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The Featherston ‘incident’

This month is the forty-third anniversary of a bloody event in New Zealand. BRIAN MACKRELL accuses historians and encyclopaedia compilers of studiously ignoring...

As the makers of the movie “Utu” discovered when they burrowed into New Zealand history to give their work authenticity, our past is so bloody it makes the Wild West look tame — they had to tone down some of the events which they re-enacted on film. The killing of prisoners of war in this country has the dubious distinction of being a long-estab-lished practice, common to Maori and European. The missionary Francis Hall gave one of the first eye-witness accounts in 1821, on the return of a Northland war party: “At length the canoe ... came in contact with the shore; when the widow of Tettee and other women rushed down upon the beach in a frenzy ... pulled several prisoners-of-war into the water, and beat them to death ... The frantic widow then proceeded to another canoe, and dragged out a woman-prisoner into the water, and beat out her brains with a club with which they pound fern root. We retired from this distressing scene ...”

In 1843 Maori and European clashed in what, for decades after, was called “The Wairau Massacre” but is now referred to in the Bateman New Zealand Encyclopedia (1984) as the “Wairau Affray.” Interestingly this same reference work’s entry for Featherston tells us about the politician and that the town named after him “is snuggled into the northern foothills of the Rimutaka Range” — but not a word about the 1843 massacre or affray. Likewise the threevolume Government Printer’s 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand makes no mention of blood spilt at Featherston.

At Wairau in 1843 armed Europeans foolishly attempted to arrest Te Rauparaha. In Maori eyes they attempted to treat a

high chief like a taurekareka — a wretched slave. In the inevitable exchange of lead that ensued Te Rongo, wife of Te Rangihaeata, was shot dead. Some Europeans then fled under heavy fire and their leader, Arthur Wakefield, and a dozen others, laid down their weapons and surrendered. George Brampton, who escaped into the bush, heard the enraged Rangihaeata demanding the death of the prisoners as utu — blood payment for the death of his wife, who had been caught in the cross-fire of a battle which the Europeans had begun. Wakefield and his men were tomahawked. In the Maori code the killings had been tika —■ correct. Te Rongo’s murder had to be

avenged with blood, and men who surrendered in battle deserved only slavery or death. But to Europeans it was a coldblooded massacre and they “demanded Maori blood. The Governor of the day refused to oblige for he rightly declared that the European’s actions had been stupid and illegal. This did not endear him to white settlers, who saw to it that he was replaced. Europeans never forgot the “Wairau massacre” and the gory details were frequently retold over ensuing decades. Yet other, bloodier massacres failed to receive the publicity given the Wairau. In 1866, for example, “The Nelson Examiner,” a newspaper particularly loud in howling for Maori blood in 1843, reporting on the Taranaki War,

briefly noted that “There were no prisoners made in these late engagements as General Chute

... does not care to encumber himself with such costly luxuries.”

So what happened to the Maoris he captured or who surrendered to him? Did he let them go free or was it a case of "every bullet has its billet?” Similarly the slaughter of 100 prisoners of war by Government forces after the fall of Ngatapa fort in 1869 where “We just lined them up on a cliff edge in batches and gave them a volley,” according to a European participant, was ignored or dismissed as just retribution for those responsible for the Poverty Bay attack and “massacre” of November, 1868.

Laurie Barber, in his history of our army, “From Red Coat to Jungle Green,” writes: “There is no doubt that the Maori auxiliaries sometimes killed women and children in and after their attacks, and that they were sometimes egged on to murder prisoners by their pakeha commanders, or brother pakeha officers. Sometimes they merely followed pakeha example. A Major Riggs deliberately shot a prisoner identified by Major Ropata as a troublemaker.”

Barber offers a little light relief with a story from the history of the Royal Irish Regiment in which an officer overhears two soldiers discussing what to do with a Maori prisoner after the battle of Orakau. Deciding they want to be rid of him but loath to kill him in cold blood the Irishmen reputedly gave the Maori a kick in the backside that sent him off into the bush while they hurried off to rejoin the regiment. But, again, there is no mention of Featherston, 1943, in Barber’s

otherwise comprehensive book. Featherston Military Camp, a small town in its own right, was officially opened in 1916 and was “the last New Zealand home for thousands of soldiers” in the First World War. In the Second World War, as the tide turned in the Allies’ favour, the Americans requested P.O.W. facilities for their ever-increasing numbers of captives. Featherston Camp became the “home” of some 850 Japanese P.O.W.S, guarded by several hundred New Zealanders. Of these prisoners, about 500 were choyokoin: labourers pressed into service for supply line maintenance, bridge and road-building.

While the choyokoin probably shared the general Japanese sense of shame at having been made captive by the enemy, they were not of the samurai warrior class to whom captivity was worse than death. When their captors put them to work on camp fatigues and in Wairarapa market gardens there were no complaints. Conditions in the camp were very good and they were even paid for their work, which rarely exceeded 30 hours per week.

All this was in accordance with the 1929 Prisoners of War Convention which specified that P.O.W.S were to work for a standard rate of pay. Copies of this convention were posted up at Featherston Camp — but they were all in English.

To the remainder of the prisoners — Japanese officers and regular troops, adherents of the bushido warrior code — camp conditions were too good, too soft, and the very idea of manual labour was abhorrent to samurai. But worst of all was the terrible shame of captivity. To samurai, as it was to old-time Maori, this was a fate worse than death: warriors should die fighting.

In the bushido code, if death in battle was not possible, suicide was the only way to save honour and apologise to the Emperor for failure. Several of the Japanese

interned at Featherston had already tried that. One junior officer arrived with 180 stitches in his head after deliberately smashing his skull against the steel bulkhead of the ship aboard which he was transported to New Zealand in a badly wounded State. Another officer, Michiharu Shinya, who subsequently wrote "The Path from Guadalcanal,” resisted American rescuers trying to haul him from the sea off the Solomons, screaming at them: “No thanks!” and trying to get back into the water to drown.

Many Japanese attempts at suicide would have succeeded but for the fact that the prisoners were too weak from wounds to carry the act through. But after recovering their strength at Featherston, the resolve to save honour returned.

Japanese officers were kept in a separate compound from regular soldiers and labourers and presumbly their rank excused them from work duties. But on the morning of February 25, 1943, two officers went into the regulars compound and apparently ordered them to refuse to work. A New Zealand officer and

guards confronted the Japanese officers and ordered them out of the compound. They refused to obey and one was forcibly removed.

The New Zealand officer threatened the remaining Japanese officer with his revolver and fired a shot into the ground at his feet When that failed to move him he was shot in the shoulder. Why he was not forcibly removed as his fellow officer had been Is a question that will probably never be answered: possibly he had armed himself with a baton or some other weapon.

Over 200 Japanese regulars surged forward as their officer was shot, hurling stones and brandishing six-inch nails they had flattened into “knives.” The Kiwi guards opened fire with machine-guns, and 122 Japanese were cut down in a matter of seconds. Thirty-one died on the spot, 17 subsequently died of their wounds and 74 others were to recover from wounds.

As the Japanese still standing fell back from the hail of lead, one, shot in the legs, dragged himself forward screaming abuse at the guards, hoping someone would shoot him fatally. He related his story to a Japanesespeaking Kiwi many years after that bloody day. He was endeavouring. to die an honourable death. But, as he recalled,

despite his best broken-English obsenities, a Maori guard only waved his rifle at him and kept saying: "Get back! Get back!” Honour was satisfied for that Japanese’P.O.W., because he had done his best to be killed even though the enemy would not oblige.

Six New Zealand guards were wounded in the brief and bloody clash and one was killed — by New Zealand bullets. An official inquiry attributed the "incident” to the failure of the Japanese to understand the 1929 Convention and a mutual, misunderstanding of language and culture. An unofficial story explains the high death toll as due to a young Kiwi soldier’s finger freezing in fear on the trigger of his machinegun. One ex-serviceman put it' bluntly: "It all happened because the people in charge were incompetent.”

Today sheep graze where the Featherston Camp once stood and a plaque set in a roadside picnic area is inscribed with a Japanese haiku poem: “Behold the summer grass, all that remains of the dreams of warriors.”

The Wairau /affray’

'Egged on to murder’

Shot fired into ground

Finger froze on trigger

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19860208.2.132.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 19

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,657

The Featherston ‘incident’ Press, 8 February 1986, Page 19

The Featherston ‘incident’ Press, 8 February 1986, Page 19

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