Maori units in the Pacific?

[errolmartyn]

Jan 12, 2013 13:59:46 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

. . . I doubt anyone has taken the time (and it would be a LOT of time) to research and collate the finer details of such lists as those who volunteered and never served, but as Errol rightly points out, not everyone who volunteered actually went on to serve (Maori or otherwise); and not everyone who was drafted did either for various reasons. . . .

Thanks for this Dave.

You may have more chance of getting through to Jock than me regarding 'volunteer' and 'served'. Incidentally, I have researched in whole or in part over 10,000 New Zealanders who volunteered and/or served in military aviation up to 1949.

If Jock cares to arrange the funding I shall be happy to work up a list of those who volunteered for service but for one reason or another never got to serve. It might require a Lotto win first, however!

Errol

[Dave Homewood]

Actually I have a small example - whilst researching the pre-WWII Territorial Air Force I found a selection of application letters from all over Auckland and the Waikato for people volunteering to serve in the Auckland (Territorial) Squadron. I was excited about the find till I realised that out of the 50 or so letters, I think only one person went on to join the squadron. This stack of applications were all those who volunteered and for various reasons were turned down for service. A few were already competent pilots too, but lived too far away I assume.

Also I found records of the doctors examinations for one of the three TAF squadrons, i think again the Auckland Squadron (off the top of my head) and I seem to recall it noted how many made it through and how many didn't - and they were a different lot of volunteers who'd made it to the next stage.

At a much different time I also recall that of those who volunteered to join the RNZAF and did the entry test at the same time as me, only a third of the maybe 60 people actually passed and got in (me inculded). That in itself amazed me as it was after lots of interviews, assessments and I am sure after the pre-entry medical.

[sprjock]

Jan 12, 2013 13:59:46 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

There will have been records of those people (anyone) who volunteered for service and were turned down for medical reasons or due to criminal convictions or any other reason.

There will also have been records of those who were drafted and appealled the draft due to their religion, political views, a medical condition, the status of their civilian employment and other reasons too. These seem to have always been reported in the local newspapers when a draftee appealled, often the appeal was granted and instead of going into the Army they would be directed to join the Home Guard - so not all Home Guards were volunteers although the majority were. This is why I asked if Maori were exempt from the draft, perhaps it was a genuine reason with which to appeal to the Appeals Board? Just wondering.

For example the Tainui tribe apparently refused to allow its members of the tribe to join the military, So if any of them had their name come up in the ballot to be drafted, did they have the right to appeal simply because of their ancestry?

I doubt anyone has taken the time (and it would be a LOT of time) to research and collate the finer details of such lists as those who volunteered and never served, but as Errol rightly points out, not everyone who volunteered actually went on to serve (Maori or otherwise); and not everyone who was drafted did either for various reasons. Like everything in historical research there are grey areas, and I think it is right to be cautious over the figures.

It's quite possible the website meant that around 16,000 Maori served their country in military and home defence units overseas and at home, and all happened to be volunteers, but the site just did not word it without the ambiguity that Errol points out. No-one is saying the figure is blatantly wrong, as such.

Dave ,

Did you not know , that there was no compulsory conscription for Maori . Hence all Maori who served , men women , children , overseas or at home , in any war service capacity , were volunteers .

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
"Maori enlistment was voluntary while conscription for non-Maori was introduced at the end of May 1940. "

www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/maori-in-second-world-war/response
-----------------------------------------------------------

Given the number Maori of who enlisted voluntarily , there was no need for compulsory conscription .

If you had read my posts above , and followed up on the info you would have learnt that .

check these out
---------------------------------------------------------

" Compared to the Pakeha enlistment, the number of the Maori enlisting voluntarily was still higher:

“Pakeha (men) enlistments corresponded to one in 55 of the population, the Maori (men) registrations
represented one in 32 (Soutar 66). This trend was to continue as the combination of traditions,
history and the hope for changes in the society drove the Maori to the fights for their country
till the last days of the war. "

is.muni.cz/th/261886/ff_b/Bachelor_Thesis_-_Pivovarnikova.txt

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"... 17 000 Māori men enlisted between 1939 and 1945, all Māori enlisting were volunteers.... "

www.nzqa.govt.nz/nqfdocs/ncea-resource/schedules/2010/90214-ass-2010.pdf

.......................................................................
"Those who volunteered to enlist in the Second World War would not be stopped, and by 1942 nearly 1000 Waikato men had volunteered for service. "
www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/maori-in-second-world-war/response
--------------------------------------------------------
Waikato area Maori men of course being in the main , Tainui Iwi Maori men .

How hard is it to do the research ?

Taking your lead from a racist fool who does not believe that Maori exist as a people anymore on the grounds that
"There are now no full-blood Mâori ..... bla bla bla " is hardly the best course of action to take .

Jock

[ErrolC]

Jock, you seem to be arguing against points that have not been made by anyone here.

A person can volunteer to serve, but not serve.

Therefore, when a source states 'Between 1939 and 1945 almost 16,000 Mâori volunteered for war service', without more detail we don't know if this means
1) 16,000 Mâori are recorded (or have been later calculated/assumed/estimated) as having volunteered, and some smaller number actually served. or
2) 16,000 Mâori (all of which were volunteers) served.

If the quote was 'there were 16,000 Mâori volunteers in WW2', then there is a better chance that meaning 2 was intended, as in this context, as you say, 'volunteer' normally means a serving person who volunteered.


And calling people racist fools for believing what they have been told about current 'full-blooded' Mâori (it's certainly what I was taught) doesn't help the conversation. No-one has stated that 'Mâori don't exist as a people', you introduced this concept.
It is useful to understand how the authorities dealt with such matters, especially during the period when Mâori were exempt from conscription.

ErrolC (not errolmartyn)

[Dave Homewood]

Whoa, Jock, I'm sorry but this is a discussion forum where we exchange information and ideas for the purpose of sharing in history and news. When people don't know something and thus ask about it we don't expect to get an angry tirade in response. The way it usually works here is if someone does know the answers to questions they willingly and happily share the information, to help better the understanding of others.

This is clearly not an area of history I know a great deal about, hence the reason why I have actively engaged in the discussion with questions that I hoped might be answered with the respect that I asked them. I am fast going off the whole subject to be honest.

No, though I had my suspicion that there wasn't, I did not know for sure if there was conscription or not for Maori, that is why I asked. Pretty simple?

Amazingly I did read your posts and I did actually follow the links too but missed seeing that particular point. My apologies for ruining your day!

So we now have a descrepency of 16,000 volunteering and 17,000 enlisting?

How are such totals even found? Is it from Electoral Roll or Cencsus data collated to say who was Maori and what their job at the time was? Because I don't recall seeing any question on the WWII RNZAF application forms for example asking if the applicant was Maori or not - maybe because they had their own seperate battalion the Army did?

I get the feeling that you simply don't want to see the point about the difference in volunteerig and actually serving, but the facts remain.

Another factor here totally overlooked is that whilst a certain number of non-Maori members of society who received a compulsory draft notice, a great many of them had already volunteered to serve in the Territorial Army, doing months of training in camp and returning to their work (often vital war work) to await their draft notice which meant the Army was now ready for their intake. They were not skiving around hoping they would not get called on. And even those who were not yet in the TA were also often in vital war work.

It should also be mentioned over 60,000 volunteered for service in the RNZAF, they did not conscript, so the Maori Battalion is not alone in this.

[errolmartyn]

"It should also be mentioned over 60,000 volunteered for service in the RNZAF, they did not conscript, so the Maori Battalion is not alone in this."

Also easily overlooked are those who enlisted in the NZ Divsion of the RN (including FAA) or RNZN or RNZNVR - all volunteers, as were the WAAFs and New Zealanders who served in the RAF (ie, as members of the RAF, not to be confused with RNZAF personnel who were attached to same), RAAF, RCAF, SAAF, USAAF and RAN, and probably one or two other outfits that I've momentarily overlooked.

Errol

[ngatimozart]

A little point about NZ History and state education cirriculum with regard to Māori. Most, if not all of us who went through the NZ schooling system prior to 1990 had the School Journal which was written by pākeha education department civil servants from I think the early 1920s onwards. It was very white and british ethnocentric which the education system was. Within the School Journal a lot written about Māori was negative and untrue. So Jock, when Errol says that is what he has been taught, that is what was taught at school. I would presume that Dave, like myself, would've been taught the same. Nā mihi, Paul.

Edit: Corrected wrongly named participants

[Dave Homewood]

Paul, are you referring to me in that post when you say Dave? If you are you might want to review your facts, as I did not say that. Others have, not me!

[ngatimozart]

Jan 14, 2013 19:44:31 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

Paul, are you referring to me in that post when you say Dave? If you are you might want to review your facts, as I did not say that. Others have, not me!

My apologies Dave, I have changed it.

[Dave Homewood]

I don't recall ever being taught that at all at school. But I have certainly seen it on TV a few times, such as in debates on Holmes, in much more recent years. A look round the internet seems to be pretty inconclusive other than that there is an ongoing debate.

[sprjock]

ErrolC,

You are wrong .
It would have been a good idea if you had read the whole thread before you started posting in it .
If you had you would have read this

Dec 29, 2012 11:18:13 GMT 12 errolmartyn said:

At the risk of repeating myself . . .

Through my interest in New Zealanders in aviation prior to 1950 (database-index of about 60,000 individuals) I have been approached a number of times by folk interested in tackling this subject, but all have soon given it away upon realising the difficulties involved.

There are now no full-blood Mâori and identifiying who is Mâori' or their percentage of Mâoriness is a very complicated business as the result of over two centuries of Maori-European inter-marriage.
To establish who was Mâori serving in the RNZAF during the Second World War, for instance, would to begin with involve examining in detail hundreds or perhaps thousands of individual service records and then checking out the Whakapapa of each man or woman.

In other words, what you are asking of Dave is a near impossible task (unless he has nothing better to do with the rest of his life!).

Errol

Two things .
I did not introduce the racism to this thread. errolm did .
errolm , in his petulant reply to the opening post , attempted to subvert the topic with his insistence that
"There are now no full-blood Mâori and identifiying who is Mâori' or their percentage of Mâoriness is a very complicated business as the result of over two centuries of Maori-European inter-marriage"
rather than stick to the topic , errolm the racist tried to stop the discussion in its tracks , by his cowardly introduction of his " no full-blood Mâori " comment .
Rushing to the aid of the vile fool is not a good idea.

Next time make sure that you have read the thread properly before you make a fool of yourself with comment like this

"Jock, you seem to be arguing against points that have not been made by anyone here."


Many of us were informed in our childhoods that there are no full blooded Maori in New Zealand anymore .
And we know why successive governments , made up of people who were themselves not full blooded in anyway ( other that human) , played that card .
We all had the option to accept or reject that foul attitude . The very war that is at the root of this thread was fought in part to combat that philosophy.
We were also told in our childhood that the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas existed .
Anyone who grew to adulthood still believing any of that is a fool indeed .


As to the nit picking about served , served over seas , enlisted , enlisted and rejected , volunteered , etc ..... pure semantics .
Semantics the extent of which I have yet to see in any discussion regarding non Maori and wartime service .


in disgust ,
Jock

[ErrolC]

I had read all of it, you appear to have a very different interpretation of meaning and intent from anyone else. What everyone else thinks is trying to define a question in a way that makes research and understanding possible (if not practical), you consider racism.
I'm sure no-one in this discussion thinks the answer to the original question is 'there were no full-blooded Maori in 1939, therefore the answer is zero'.
Any other answer to the question of defining Maori, would, as Errolm said, involve a huge amount of work, and a 'correct' answer isn't possible. Estimates can of course be made.

As to the nit picking about served , served over seas , enlisted , enlisted and rejected , volunteered , etc ..... pure semantics .Semantics the extent of which I have yet to see in any discussion regarding non Maori and wartime service.

You haven't looked very hard - it's clear in this very thread that many non-Maori 'volunteered' and 'served', but weren't in the full-time armed forces. And it isn't 'pure semantics', but words with different meanings, which are important in trying to understand what a source actually means. Trying to understand what a source means by '16,000 volunteered' doesn't lessen any of their actions - while you appear to take it as an insult.

[ngatimozart]

Spr Jock, where are you from?

It is very easy to sling allegations of racism but it is much harder to define and understand the issues that lie therein, whether it be from the perpetrator racist or the victim of racism. Racism has very many forms and it is very easy to claim something is racist when it isn't and political correctness is good at this. Conversly it is also very easy to claim that something isn't racist when it fact it is and again political correctness is good at this. For example I am a very firm believer that orientalism is racist, (I'm not going to explain it because it takes too long but google the term and Edward Said) whilst others deny orientalism isn't racist. So racism can be very much defined by the context within which it is being used. Now the phrase that there were no full blooded Māori in 1939 is not a racist term. There is nothing derogatory in that statement. It may be an incorrect statement but there is nothing inherently racist in it.

So my question to you is what in the statement there were no full blooded Māori in 1939 is racist and your valid reasons why you claim it is so? I just want to ensure that this is not just some ill informed political anti pākehā text that I see a lot of our young people do because unfortunately they haven't followed the advice of Sir Apirana Ngata.

Nā mihi,

Paul.

[corsair67]

Jan 20, 2013 19:09:46 GMT 12 ngatimozart said:

Spr Jock, where are you from?

It is very easy to sling allegations of racism but it is much harder to define and understand the issues that lie therein, whether it be from the perpetrator racist or the victim of racism. Racism has very many forms and it is very easy to claim something is racist when it isn't and political correctness is good at this. Conversly it is also very easy to claim that something isn't racist when it fact it is and again political correctness is good at this. For example I am a very firm believer that orientalism is racist, (I'm not going to explain it because it takes too long but google the term and Edward Said) whilst others deny orientalism isn't racist. So racism can be very much defined by the context within which it is being used. Now the phrase that there were no full blooded Māori in 1939 is not a racist term. There is nothing derogatory in that statement. It may be an incorrect statement but there is nothing inherently racist in it.

So my question to you is what in the statement there were no full blooded Māori in 1939 is racist and your valid reasons why you claim it is so? I just want to ensure that this is not just some ill informed political anti pākehā text that I see a lot of our young people do because unfortunately they haven't followed the advice of Sir Apirana Ngata.

Nā mihi,

Paul.

Well said, sir!

[errolmartyn]

“rather than stick to the topic , errolm the racist tried to stop the discussion in its tracks , by his cowardly introduction of his " no full-blood Mâori " comment .
Rushing to the aid of the vile fool is not a good idea.”

So Spr Jock accuses me of being racist, a coward and a vile fool.

Unlike Spr Jock, none of my posts have resorted to the desperate tactic of playing the man rather than the ball – and, again unlike Spr Jock, all have been under my own name.

I leave it those on the forum to decide for themselves who the real racist, coward and vile person here is.

Errol

[baronbeeza]

I am surprised we have taken off on this tangent. I certainly never took the full blooded Maori comment to be anything other than an indication of what qualifies as a Maori in this context.

I would still be interested in hearing how this was determined at the time. The Dambuster Len Chambers would have been approx 1/4 Maori which must qualify in any definition.

These days you don't need to have any Maori blood to be on the Maori electoral roll, you just need to feel Maori.

That has to be about as far removed as the 100% statement as you can get. So in definition we have some percentage between 100 and zero as being a prerequisite.

I think our questions remain, what was the definition or criteria that was applied at the time ?
I am guessing that would be the same criteria that would be applied to any prospective book on the subject.

We don't see much 'playing the man' type comments here and I am not so happy to see them appear in this thread. I don't mind them when said in jest, ala Auster type comments but this was something different again.
I would imagine many reading this would feel the same way.

www.teara.govt.nz/en/conscription-conscientious-objection-and-pacifism/1

[Dave Homewood]

I am not at all happy with the direction that Spr Jock has taken this discussion, and I feel that he should retract the accusation of racism he levelled at Errol Martyn and apologise to both Errols here in public. I am very tempted to ban Spr Jock for being a troll, but if he chooses to apologise and agrees to actually approach this in an adult and civilised manner and as a historian that is willing to listen as well as pseak, he may win a repreive.

Initially I was most willing to learn from Spr Jock's information but I cannot help feeling he has let himself down badly by placing such a slur on such a well known and respected historian and member of this forum. Apologise and retract please Spr Jock.