Yank ‘invasion’ and the war years

Press, 18 December 1989, Page 36

Yank ‘invasion’ and the war years

The Yanks are Coming. By Harry Bioletti. Century Hutchinson, 1989. 223 pp. illustrations. $24.95. The War Years: New Zealanders Remember, 1939-1945. Edited by Anna Rogers. Platform Publishing, 1989. 173 pp. Illustrations. $29.95. (Reviewed by Angus Ross) The fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War II has witnessed the publication of several newspaper articles and sets of reminiscences. Here we review two of the latest books to appear relating to the subject. They have a special interest for New Zealand readers in that they deal specifically with a chapter in our history which deserves to be recorded before it is too late.

To a marked degree, both books relate more particularly to the North than to the South Island: all the “Yank” camps were situated in the North Island; eight out of the ten contributors to “The War Years” have North Island addresses. While both books have some things in common, such as the personal memories so fully described, they differ in that the “Yanks” provide one main theme while each chapter of the “War Years”' has its own quite separate subject matter. The sub-title of “The Yanks are Coming” is ‘'The American Invasion of New Zealand, 1942-1944.” It was an invasion welcomed by most New Zealanders because of the promise it conveyed of eventual victory in the Pacific, as well as in Europe. New Zealanders serving overseas were not so pleased to learn by slow stages, largely because of censorship imposed for security reasons, that their home country had been invaded by the Yanks. The current saying that the Marines and others were “oversexed, over-paid, and over here” did nothing to improve that impression. Nevertheless, in the main, the Americans were well received, more especially when after tough fighting at Guadalcanal, Tarawa and other Pacific islands, the survivors came back to New Zealand for rest and recreation. The author, Harry Bioletti, who himself served in the 29th and 30th Battalions of the 3rd New Zealand Division from Fiji through to Green Island, has made a good fist of his history of the Americans in New Zealand. With the aid of some entertaining reminiscences and anecdotes culled either from Marine Corps archives and published books, or from New Zealand newspapers and journals, he has described the “culture shock,” the training, the clashes in Manners Street, Wellington, and Queen Street, Auckland, and the general effect on this country of the “invasion.” While there is more a little

repetition of views held and comments made by New Zealanders, Bioletti is both informative and astute. For example, while most of us would know there were several New Zealand girls who became American war brides, Bioletti is able to tell us, “Nearly 1400 New Zealand women married American servicemen and went to the States as war brides.” This was despite the fact that each girl’s background was researched by an American chaplain before official permission was granted to a serviceman to marry. In addition, “Girls were subjected to the indignity of an examination for possible venereal disease, and also for pregnancy.” The other book, “The War Years,” contains 10 stories of personal memories which were originally broadcast in an award-winning “Spectrum” radio series. The individual contributors cover a very wide range of the experiences of ordinary men and women in the Second World War. Of the four servicemen, one was a young flying officer who inadvertently landed in southern Ireland and had to spend quite a time in the Curragh Internment Camp, an odd place if ever there was one, in that the prisoners were allowed out, on parole, to hunt or fish. The chapter, “Girls of the Silver Dollar,” by a woman public health nurse, supplements what Bioletti has to report on a subject usually skipped over by the official war historians. These two books do not add very much to our knowledge of the actual fighting in World War 11, although Bioletti’s chapters on some of the early Pacific island battles in which the Americans were engaged will be found most informative by New Zealand readers. But, in view of the current trend to stress social rather than straight political or military history, these books have their real importance, since they contain so much of interest on the social side of the Home Front. 7