Background

At the end of the Second World War, the Allied governments prioritized the repatriation of troops but in addition had to provide passages for any dependents the troops had acquired while on overseas duty.

New Zealand's War Cabinet dictated the conditions under which marriages of servicemen were permissible, and the Defence Department vet­ted intending brides (and grooms), restricted opportunities to marry, granted wives' allowances as they saw fit, and controlled access to transport. The government devised policies couched in terms of immigration quotas about “acceptable” and “unacceptable” spouses. In this way, the government exer­cised powerful economic, legal, and administrative control over the lives of the war brides and shaped gendered perceptions of them as well. Becoming engaged to a New Zealand serviceman transformed them from love interests of individuals into a part of a military operation.

So while most war-bride marriages started out as romantic encounters, the private commitments to marry foreign servicemen proved more com­plicated than war brides might have imagined, when their marriages were treated as events in the “public” interest. These women unwittingly invited Defence Department and government officials to adjudicate on their per­sonal decisions. Marrying and migrating as a war bride under the auspices of the Defence Department imposed constraints that shaped war brides' experiences. Conditions of entry to New Zealand were dictated to war brides, and politicians framed war-bride migration in ways that fitted post­war reconstructive, economic, and population strategies. The multifaceted projections of war brides and their migration by these agencies suggest how their experiences could be utilized to fit various cultural, social, and political agendas. War brides were never simply choosing love, marriage, and domes­tic life: they were embarking on a journey that exposed their private affairs to official and media interpretation and intervention.

From the government's perspective at least, gendered expectations of the war brides' roles in New Zealand were made abundantly clear. Information supplied to war brides on board ships, on arrival at the wharfs, and at receptions, both public and private, emphasized their role in New Zealand society as the wives of servicemen and the mothers (and future mothers) of their children. For example, in one Weekly Review newsreel of returning fighter pilots escorting their wives and children off the ships with carrycots and other parenting paraphernalia, the commentator remarked that

proud fathers carry their offspring ashore in the latest portable bassinets. When they left New Zealand they never bargained on this but right now they can't think of a better homecoming. Showing off their bright-eyed-babies means more to them than their deeds in the air.¹⁰

Returning servicemen were presented as committed to family values to the extent that their war service was almost, but not quite, relegated to second place. War brides in this instance were designated as the supporting cast in the homecoming display of returning war heroes.