A week in Wellington researching civilian internees who died while being kept here as

‘Japanese enemy aliens’ in WW2 for the

When You Call My Name Project

Supported by CAPO All Insure Emerging Artist Award

A week in Wellington researching civilian internees who died while being kept here as ‘Japanese enemy aliens’ in WW2 for the When You Call My Name Project, supported by CAPO All Insure Emerging Artist Award.
Most of the people I’m researching had settled in Tonga, and, coming from the heat of an Australian summer, Wellington feels like it is in the depth of winter, a southern ocean wind hurtling beneath heavy clouds and misty rain. The Japanese-born wives and Tonga-born children didn’t speak English, so New Zealanders had to communicate with them through Tongan interpreters. I read the Tongan word for cold is momoko.

Our flight path into Wellington takes us past Somes Island, where the men lived separate from their wives and children who stayed on the mainland. Each subsequent day the island haunts the horizon trapped between clouds and sea like a land of limbo. On the mainland, the archives unveil baby clothes being bought, children being born and growing up, for the near two years the families are separate.

 

Wellington waterfront is lined with plaques remembering brave explorers, seafarers and soldiers, including Japanese Antarctic explorers of 1910-2, but no one seems to remember the families I’m here to get to know.
The men from Tonga and Fiji lived with a few Japanese settlers from Aotearoa New Zealand, some of whom had integrated into Maori communities. They carved paua (abalone) which was sold by the Society of Friends to support the internees’ families.

 

Most of the people I’m researching died in a plane crash, and Bennett’s paper writes that the official instructions to witnesses of the crash were to ‘forget everything’. Is trauma better forgotten or processed?

Most of the people I’m researching died in a plane crash on their way to Australia, and flying in and out of the harbour in the failing light through thick cloud, I can’t help but think of that night, the fathers and mothers and their children, reunited briefly after almost two years apart before the horror of the crash.
At Wellington Airport, Kura Moeahu has shared the origin story of the harbour, with stunning artwork from Manukorihi Winiata, a peek of which is pictured here. Kura Moeahu talks of a tupua Whātaitai who lived with his brother trapped in Wellington harbour… one day they launched themselves into the air to make it to the outside world but Whataitai didn’t make it, crashing before he reached the ocean.
Whātaitai began to die, and in his last breath transformed into a shining bird before passing through a portal to the universe beyond.
https://brandstory.wellingtonairport.co.nz/#w-tabs-0-data-w-pane-0
This purakau reminds me so much of those who never made it out of New Zealand in 1943.
It makes also me think of the birds that fly between New Zealand and Tonga and hope that the spirits of the internees could have turned into one of those birds and made it home.

 

One of the groups of internees Archives NZ shed light on were a group of three Thai students in New Zealand to study mining.
Because the youngest of the students had once written a private letter in which he expressed his anger at encountering racial prejudice against Thais in New Zealand, and Thailand had capitulated to Japan’s invasion on the 8th December 1941, all three students were classified as dangerous to the white race and interned.    /  Archives NZ R22533540

 

The three young men died in the plane crash of 1943 – a loss lamented by their New Zealand friends in this letter, which says of the eldest, Bira “This boy had a brilliant career before him had not the war intervened. It seems very sad to think that he should die in a strange land unmourned (?) because a cruel chance has branded him an enemy.”  /. Archives NZ R22533540

 

At Mangere Arts Centre, South Auckland: a gathering of WYCMN participants. Left to right: Elizabeth Taufa, Aniselina Nishi, Sophie Constable and Ebonie Fifita.
We are holding a massive ngatu (tapa) cloth, made by stripping, soaking and beating the inner bark of the hiapo (paper mulberry). The same fibre is used to make washi paper in Japan.
We met to discuss creating a work to honour the memory of Aniselina’s great grandfather Kumazo, who was taken away from his Tongan wife and two young children in Tonga in Dec 1941.

 

Aniselina’s great grandfather Kumazo Nishi became seriously ill while interned in Wellington during WW2, so he wasn’t on the flight to Australia in 1943. In 1944, he reported feeling well enough to travel and asked to be allowed to go home to Tonga, as the German internees were then being allowed to return to Tonga. He was not allowed to return.
In 1945, a military messenger was sent to Kumazo’s hospital bedside to let him know that he was now technically a free man. He died shortly afterwards, never having been able to leave the hospital. His wife Manusiu requested his ashes be sent home to her in Tonga – Aniselina told us they finally made it there in the 1980s, reuniting Kumazo’s descendants in the act of reuniting Kumazo and Manusiu.
As ashes were an important of Kumazo’s story, Ebonie showed us a beautiful ngatu that had been coloured using ash. Ebonie and Peti are fele artists and we discussed how we might use ash, earth and Aniselina’s family photos to create a portrait of Kumazo incorporating his life and legacy.

Words and photos by Sophie Constable, otherwise stated.

Sophie’s work can be viewed here: https://www.instagram.com/sophieconstableart/

Ebonie Fifita’s work can be viewed here: https://www.instagram.com/fele_home/