Written by, and based on, the research of Dr Marsa Dodson
America’s Gift to the People of Aitutaki In 1942 the American servicemen came to Aitutaki to protect our island from Japanese invasion. They left behind their families and their homeland to travel to the unknown, to a foreign land. The people of Aitutaki remember these servicemen with gratitude for their great sacrifice. While residing on Aitutaki some of them had children with local women. We can say that this became a blessing because the Aitutaki blood was enriched through this mixed relationship. Some of these men tried to get their children across to America but were not successful. These children all grew up in Aitutaki. They have been very active sports people at the only local primary school of Araura, and also in their own villages as matured adults. Most married local men and women and became parents to many beautiful children. Some migrated to New Zealand, Australia and other countries. Those who remained in the Cook Islands worked for the government and private businesses. They also held prominent offices in their churches and the community. Most have retired and are enjoying life with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They are happy, fun loving and peaceful people.
Jackie Puna 6 February 2010
Some of the children left behind following the ‘friendly occupation’ shared information about their lives for this website. In the cases where the individuals are now deceased, family members contributed information on their behalf. Knowing briefly about their histories provides a wider picture of the long-term impact of the occupation upon the people left behind when the soldiers evacuated. It is helpful to understand that, within the Cook Islands culture and identity, having family relationships is highly valued.
Sad farewells at war's end - Martha Taiono and Arthur Beren at left - see their story below
After Maria Tera Akuhata (née Tiare) rejoined her mother to finish school in New Zealand at age fifteen, she became a hotel waitress. Through that position, Maria met and married the nephew of her co-worker in Gisborne. Their union produced two children, and when her husband’s mother offered to look after the children, Maria went to work in an Italian café until the family shifted to Whangarei for her husband’s job. Eventually the family returned to Gisborne where Maria resumed employment at the same Lyric Café, for a total of fifteen service years. Next, she sold Dromone linen for about a year, and then in 1988 she and her husband bought a fish shop in Tauranga. For five years, they ran this as a family business until her husband decided he wanted to sell fish wholesale to the public. Shortly after they sold the business, Maria’s husband died, and she became a bar manager in a squash club. For more than twenty years now, Maria has been employed in a fish cannery, initially as a packer. Presently, she is the canteen’s chef and supervisor, and her work day begins at five in the morning. Maria plans to retire in December 2017. She enjoys watching sports, running, playing squash, listening to Elvis and sewing tivaevae, the traditional style of quilt-making in the Cook Islands. Maria tends her flower garden that features many plants found in her island home. Although her father left Aitutaki unaware of his pending fatherhood, Maria was successful in establishing contact with her three half-sisters after their father passed away. Maria has six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Maria Akuhata
Ward Kenneth Faye Baker
or Baker Kaitamaki
Arthur Black Beren (Jnr.)
To view video of Arthur's touching story - click image below
Arthur's mother Martha Taiono
As a young man, Ward Kenneth Faye Baker or Baker Kaitamaki, was drawn to a teaching career. He worked as a probation officer and monitored youth offenders from the Outer Islands. Upon graduation in Rarotonga, he went to Mitiaro and became their school’s headmaster. By then he had fathered a child in a relationship that ended before he met and married Tauri Tararo in Rarotonga. After they had seven daughters, Baker, a man with a sense of humour, reminded friends, ‘On the seventh day, God rested.’ He worked as the court registrar in Rarotonga and earned a reputation for being extremely loyal to his employer over the years to the extent that he did not apply for other more lucrative positions. Baker lived his adult life in Rarotonga. Throughout his life, Baker was always drawn to papa’ā or European people. He spoke English fluently as did his children. Baker, a spiritual man, started an innovative home church and the Cook Islands Gospel Society. He was a successful business man and ran two businesses: BK (Baker Kaitamaki) Trekking and BK Taxis which operated three vehicles. After his government work and on Saturdays, Baker would schedule trekking excursions with tourists. He was excited to learn where they were from, and he always disclosed his American heritage to them. Baker was unsuccessful in locating his birth father; he did not know his father’s first name; however, he had a photo which he believed was his father. Baker was an active man of many hobbies such as snorkelling without the aid of a breathing apparatus. He loved to read. At age 52, Baker died of a heart attack from fish poisoning while playing rugby—his favourite sport—with the Golden Oldies’ team. Baker’s children have produced 21 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
News of Arthur Black Beren (Jnr.)’s existence came as a surprise to his step-father in Australia. This strained family relationships when Arthur joined his mother and increasing number of younger brothers. Eventually Arthur enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy and served twelve years as a marine electrician. Thereafter, Arthur returned to New Zealand where he met and married his wife, Mindy. Together, they raised their son and daughter. Arthur’s career interests shifted to horticulture, and he managed properties for international investors. Eventually Arthur scaled down his personal holdings to have his own feijoa orchard in Kerikeri, New Zealand. Additionally, he continues to manage investment properties for others. Arthur still enjoys golf. In January 2011, Arthur discovered that although his father was deceased, he had three American siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles. In July of that year, Arthur and his son flew to meet his American family in Flint, Michigan. Now Arthur has his father’s yarmulke and answers to many life-long questions about his paternal identity. In 2012, Arthur’s siblings came to meet him and the rest of his family in Rarotonga, a favourite destination. Reunions with his American family continue. Arthur and Mindy enjoy two grandchildren.
'Tiki' Richard Louis
Bixby-Hewett
Following ‘Tiki’ Richard Louis Bixby-Hewett’s abrupt return to Aitutaki after his brief high school experience in New Plymouth, New Zealand, he stowed away aboard a vessel to seek adventure and employment in Rarotonga. There he worked in a garage and a couple of shops before he was employed in A. B. Donald’s hardware department. Richard had several relationships that produced children before he married. The couple shifted to Aitutaki and had three children. Island politics drove him to Aotearoa here Richard worked in the Kinleith timber mill in Tokoroa. He sent for his family and continued working there for nineteen years. His youngest child was born in Tokoroa. The marriage ended, and Richard returned to Aitutaki where he has remained for over twenty years, working part of the time in agriculture for the government. He also took up lagoon fishing to supply several eating establishments on the island. Richard, a handy-man, operated a cottage industry as Aitutaki’s sole beer manufacturer. Named after his father, he was unable to establish contact with his paternal kin before his death in November 2015. His children produced eighteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Miriama E. F. Dol (née Gallogly) went to New Zealand on the Maui Pomare to continue her education. Her mother’s husband died before both Miriama and her sister by another American father, shifted to live with their mother and step-brothers. Having been raised in different homes in Aitutaki, the two sisters became close. Miriama finished her schooling and ran away from home to live with an aunt. There she began her first job as a shopkeeper in a haberdashery for six pounds per week, which seemed generous to her. In time she switched her job to data-entry. Miriama met her husband, Joe, at a dance, and they went on to raise their family of three children. She was employed between their births, and in 1981 she began a career of government service that spanned 28 years. Miriama worked first at the Ministry of Defence, and then after several years, she went to work for the Ministry of Social Development. Her roles in the latter included being the support officer preparing cases for prosecution, general administration and investigating fraud for the Benefit Fraud Division. When eventually offered redundancy, Miriama chose to retire. Now she travels between Australia and Aotearoa to enjoy her grandchildren and baby-sit as opportunities arise. It was a friend of Miriama’s who helped her find her American family after her birthfather passed away. Miriama flew to the States to meet one of her two brothers who drove her three and a half hours each way to visit their father’s gravesite. Miriama and Joe celebrated their golden wedding anniversary surrounded by loving family which includes five grandchildren.
Miriama Dol
Francis Gifford was seventeen when American workers came to renovate Aitutaki’s wharf. She found a job working for them as a cook and ironing the workers’ clothes until her family decided she should join her mother in Aotearoa. Initially Francis wanted to get into police work like her birthfather did during the war; however, she did not want to complete requisite English classes. Instead Francis became a kitchen hand in a boy’s college, and then she worked in a hospital. Eventually she became a community worker for Maori and Island Affairs and was on the grass-roots committee to develop a support organisation for Pacific people. Francis retained her fluency in the Aitutaki dialect, and she translated for the courts during judicial proceedings. Francis was involved in play groups and returned to the classroom to become a licensed Early Childhood head teacher at the Cook Islands Early Childhood Centre in Hastings on New Zealand’s North Island. Her five children were born in New Zealand, and she actively helped meet her family’s needs. Until her death on 1 May 2015, Francis was unsuccessful in locating her American family line which was disappointing to her and her family. She was a devoted grandmother to her twenty grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Francis Gifford
Jeffrey Harold Girard
In 1959, Jeffrey Harold Girard watched the final TEAL flight depart Aitutaki’s lagoon on the old Coral Route. After Tereora College where he excelled as a fast runner, Jeffrey landed a government job in Rarotonga with the thrift and loan cooperative. Then he decided to experience Aotearoa. Several years later he returned briefly to the Cook Islands; however, jobs were scarce so he headed back to New Zealand where he met and married his first wife. Jeffrey learned some lessons, and the couple separated. He went to work for Fisher and Paykel. There he met his second wife, Teina, one of the few Cook Islander girls around over 30 years ago. They had two children, one of whom died from spina bifida. After being made redundant, Jeffrey came up against ageism in hiring practices and took several jobs such as delivering orders for KFC and working nights for Woolworth’s until he officially retired in 2009. He and his wife had a new home built, and Jeffrey is the house husband until she retires. Their household now includes the daughter and her three children. Jeffrey helps with his grandchildren, and he also likes to read and fish. He never heard from his American father and every ANZAC day Jeffrey wonders what happened to him, if he is alive and where he might be. Jeffrey and Teina help with the care of their three grandchildren.
After completing high school in Whangarei Boys High School, New Zealand, and Tereora College in Rarotonga, Goldy Goldie enrolled in a police cadet training course in Trentham, Aotearoa, and discovered that he was suited to the career in which he subsequently served 38 years prior to retirement in 1999. During his tenure in the Cook Islands Police Service at Rarotonga, he worked his way up the administrative ladder to superintendent and second in command. He received additional training in New Zealand and Europe during his service years. At age 22, Goldy married a nurse and had two children. He built a retirement home on Aitutaki and was the island secretary there for a time. After his wife passed away in 2007, and he married Ngapoko Elizabeth Ben. Goldy began sailing and represented the Rarotonga team that competed in Fiji’s Hoby catamaran competitions in 1992 and 1993. He also liked to play rugby and softball. Goldy looked after the house in Rarotonga while his wife continued to work. He raised pigs until 4 pm—time to meet his buddies at the Cook Islands Game Fishing Club where he was a life member. On his 70th birthday Goldy celebrated by surviving a stroke which markedly changed his life. Until his death in December 2016, Goldy never learned who is father was, nor did he attempt to find him because he believed that his father should be the one to seek him. Goldy’s four grandchildren and great-grandchildren are interested in discovering their American kin.
Goldy Goldie
When Puroku Utivaru Hall (née Mokoenga) was doing her provisional teaching in Tokoroa, she met and married her husband, Jeff. She interrupted her professional career to raise their three children and then returned to the work force to teach in a Tokoroa kindergarten. In 2007 Puroku earned her Bachelor’s Degree from Canterbury University in ‘Teaching and Learning, Early Childhood,’ and she is considering undertaking a Master’s programme. After her foster mother’s death, Puroku began to look for her birth father. Until then, she did not feel the need to search. On her third attempt, Puroku found her family, although by then, her father was deceased. In September 2007, her father’s family arranged a reunion in America that Puroku and one of her two daughters flew over to attend. During that event, Puroku met her American aunt who used to write letters on behalf of her birth father to send to Puroku’s mother. This same aunt sewed dresses for Puroku and sent them to Puroku’s mother. Since their family reunion, that aunt passed away; however, several members of Puroku’s American family have visited her in Aotearoa, and they continue their relationship that nearly did not happen. At the end of 2016, Puroku retired from working at the Clyde Street Kindergarten. She lives independently and has nine grandchildren and just welcomed her first great-grandchild to the family.
Puroku Hall
Grover Lee Harmon carries his birth father’s name and wanted to be a doctor; however, his mother preferred that he become a teacher. So after attending night classes, Grover was hired as a junior teacher in Atiu to assist a home economics teacher for three months. Thereafter he headed to Rarotonga to attend Teachers Training College for three years during which he was recognised as the ‘Athlete of the Year’ for being a fast runner. Grover taught primary school in Rarotonga. He met his wife, Moeroa, at church, and they raised their five children, plus they foster another child. Grover credits his religious upbringing with providing many opportunities for him to develop as a public speaker. He taught at Tereora College for two years before he shifted his family to Aotearoa where he worked a day job at Finlay’s Bakery and at night he worked at Forest Products in Penrose. His goal was to earn enough money to purchase a car to take to Rarotonga. When Grover and his family returned to Rarotonga, he worked as the department head of the Education Administration for about five years. He moved around between various upper-echelon government positions in Finance and Marine Resources. After attempting politics, Grover took a break fishing and planting and found that he missed the social interaction of the classroom. So he taught at the Seventh-Day Adventist School until the next election when his party won. Grover was appointed Cabinet Secretary to the Prime Minister for ten years until the Opposition took power in 2011. Since then, Grover builds his business selling fabric. He sews professionally, a skill he learned from his mother. As his son’s running coach, Grover travelled globally. With the help of U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, Grover found and met his birth father and his half-siblings. Today there are four generations of Grover Harmons in the family. The same day that Grover had his appendix removed in Rarotonga, his father died in the States. Grover and his wife have seventeen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Grover Lee Harmon
Funds were limited for Ani Ioane (née Rima) to continue higher education so she went to work as a shop assistant in Aitutaki for five years. Then she shifted to work as a domestic staff at Iona College near Hastings, New Zealand for two years. It was at a birthday party during the school holidays in Tokoroa where Ani met her husband, Marama. When her widowed grandfather became unwell, she returned to Aitutaki to become his care-giver. Her fiancé, also an Aitutakian, returned to look after his father’s family business. They married in a double wedding with the other couple being Ani’s new in-laws. Ani and her husband raised a family of four children. They ran several businesses that have since been turned over to their children although she still helps out. Ani’s birth father returned to Aitutaki when she was an adult and inquired about her at Ani’s shop; however, at the time, she happened to be out and missed that opportunity to meet him. Since the hurricane of 2010, Ani and her husband built and run a hardware shop. Ani’s hobby is creating tie-dyed pareu, which people wear as clothing, to sell in their shop. Ani was able to locate her birth father in Hawaii and spoke to him on the phone before he passed away. She and her husband have thirteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Ani Ioane
Merida Vise Kavana
Merida Vise Kavana was raised in the same home in Tautu alongside his cousins, Mary Ruggieri and Francis Gifford. Underneath their home was Aitutaki’s only hurricane shelter wherein their community would gather for safety. Next to their home was a tennis court. Vise played rugby in Rarotonga and fathered two children prior to shifting to Hastings, New Zealand in 1966 where he met and married Metua. Together they had six daughters before he moved on to Australia in 1974. There, the farmer from New Zealand who had also been employed in the freezing works, earned his ‘black belt’ in karate and worked as a bouncer in clubs. Vice remarried for a time in the early 1990s and returned to New Zealand where he continues to reside in Hastings. He never knew his birth father. Vise has seventeen grandchildren and his family is spread across Aotearoa, Australia and the Cook Islands.
Josephine Lockington
Instead of going on to college in Rarotonga as Josephine Lockington planned, her guardians arranged an early marriage for her and a young Aitutakian, Tei, who was then living in Tokoroa, New Zealand. After Josephine had their first of six children, she joined her husband in Tokoroa where they lived with his parents. Josephine missed Aitutaki’s climate, and after the birth of their second child, the family returned to live in Aitutaki. There, her husband worked as a shop manager while Josephine assisted him and looked after their children. They also raised their first grandson. At the end of 2010, Josephine retired from being a women’s officer in Aitutaki, which duties included travel in the South Pacific. Josephine is a seamstress and active in the Cook Islands Christian Church. In June 2012, Josephine was presented with the British Empire Medal for her many years of volunteer civic service. Besides looking after her family Josephine devoted time to various agencies including Disabilities, Girl Guides, Child Welfare, and the Red Cross. She was a liaison between the Cook Islands Internal Affairs Department and non-government agencies. Josephine has served in a variety of positions in the CIC Church. Josephine desires to find her American family. She and Tei celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with their family and have eighteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
As a teen, Anne Anderson Maoate (née Tereu) wrote to her mother and asked to join her in New Zealand to finish her schooling. Once she arrived, Anne went to live initially with her favourite uncle in Tokoroa before she went on to stay with her mother in Wellington. Anne met her husband, John, amongst the church group in Wellington that also attended dances for the young Pacific Islanders. After marriage, the couple returned to live in Rarotonga where they raised a family of five sons and two daughters. When Anne was in her 40s, her widowed birth father contacted her and came to Rarotonga to meet her. He also had a reunion with her mother—only five weeks prior to her mother’s death. Until her father’s death in September 2015 , his stateside and Islander families met regularly either in Rarotonga or America. Anne and her husband continue to work in their plantation that supplies local hotels with fresh produce and pineapple. At home, Anne bakes the best pineapple meringue pies for sale at Rarotonga’s Saturday market. She describes herself as a workaholic, just like her father was. When she’s in the mood, Anne sews for her home and family. Anne has ten grandchildren living in the Cook Islands and Australia.
Anne Maoate
Because Lee Clinton Moore regretted not having the companionship, mentoring and protection from his father as he was growing up, he turned to God to fill this void. After Lee finished public schooling on Aitutaki, he shifted to Rarotonga to stay with a pastor for several years. Lee bounced between Rarotonga and Aitutaki several times until his mother asked him to join her in Aotearoa when he was eighteen. Lee worked a series of jobs starting out at a freezing works in Auckland. An early marriage that did not last produced four sons and two daughters. In 1986 Lee sustained a sports injury in a gym that cost him his leg and nearly his life. This motivated Lee to investigate naturopathic and New Age options and his own spiritual gifts for healing others. After three years, Lee graduated from Bible College. In 1997, he went to Kenya with a pastor friend and also conducted healing ministries in Tahiti and in Aotearoa. Lee travelled to the States in an unsuccessful search for his father. He legally changed his last name from his mother’s maiden name so that he carries his birth father’s full name. Lee remarried to Marilow, and has ten grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Lee Clinton Moore
Kaiariki Ngariki was always happy and befriended people easily. She was attractive, quite fair with freckles, and her petite physique was similar to her mother’s build. Kai also inherited her mother’s asthmatic condition. After finishing her schooling in the Cooks, Kai’s mother brought Kai to New Zealand to complete her education. Kai and her sister, Miriama, lived with their mother and four step-brothers. Kai went to work in retail earning six pounds weekly. The aunt that raised Kai looked after her firstborn son for his first six months. Kai declined her aunt’s request to adopt him, and other care-givers looked after him until he was three years old. Then Kai’s sister took Kai’s son to their grandparents’ home in Aitutaki. Kai progressed to better jobs and eventually returned to Aitutaki to live for a year. She brought her by then ten-year old boy back to New Zealand where Kai’s mother cared for him until she married. Kai worked until the birth of her second son. He was only two and a half years old when Kai died at home from an asthma heart attack in 1981. Kai never knew her birth father’s identity other than he was an American sailor stationed in Aitutaki late in the war. Kai has three grandchildren.
Kaiariki Ngariki
At age fourteen, Agnes Tangi Oariki left school, her elder sister and younger siblings, and went alone to New Zealand’s North Island to work as a house girl for the Lynch family in Palmerston North. Although they wanted her to stay, after a year, she shifted to Tokoroa to be closer to family. There Agnes went to work as a kitchen hand for several years in the Kinleith timber camp. One weekend, she accompanied her cousin to a dance in Auckland where she met, Aito, her future husband. They raised their family of eight children, five sons and three daughters. Now over fifty years later, they enjoy retirement, although they continue to manage family land holdings and a shop in Aitutaki. Agnes serves her community as a Justice of the Peace. She knows nothing about her birth father’s identity and would like to know more. Agnes and Aito count 38 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.
Agnes Tangi Oariki
Because Jackie Puna's (née Cecil) grandfather Cecil had been a cook for the Americans on Aitutaki during the war years, she enjoyed unusual vegetables from his garden. She also remembered eating tasty cheese that came in a can. At seventeen Jackie followed family to Rarotonga where she attended evening classes. Through her step-father’s contacts, she found employment at the Cook Islands Cooperative Society and, in the course of her duties, she met her husband, Ngereteina Puna, who was a teacher at Tereora College; plus, they worshipped in the same church. Her husband’s father was the principal of Aitutaki’s leper’s school that she attended for a half year. They married and raised their seven children, as well as her husband’s eldest son. Jackie became knowledgeable about traditional herbal medicine in the Islands to help people back home and in New Zealand. Although she knows the identity of her father, Jackie was never able to contact him. She and her mother were just beginning to talk about the situation with her birth father when her mother passed away. Jackie learned that the child is the one who loses most when the father is absent. She has retired from working at the Rimu Play Group in Auckland, and she remains a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. Whenever Jackie meets American tourists she wonders if they might be her distant relatives. Jackie’s family includes 27 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Jackie Puna
After Mary Ruggieri completed her schooling on Rarotonga, she returned to Aitutaki. At age sixteen, Mary immigrated to New Zealand on the American boat, Mariposa. She met her husband on holiday in the South Island and they married in Tokoroa. After four years, they shifted to Hastings, New Zealand and raised five children. Mary treasures the wartime photograph she has of her parents together. At age 50, Mary’s birth father telephoned her from the states and sent her a card along with 25 dollars for Mary to celebrate her birthday and take her mother out to dinner. Mary cherishes that card. Her father passed away before he could rent a post box to communicate discreetly with Mary, as he intended. Mary is active with the Cook Islands community in Hastings. She and her husband have fifteen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Mary Ruggieri
At age eighteen, Don Joseph Seiler Siliar, also known as ‘Jackson’, was assistant manager in a textile company. After several years he became a diesel mechanic for the Cook Islands’ government. By age 25, he salvaged his ailing uncle’s old bakery, built a new bakery for the family and met, Moana, the woman he would marry. Don was the first person hired to construct the Rarotonga airport and he worked through to its completion, initially as a heavy equipment operator and then to mix asphalt for the runway. Don and his family shifted to Aotearoa where he put his natural management and mechanical skills to use in career moves that landed him at Lyon Breweries from where he retired 26 years later. Don earned a reputation for being efficient, thorough and dependable. He can observe something being done and then revise the method to improve the outcome with greater efficiency. Don and his wife enjoy a kaleidoscope of colourful grandchildren. In four years, he built a retirement home in Rarotonga to enjoy with his family and spends time there as well as New Zealand. Near his home in Rarotonga, he hand-dug five wet taro patches and has plans to dig and plant five more wet taro patches. From his building and planting activities in Rarotonga, he has lost weight and feels great. Don continues to seek his American family. He is committed to teaching his eight grandsons—one at a time in Rarotonga—their island culture and language. Don and Moana have two great-grandchildren .
Don Joseph Seiler Siliar
Stanley Johnny Stusky known as ‘Johnny’ was raised in Arutanga, Aitutaki. He was active and loved to play rugby, net-fish in the lagoon and plant wet taro. As a teenager, he went to work as a truck driver delivering building materials for A B Donald’s plus feeding pigs for the owner of the business. When he was about eighteen he met Anne, a co-worker at the same establishment. They married in 1965. His grandmother encouraged Johnny to go to New Zealand for better employment opportunities. They resettled in Tokoroa along with his grandmother and uncle. Johnny got a job at the Kinleith lumber mill where he worked for sixteen years. He and Anne had five sons before they were blessed with the daughter that Johnny always wanted. Eventually they sold their home in Tokoroa and returned to Aitutaki. At age 49, Johnny had a heart attack and died in their home at Amuri. He is buried in Nikaupara, among the Hewetts, a family who looked after him when he was young. Johnny and Anne have fourteen grandchildren.
Stanley 'Johnny' Stusky
Reo Tereotaiku Walter Tarapi
Reo Tereotaiku Walter Tarapi never disclosed anything to his children about his childhood in Aitutaki. It was as though Reo’s life really began once he shifted to Aotearoa at age eighteen. Along with a friend, Reo emigrated from the Cooks for better employment opportunities than were available in the Cooks. He made his way to near Huntly where he worked on a farm to pay off his transport fare to get to New Zealand. Eventually he went on to work in coal mines throughout the North Island and the West Coast of the South Island. In time Reo joined the team of labourers in Dunedin constructing the Moana Pool complex which opened in November 1964. Back then, this sport facility was considered to be the best of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It was at a dance that Reo attended in Dunedin’s Regent Theatre where he met his future bride, Patricia Margaret MacDonald. Reo sent remittances home to his relatives in Aitutaki until he became a family man. In 1968 Reo was hired by Dunedin’s Cadbury factory where he worked 30 years until retirement. Reo’s children recall that he was health conscious throughout his life—always mindful of his eating habits. He exercised regularly and walked daily the miles between work and home. Reo and his wife raised five children who in turn produced six grandchildren. He died on 20 August 2008 in Dunedin. Reo was preceded in death by his wife and a son. At his request, the family scattered the collective ashes of their father, mother, and brother on the ocean by St Kilda beach in Dunedin. His children do not know if Reo knew his father’s identity beyond ‘Walter’ however, they would like to know more about their American relations.
Nooroa ‘Nat’ o Tuaiti ki Aitutaki
Nooroa ‘Nat’ o Tuaiti ki Aitutaki went to live with an aunt in Rarotonga and was first employed by the Public Works Department. An uncle in Tokoroa secured a job for Nat in the forest industry there, so he headed to Aotearoa on the Monterey. Nat married and had two children. The marriage ended, and Nat remarried. He and Kathleen travelled to Australia to pick fruit and were valued for their efficiency. Nat was hired as a hole-borer by a construction company. The job paid well until he had an industrial accident that shattered his foot. Problems compounded when hospital staff administered the wrong medication to him which caused him to suffer a stroke. Seven operations later, Nat could walk with a limp. He and his wife looked after a crippled cousin and an eight-year old abandoned child from Australia. Following the cycle devastation in 2010, they slowly renovated their home. Several times in Nat’s life, he has missed out on participating in international rugby team playoffs because of racial discrimination due to his colour. Nat retained his impressive singing voice. He never learned about his father’s identity other than he was African-American. Nat succumbed to pneumonia in Aitutaki on 25 July 2012 and is buried next to his home in Aitutaki. He had one grandchild.
After Viriama Tuapou completed her education in Aitutaki, she joined a netball team. She also became a prolific seamstress who also paints fabric. Viriama worked first as a school teacher before she went to Rarotonga. Later she returned to work as a domestic for Aitutaki’s Resident Agent John Webb. It was between competitive dancing trips to Tahiti, that Viriama first became a mother. Following the arrival of her second child, Viriama decided to meet up with her birth mother and went to work as a kitchen helper at Iona College in Havelock North, New Zealand. The next month, her grandmother who had been her primary caregiver died in Aitutaki. Viriama worked in Aotearoa nearly two years and during weekends, she went to Tokoroa where she met her future husband. They had three daughters, and the family would travel to Auckland to visit her birth mother. During these visits Viriama began to grow close to her mother. Viriama’s marriage ended before her husband’s death. She married the second time to Mata, a widower living in Tokoroa, and this union produced one child. Due to mental health challenges, one of Viriama’s twins by the first husband, burnt down the home where Viriama and Mata lived. Unfortunately, the house insurance had lapsed by several days as she forgot to post the premium payment. So their home was uninsured when fire destroyed all of their possessions including family photographs and 50 of her hand made tivaevae. In a positive light, however, the family sustained no loss of life as a result of the fire. Viriama knows her birth father’s identity and that he was aware of his impending fatherhood because left a small trust fund for Viriama. She has not been able to establish contact with him or his family. Viriama has fifteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Viriama Tuapou
Margaret Tepui Uri (née Ioane) has lived all of her life in the Cooks with most of time spent on Aitutaki. She helped her family at home until she met her husband, Ioane, when she was 25. Their union of over 40 years produced thirteen children. In addition, the couple fostered countless children over various periods of time. Margaret also did some housekeeping for other people for several years. When Cyclone Pat ravaged through Aitutaki on 10 February 2010, Margaret’s home and all their family possessions were destroyed. The ‘blow’ also ruined her church building next door where Margaret and some members of her family sought refuge after their house was decimated. Margaret’s home has since been replaced through the New Zealand government’s recovery plan, and her Presbyterian religious community now worships with a Cook Islands Christian Church (CICC) congregation. Margaret knows her father’s name and continues to hope to eventually establish contact with her American family. Margaret taught her children that when they have offspring of their own, to not leave them behind like her father did to her. Margaret and her husband have 48 grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren.
Margaret Uri
At age sixteen, Teina Williams was assaulted in Rarotonga, after which her mother sent for her to immigrate to New Zealand. There Teina went to work with her mother at a hospital for five pounds per week. Teina met up with a young man she first met in Rarotonga, and they married in Masterton, New Zealand. After she became pregnant, the young couple returned to Rarotonga where her first child arrived on 4 October 1964. It was a record-setting day because nine other babies were born in the hospital as well. In four years, Teina had four children, and she was exhausted. The family returned to Aotearoa. When Teina’s youngest child was five and started to school, she took a day-job sewing industrial clothing to supplement her husband’s income as a handyman. She brought work home and sewed at night. Their marriage failed, although they remained together until their children became adults. While Teina enjoyed an idyllic early childhood, she sacrificed her adult years for her children. Teina looked after her mother following the first of her mother’s three strokes, and she continued to work as a seamstress. Now, after suffering her first stroke, Teina lives a quiet independent life, looking after herself and a partner. Periodically she visits with her children and their families in Aotearoa and the United States. Teina knows the name of her birth father; however, she has not been able to trace his family. Teina has thirteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
Teina Williams
These glimpses into the lives of some of the children left behind by the US military Force during World War II stand as a witness that the American fathers were not forgotten once they packed up and left Aitutaki’s serene shores. It is a further testament that the people of Aitutaki remembered the Americans over half a century later, when in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, the people of Aitutaki met together in a solemn memorial and wreath-laying service to honour the dead.
......Continued from top of page: Try to imagine what it would be like to live on tiny remote Aitutaki in the vast Pacific Ocean during wartime when the local population swelled by more than 800 plus young healthy American military men of all colours who landed on 14 November 1942. Aitutaki saw no combat while the men maintained readiness during what amounted to a ‘friendly occupation.’ Relationships developed naturally between the curious islanders and their protectors. Some liaisons were fleeting while others lasted until the men were deployed elsewhere. The warm friendly islanders and the aliens worked and played together, and everyone knew from the beginning that as much as they might want to, no marriages were permitted to the foreigners. The men were on assignment.
There were several reasons for this official stance. In the 1940s, the laws in the States forbade interracial marriage. There was concern that the cultures were sufficiently different that the sweethearts might have difficulty adjusting to the American ways or being far from their islander families. If marriages subsequently failed, the logistics of getting the islanders return tickets to the Cooks were problematic at a time when austerity measures meant that there was little discretionary oceanic transportation available, and if there was, who could afford to pay for the women’s return passage?
The solution was that US government issued condoms as a strategy for birth control whether or not the lovers chose to use them. To further discourage intimate attachments, when it became known that a serviceman was facing paternity with an islander, protocol directed that the father be assigned duty elsewhere prior to the infant’s birth. Before their departure, trust funds amounting to 300 pounds were deposited by the fathers-to-be with Aitutaki’s Resident Agent to pay for the maintenance of any children to age 12. Beyond this age, the islanders deemed the children old enough to work and contribute to their households.
Some fathers never knew that their sweethearts had conceived. Only several were able to hold their infants before war called them elsewhere. Approximately 70-80 infants were born as a result of Aitutaki’s wartime occupation. Some of these children left behind by the US servicemen have shared their stories of growing up without a birthfather present in their lives and without knowing half of their identity. Each of their stories is unique and some of the children from WWII have found their fathers.
