Over £350,000 Spent Monthly By Americans

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 200, 24 August 1945, Page 4

Over £350,000 Spent Monthly By Americans

By CLIVE TIDMARSH

TT did one good to hear Lieutenant- * Colonel Lloyd Nickerson, U.S. Marine Corps, officer commanding the Third Base Depot, talk about the high workmanship of New Zealand artisans. If they earned big money here a year or two ago—and it was never as big as rumour or boasting had it—they must have earned every penny of it.

"The average workman in this country has a background of apprenticeship unequalled in our experience," said Colonel Nickerson. : 'He can do anything—l mean that sincerely—we could never have done the job without him."

It seems that in the States there is a greater tendency for tradesmen to specialise. For instance, a man can put a screw in a rotor and do it well without knowing precisely what a rotor is and does. The New Zealander may not be so fast but his knowledge is more comprehensive. Overtime Was Controlled A word about the wages. It was a popular misconception that the "Yanks were paying high wages." As I have mentioned in an earlier article, they were roughly one-third of the wages that would have been paid in the United States. They were New Zealand award rates based on a 44-hour week and the amount of overtime, which was governed entirely by circumstances, never exceeded 60 hours a week. Strict control over overtime was exercised; it had to be authorised by the commanding officer at the camp. The veil can be lifted now on a number of interesting facts associated with the American development of Auckland city and suburbs as an important base, supply source arid billeting and hospital centre during the critical period of the war in the Pacific. Some Statistics Here is one fact: in reverse lendlease, cash payment and reimbursable items the Americans were spending over £350,000 a month. This big outlay started in late 1942 and didn't taper off until last April. Some of the orders which sent New Zealand merchants and distributors into a fiat spin included 700 cooking stoves, 50,000 camp cots, 150,000 pairs of shoes, 240.000 woollen blankets. They bought 28,000 tarpaulins and hundreds of tons of special water and rot-proofing compound. Quite early in the activities of the United States Joint Purchasing Board orders were put in and fulfilled for 1,000,0001b of sugar and about 500,000 ft (board measurement) of timber. Dominion firms found 25,000 sacks of cement a month for the J.P.B. for use on defence works in the Islands. It is not generally known, too, that the Americans purchased in New Zealand no fewer than 700 motor vehicles (90 per cent new) which were declared surplus by the Army Department and were originally imported here under lend-lease. - Arsenal on Motutapu During the six months ended April, 1943, the U.S. authorities in Auckland received 50,000 tons .of ammunition. Eighty magazines were built on Motutapu for storage, but they were never used, because as fast as the ammunition arrived it was dispatched. Moreover, the war began to move away from New Zealand. For months the "goings-on" at Motutapu were a close secret.

This information will help to fill in a few of the gaps in the mass of scrappy data, hearsay and rumour which surrounded the doings of the Americans when they were among us in large numbers. Much more could be written about Camp Bunn. About, for instance, the intricate and comprehensive cost accounting system under which every item reclaimed was "logged in" and the complete cost accounted for. (These records, or most of them, have been shipped to the United States for the official archives.)

Camp Burin, all the other reclamation schemes, the big building programme, the food production drive, transport organisation—all these are achievements on the home front of which New Zealanders equally with their American Allies have every reason to feel proud. They must have made no mean contribution to final victory.