Book Launch: "Last Line of Defence - New Zealanders Remember the War at Home"

Book reminds us that during World War Two there was a major home front backing the war effort, and preparing in the event that the war reached our shores.

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I am very pleased to be launching this book, "Last Line of Defence: New Zealanders Remember the War at Home".

New Zealand's participation in the mass mobilisation of World Wars One and Two played a major part in shaping our small nation. Many of our people returned from service overseas changed forever by their experiences. But as this book reminds us of World War Two, there was a major home front backing the war effort, and preparing in the event that the war reached our shores. One man our historians spoke to vividly remembered the outbreak of war in 1939, saying 'I looked up to the sky, quite expecting there to be bombers coming over'.

At the beginning of the research for this book, New Zealanders were invited to fill in questionnaires about their experiences of service at home during World War Two. Many did so, and this book tells the stories of fifteen of them.

It is the final book in the series of oral histories of World War Two which the Ministry for Culture and Heritage has been compiling since 2000. Other volumes have explored the experiences of New Zealanders on Crete, in Italy, North Africa and the Pacific, as prisoners of war, and in the merchant navy. Taken together, these books give us the stories of more than 100 New Zealanders directly involved in the Second World War.

Their stories have been chosen to represent those of the many tens of thousands who served our country at home or abroad. As well, so that we could keep gathering the memories of women and men involved in the Second World War and subsequent conflicts, the Ministry established the From Memory war oral history programme in 2004.

We have also released a book about Kiwis' memories of being involved in D-Day and the war in Europe. And currently, we are collecting the stories of civilians who kept the home fires burning, so that a book on their story can be released in due course. While interviews continue with veterans from the Second World War, we are now moving to interview veterans from J-Force and K-Force, as well as those who served in Vietnam.

Most New Zealanders who served in uniform spent the war here, devoted to home defence in one form or another. There were over 100,000 New Zealanders in the home-based sections of the Army, Navy and Air Force. A quarter of a million more were in the Home Guard, the Women's War Service Auxiliary, or the various emergency services. When one includes the tens of thousands of men and women who served overseas, one begins to comprehend the enormous scale of the commitment made by New Zealanders in the Second World War, and why it, like its terrible predecessor, holds such an important place in our history.

Those who served in uniform at home were indeed New Zealand's last line of defence. The Home Guard was set up in 1940, taking young men as well as veterans from the First World War. Men like George Judge, a teenager at the time, joined as soon as they could: 'I was keen to get into it', he said.

Men had to fit their Home Guard duties around their full-time jobs, and it wasn't always easy. My father, George Clark, helping on the family farm in the Waikato when he joined the Guard with his father and brother, told us how the two jobs had to fit together : 'some days we'd gone out and dagged a few sheep or drenched some lambs, and then gone off to Home Guard'. Entire Saturdays could be spent on Guard duty, before heading home in time to milk the cows.

The home-based sections of the forces kept New Zealand's war effort rolling. Peter Crispe talked about his role in the instruments section of the Air Force, where his work involved servicing oxygen units for pilots heading off to the South Pacific Islands. In the Army, men such as Harry Spencer worked in the training camps - in his case, out at Trentham where he made sure the cookhouses never ran short.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941 pushed up New Zealand's defences by several notches. There was a real fear of invasion. Gwen Stevens worked with radar and recalled the 'panic stations' that could set in: 'It really was quite scary at times', she told us. Derek Laver was aboard one of the naval launches that patrolled Wellington Harbour: 'If any submarines lurked around the New Zealand coast, we were there to bop them on the head with depth-charges.'

This book includes the stories of nine women from the many thousands who took the opportunity to be involved in home defence. Maisie Takle told us how, once her husband, brothers, and cousin were posted overseas, 'I wasn't going to be left home not doing something, so I joined the Red Cross', eventually nursing in the Air Force. Maisie Munro was among the first women in the country to enlist. She joined the Women's War Service Auxiliary when it was set up in mid 1940, and she was in the first intake of Wrens accepted by the Navy.

These women did a huge range of tasks. Ngaire Gibbons wanted - and got - a job driving big trucks; Hazel Rowe trained at the School of Artillery and spent several months at an anti-aircraft battery near Lyttelton. Former WAAC Kath Dyall worked in the officers' mess at Castor Bay and eventually became 'batwoman' for a woman officer. Former Wren Heather Crispe also had an officer to look after, but her duties turned out to be very different from Kath's: 'I had to not only clean the billiard table, I had to iron it', she told us. Her tasks of cleaning the men's latrines stopped after her mother called the superintendent of the Wrens.

In those days it wasn't really the done thing for young single women to leave home, so joining up was a big step. 'You've got to look after yourself in Queen Street. It's a terrible place', Jane McIntyre recalls her parents warning.

The stories in this book occurred far from the centres of battle and chaos, but they show us that service and sacrifice take many forms. In this war, as in others, some people decided that they could not take part in the conflict. The stance of conscientious objectors such as Merv Browne also entailed sacrifice; his refusal to report for military service in 1941 led to his detention until May 1946.

Looking back on this period of their lives, the people we interviewed see their experiences as vital in shaping their character; 'I think it was the making of me', one told us. Yet they also voice their hope that their grandchildren will never have to go through a war: 'Nobody wins. Nobody', Betty van Praag said.

This final book in the series leads me to reflect on the things shared in common by the many people we've interviewed over the years for this oral history series. The strong Kiwi sense of fair play always shines through. All of our interviewees had a job to do, and they got on with it, without fuss or fanfare. And when they did extraordinary things - as so many did in those extraordinary times - they are the first to understate their achievements. The stories in these books truly tell us much about what it means to be a New Zealander and to do things in a New Zealand way.

So let me congratulate all who have been involved with this volume, and with the entire series : Megan Hutching, the team at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and our publishers HarperCollins. I especially want to pay tribute to all those who generously shared their memories with us so that we and future generations never forget.

It gives me great pleasure now to launch:

"Last Line of Defence: New Zealanders Remember the War at Home"

ENDS

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