Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 15, 2008 13:50:23 GMT 12
I just found this on Google News
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/auckland/4346690a22896.html
Writer gets zero for accuracy
By PAT BOOTH - Auckland | Tuesday, 08 January 2008
Well, yes. We’ve all been involved in those holiday stories which somehow get garbled in the retelling. I’ve done it myself – but without the mass circulation of the latest example.
It’s from Britain’s The Spectator magazine which burst through the mass of Christmas mail to arrive in time for end-of-the-year reading.
The magazine’s travel editor Jonathan Ray called on us, it seems, at a bad time: A storm which prompted him to suggest a change of slogan from City of Sails (to gales). His diary of the few days (or hours) spent here does go on more than a little about the weather.
However, he did get out to walk around the Domain after a hugely (his word) "uplifting lunch, my main course alone (of caramelised pork belly, crayfish tail, pumpkin puree, rhubarb and sage butterscotch) merited the trip from London".
And it was then that the rain drove him into the Auckland War Memorial Museum which he praises enthusiastically as the fine building it is.
Once there though, some later misreading of his notes led him into a couple of inaccurate traveller’s tales. The museum’s memorial status took him down the first false path. He tells of the totals of war dead it remembers and then goes on.
"I had no idea that New Zealanders fought in the Boer War but following the cry ‘where Britain goes we go’ 6500 Kiwi volunteers sailed for South Africa, each providing his own uniform and horse and receiving only their rifles from a grateful British government.
"Where Britain goes and stands, etc." Yes, a great rallying cry, Jonathan. But the wrong war. These were the words used by our first Labour prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, in those early days of September 1939 when he followed Britain in declaring war on Germany.
Then there was the Japanese World War Two fighter which caught the visitor’s eye and set his romantic juices flowing. It had been, he wrote, "appropriated and flown home by an enterprising Kiwi pilot who had found it with the keys in".
I’m not at all sure that the Zero actually had an ignition key but that aside there’s plenty more false detail flying around this too.
My files from museum and RNZAF records show that the Zero was found when Australians reoccupied Bougainville just after the Japanese surrender in 1945. Damaged by Allied bombers, it had earlier been repaired by Japanese ground crew after being hidden for 18 months.
The Japanese flew a pilot, Sekizen Shibayama, in from Rabaul to ferry the Zero there but the surrender headed off that mission.
Instead, with the war over, there was some talk of getting him to fly the Zero out for his captors but this plan was quickly scrapped for fear he might decide to go out in a literal blaze of glory with a kamikaze attack on an Allied ship on the way.
Instead, New Zealand Wing Commander Bill Kofoed got some pretty basic instruction from Shibayama and intrepidly flew the Zero out himself on a 32-minute trip to the RNZAF base at Piva, on New Britain. A few days later, four other Japanese aircraft were flown into Piva by Japanese aircrews, escorted by RNZAF Corsairs.
Later in 1945, the museum Zero was shipped to Auckland during the war service of the inter-island ferry Wahine, which was later wrecked in a super storm at Wellington heads in 1968 when 51 drowned.
The last battle over the plane was in 1953 when the Government Stores Board decided it was of no value and was about to sell it for scrap when someone remembered it had been promised to the museum.
There you go then. All rather straightforward really – no key in the ignition, no flight "home" as Jonathan recorded it.
But like Jonathan – and for different reasons – many others are fascinated by the Zero. The fighter is a regular centre of interest for Japanese tourists in the museum.
One man who has made several pilgrimages to it on visits here is former kamikaze instructor professor Nobuya Kinase from Nagano prefecture, who dedicated himself to international peace and understanding after the war. Of 50 young pilots he trained, 40 died in suicide missions. Professor Kinase presented his navy uniform and dress dagger to the museum as exhibits in 1998, when he was aged 78.
Earlier, he helped me end my own four-year quest by finding the family of a Japanese soldier killed on Guadalcanal in December 1992. As a sequel, I wanted to return their brother’s personal flag to them. I did – on the 41st anniversary of his death. It had been taken from his body by a US marine and I had found it in a city militaria shop.
Professor Kinase’s gift to me to mark that day: A tiny badge of Japan’s Zero Pilots’ Association.
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/auckland/4346690a22896.html
Writer gets zero for accuracy
By PAT BOOTH - Auckland | Tuesday, 08 January 2008
Well, yes. We’ve all been involved in those holiday stories which somehow get garbled in the retelling. I’ve done it myself – but without the mass circulation of the latest example.
It’s from Britain’s The Spectator magazine which burst through the mass of Christmas mail to arrive in time for end-of-the-year reading.
The magazine’s travel editor Jonathan Ray called on us, it seems, at a bad time: A storm which prompted him to suggest a change of slogan from City of Sails (to gales). His diary of the few days (or hours) spent here does go on more than a little about the weather.
However, he did get out to walk around the Domain after a hugely (his word) "uplifting lunch, my main course alone (of caramelised pork belly, crayfish tail, pumpkin puree, rhubarb and sage butterscotch) merited the trip from London".
And it was then that the rain drove him into the Auckland War Memorial Museum which he praises enthusiastically as the fine building it is.
Once there though, some later misreading of his notes led him into a couple of inaccurate traveller’s tales. The museum’s memorial status took him down the first false path. He tells of the totals of war dead it remembers and then goes on.
"I had no idea that New Zealanders fought in the Boer War but following the cry ‘where Britain goes we go’ 6500 Kiwi volunteers sailed for South Africa, each providing his own uniform and horse and receiving only their rifles from a grateful British government.
"Where Britain goes and stands, etc." Yes, a great rallying cry, Jonathan. But the wrong war. These were the words used by our first Labour prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, in those early days of September 1939 when he followed Britain in declaring war on Germany.
Then there was the Japanese World War Two fighter which caught the visitor’s eye and set his romantic juices flowing. It had been, he wrote, "appropriated and flown home by an enterprising Kiwi pilot who had found it with the keys in".
I’m not at all sure that the Zero actually had an ignition key but that aside there’s plenty more false detail flying around this too.
My files from museum and RNZAF records show that the Zero was found when Australians reoccupied Bougainville just after the Japanese surrender in 1945. Damaged by Allied bombers, it had earlier been repaired by Japanese ground crew after being hidden for 18 months.
The Japanese flew a pilot, Sekizen Shibayama, in from Rabaul to ferry the Zero there but the surrender headed off that mission.
Instead, with the war over, there was some talk of getting him to fly the Zero out for his captors but this plan was quickly scrapped for fear he might decide to go out in a literal blaze of glory with a kamikaze attack on an Allied ship on the way.
Instead, New Zealand Wing Commander Bill Kofoed got some pretty basic instruction from Shibayama and intrepidly flew the Zero out himself on a 32-minute trip to the RNZAF base at Piva, on New Britain. A few days later, four other Japanese aircraft were flown into Piva by Japanese aircrews, escorted by RNZAF Corsairs.
Later in 1945, the museum Zero was shipped to Auckland during the war service of the inter-island ferry Wahine, which was later wrecked in a super storm at Wellington heads in 1968 when 51 drowned.
The last battle over the plane was in 1953 when the Government Stores Board decided it was of no value and was about to sell it for scrap when someone remembered it had been promised to the museum.
There you go then. All rather straightforward really – no key in the ignition, no flight "home" as Jonathan recorded it.
But like Jonathan – and for different reasons – many others are fascinated by the Zero. The fighter is a regular centre of interest for Japanese tourists in the museum.
One man who has made several pilgrimages to it on visits here is former kamikaze instructor professor Nobuya Kinase from Nagano prefecture, who dedicated himself to international peace and understanding after the war. Of 50 young pilots he trained, 40 died in suicide missions. Professor Kinase presented his navy uniform and dress dagger to the museum as exhibits in 1998, when he was aged 78.
Earlier, he helped me end my own four-year quest by finding the family of a Japanese soldier killed on Guadalcanal in December 1992. As a sequel, I wanted to return their brother’s personal flag to them. I did – on the 41st anniversary of his death. It had been taken from his body by a US marine and I had found it in a city militaria shop.
Professor Kinase’s gift to me to mark that day: A tiny badge of Japan’s Zero Pilots’ Association.
