Contingent.

While much about the Anzac service on Niue echoed the services held throughout New Zealand, there was a definite Niuean flavour to the day. Perhaps most striking was the gathering of the men the evening before in the cargo shed at the wharf. Spending the night together allowed the oral tradition of storytelling to flourish. People still remember going with their fathers, grandfathers and uncles to share the evening. They recall the stories being told, the joking and laughter but also the sadness. They remember the smell of the maile leaves and the tiale flowers and the bundles of kapihi as they were prepared into wreaths and necklaces.

Anzac Day itself followed the normal pattern and the food following the dawn parade was usually palagi-style. But most of the participants in the service were Niuean, the church service was followed by an island-style feast of umu kai, and the speechmaking and storytelling were predominantly in the Niuean language.

Early commemorative efforts - Cook Islands and Niue

Cook Islands

Cook Islands Armistice Day notice, 1924

From the early 1920s, commemoration of the First World War in the Cook Islands was linked to Armistice Day, 11 November. Messages each year from the Cook Islands Department in Wellington to the Resident Commissioner, Rarotonga, stated: ‘HM the King has expressed wish for two minutes silence November 11, Armistice Day.’

In 1923 the message was extended: ‘His Majesty has expressed a wish that throughout the Empire special services should be held and two minutes silence observed at 11am, 11 November.’

From this date services were held in Rarotonga and the other islands in the Cook group were instructed to observe the two minutes’ silence. Resident Commissioner H.F. Ayson arranged for services to be held in all churches on Rarotonga.

In Rarotonga two branches of the Returned Soldiers’ Association were formed, one for returned Cook Islanders and one for returned New Zealand expatriates, many of whom were working for the Administration. The Resident Commissioner invited the two associations to hold a combined church parade and later the Minister for the Cook Islands, Māui Pōmare, wrote to both RSAs in Rarotonga thanking them for combining for the service and urging them to work in harmony with their fellow soldiers.

By 1925 schoolchildren were being included in the commemoration. On 11 November 1925, special services were held in all the churches and at Avarua School the pupils saluted the flag. Short speeches were given by the Resident Commissioner, Makeanui Tinirau Ariki, George Karika DCM and Mr Binsted (the headmaster).

Unveiling of soldiers’ memorial, Avarua

In 1926 the war memorial in Avarua was unveiled by the Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson. That year the Armistice Day ceremonies were extended to include a parade of returned servicemen from the London Missionary Society (LMS) church in Avarua to the Soldiers’ Memorial, where a short service was held and wreaths were laid. All branches of the Administration and all shops closed for the day.

The war memorial now provided a focus for commemoration services in Rarotonga. In 1927 possibly the first Anzac Day service was held there, with returned servicemen placing wreaths at the monument and also on soldiers’ graves. Armistice Day continued to be marked in the normal way and it is not certain when 25 April became the more important of the two dates for the Cook Islands community.

Cook Islands roll of honour boards

Armistice Day, and later Anzac Day, was marked in the outer islands of the Cook group by two minutes’ silence. Resident Commissioner Ayson was keen to have honour boards prepared for each island so the names of those who served would be in view and there would be a focal point for commemoration services. In 1926 a committee of returned soldiers, including George Karika DCM and Pori Ngoroio Makea, was set up to check names and ensure spellings were correct before details were sent to New Zealand for the Public Works Department to make the boards. Honour boards were prepared for Aitutaki, Mangaia, Atiu, Mauke, Penrhyn, Manihiki, Rakahanga and Pukapuka. In March 1929 Ayson reported to Wellington that all had reached their destination and suitable unveiling ceremonies were being arranged, presumably on Anzac Day that year.

On Mangaia the RSA decided to build a war memorial with funds raised for the celebration of George V’s Silver Jubilee in 1935. Plans were drawn up, lists of names prepared, a site chosen and financial details settled. The Mangaia Soldiers’ Memorial was completed in time for Anzac Day 1936.

Niue

Niue First World War memorial

The Armistice celebrations on Niue focused on village efforts to plant ‘peace groves’ of coconuts, and there is no evidence of an annual day of commemoration. Remembrance was confined to the observance of two minutes’ silence on Armistice Day, 11 November. Each year the Secretary of the Cook Islands Department in Wellington sent a message from His Majesty and a note to the effect that Armistice Day should be observed in the usual way. In reply, the Resident Commissioner’s office in Alofi confirmed this was being done.

It was not until after the Second World War that a remembrance service on Anzac Day, 25 April, was started on Niue. Credit for initiating this commemoration goes to Percy Walsh, a Second World War veteran who had come to Niue from New Zealand to work in the Public Works Department.

The first commemoration was held in 1947. The Resident Commissioner, Hector Larsen, provided a government truck to go round the island and collect the returned servicemen. They were brought in to the main village of Alofi late on 24 April and spent the night in the cargo shed near the wharf.

A dawn parade was held at 5.30 a.m. The men assembled in front of the administration building and marched to the war memorial for a short service. They then returned to the administration grounds and were usually invited into a home, such as that of Percy Walsh in Alofi South, for breakfast/morning tea.

Meanwhile the government trucks made another circuit of the island to collect the wives and children of returned servicemen and, most importantly, the food that had been prepared in umu overnight.

When the trucks arrived the families joined their men for a service in the Alofi LMS church. Then a feast was shared, usually in the cargo shed. After the umu kai came speeches and then the singing of army songs, especially the much-loved ‘Tipperary’. At the end of the day the trucks returned the men and their families to their villages.

NZHistory, New Zealand history online - anzac day

War and remembrance activities

Avatele war memorial on Anzac Day, 2001

Cook Islands Anzac Day stamps

Cook Islands Anzac Day parade, 1970s

The King's Anzac Day message, 1948

Anzac Day service in Rarotonga, 2009

Further information - Anzac Day in the Pacific

Links

Books

Present day commemorations - Cook Islands and Niue

The growth of Anzac Day - Cook Islands and Niue

Anzac Day in the Cook Islands

Anzac Day in Niue

Early commemorative efforts - Cook Islands and Niue

Cook Islands

Niue