New Zealand in the Pacific War

P EARL HARBOR MARKED for New Zealand a potentially epochmaking crisis, though it is already receding from the consciousness of a people prone to move along accustomed grooves which are tacitly assumed to have been cut by inscrutable Providence. By December 1941 New Zealand had been at war for over two years, and had made an effort that was highly creditable for a country of her limited resources. Whether the standard be men in uniform, casualties suffered, or the sustained efforts of farmers and industrial workers, New Zealand could claim that the had at least pulled her weight among the enemies of Hitler. Yet New Zealand-the remotest country of the South Pacific-fought really as part of Europe. Isolated enemy raiders sank merchant ships just off her coasts, but the Pacific problems played little part in her consciousness. The war seemed plainly a European affair and, like World War I. a struggle to be decided on the other side of the globe. The cream of her man-power was drained away to fight in the air over Europe, around the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the Battle of the Atlantic. Her foodstuffs-Britain's number one priority among instruments of warflowed towards Europe. She looked, as usual, to London for leadership, and felt her bonds with Britain grow closer in strategy, politics and economic interest. This pattern was rudely shattered by Pearl Harbor and the disasters that followed, for the Japanese then gave convincing proof that New Zealand was, after all, situated in the Pacific, and that her fate was bound up with the power of the United States as well as that of Britain. She had been an outpost, lightly garrisoned because of geographical protection. Overnight she found herself threatened by a military power which had won staggering successes. This was no crisis of European origin to be fought out on other people's territory. It arose and would be decided in the Pacific; and New Zealand was involved, not merely as in Europe through cultural and economic bonds with a major participant, but as a possible battlefield. In short, Pearl Harbor momentarily brought into the clear light of day the essential dualism of New

Geography · New Zealand studies · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Canadian Identity and History · History · Military and Defense Studies