TRIBUTE TO MAORI V.C.

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23973, 14 June 1943, Page 4

TRIBUTE TO MAORI V.C.

♦ MINISTERS ATTEND HUI EXAMPLE TO RACE AND NATION From Our Parliamentary Reporter WELLINGTON, June 13. The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser, and the Hon. E. T. Tirikatene, member of the Executive Council representing the Maori race, are attending a hui at an East Coast centre in honourable memory of Second-Lieutenant Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. Mr Fraser and Mr Tirikatene were accompanied by LieutenantColonel Hemphill, Maori Liaison Officer, and Mr D. W. Coleman, M.P., Gisborne. Mr Fraser will return to Wellington to-morrow morning. “It is a little over a year since we paid tribute to Captain Harding Leaf, who laid down his life for his country fighting with the Maori Battalion. There have been a great many other losses of sterling officers and men in that battalion, and now we mourn a young officer whose deeds have wo/i imperishable renown for his memory and for his race; indeed for the Dominion and the Empire,” stated the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) at Hiruharama (Jerusalem) before a large gathering to-day. He was paying tribute to the memory of 2nd Lieutenant Ngarimu, winner of the sixth New Zealand Victoria Cross in this war and the first Maori V.C.

Mr Fraser made a special journey, accompanied by the Hon. E. T. Tirikatene, to take part in the public ceremony on Lieutenant Ngarimu's home marae, the occasion being marked by a muster of Homo Guard units numbering 800 men. Mr Fraser read the citation of Lieutenant Ngarimu's award and said that without embellishment it would inspire generations of New Zealanders and write a new pag in the great fighting history of the Maori race. He added that the country would welcome representations that the Maori Battalion overseas be kept up to strength for the duration.