Wartime memories at exhibition
Wellington Girls College year 10 pupil Ali Wheeler was among the first to view it and believed it and an accompanying teaching text would encourage others her age to learn more about the war.
As a young marine Donald Jones spent six months in Wellington in 1943 recovering from illness and injury suffered on the island of Guadalcanal, and preparing for further assaults to push back the Japanese advance in the Pacific.
Almost exactly 65 years later, Mr Jones has returned to Wellington where memories of the hospitality offered still fiercely burn.
The people treated us so nice and that was exactly what was needed after we came back from Guadalcanal.
Mr Jones, a vigorous 84, even happily acknowledges elements of the complaint made by New Zealand men at the time that the American were over-paid, over-sexed and over here.
I think every man that was ever here said Wellington was the best place in the way women were available and would go out with you.
It is that kind of recollection which the Historic Places Trust has used in the teaching kit to accompany the multimedia history exhibition now on display at Old St Pauls, where many wartime marines worshipped.
Co-author Silke Bieda said the kit was designed for teachers and provided background material for a trip to the exhibition.
It was divided into six chapters and titles included War in our own backyard, Marines training camps and Hell in the Pacific - something Mr Jones, who went on to a post-war career as a building contractor in California, knows all too much about.
Two years ago, accompanied by his daughter, he returned to the Guadalcanal island battlefield site.
It puts a lump in your throat, I tell ya, he said.
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 8:27 pm under