Conclusion

New Zealanders portrayed the women who became the war brides of “their” men in contradictory terms. Publicly, they were acclaimed as ambassadors, model settlers, and contributors to the “balancing of the books” in terms of imports and exports.

Besides being assessed in commercial terms, they were judged on moral, demographic, and logistical criteria, and their perceived attributes and deficiencies were a matter of public debate. The media scrutinized their origins, appearance, and demeanor, portraying them as harbingers of modern fashions, adaptable, and compatible with New Zealand society while simultaneously drawing attention to their risque behavior and possibly dubious motives for marrying New Zealand servicemen. Privately, in-laws examined and questioned war brides' capacity to be good wives and mothers and were variously intrigued and scandalized by their clothes and habits.

The war experiences and service of the war brides marked them off as dissimilar to the majority of local women and were completely overshadowed by the war service of New Zealand's returning veterans. On arrival in New Zealand, war brides faced prejudice and conservative attitudes as well as well-meaning, if sometimes narrow-minded, kindness and acceptance. War brides were, even in their own eyes, at once privileged and disadvantaged. They were privileged by virtue of their marriage to a New Zealand serviceman and the rights to free passage and entry to the country that it implied; they were disadvantaged by being “foreign” and having to face the journey and life in New Zealand without family support. Administrative procedures and gendered expectations categorized them in ways that predetermined their roles and directed them to fit into the receiving society intent on regenerating the family and reigniting the national economy. War brides' family histories, their war service, and life experience were subsumed by marriage, motherhood, and domestic life.

In the process of becoming a war bride and traveling to New Zealand, these women found their dependent status firmly established and their occupation in the domestic arena assumed.⁹¹

New Zealand's sample of incoming war brides demonstrates how moving between countries as a result of wartime encounters impacted on these women. Government policies relative to citizenship, nation building, and maintenance of the British Empire, economic, and commercial considerations, all contributed to the reconfiguration of war brides' identity and sense of belonging in the postwar period. The women themselves have overwhelmingly described the impact of arrival as heightened by the sense that they needed to abandon their past affiliations, customs, and histories. The full glare of publicity that greeted war brides on arrival focused attention on their compatibility with New Zealand culture and society or, at least, their willingness to adapt to it. Signs of difference were muted as press reports sought to convey the impression of easily assimilated women and children. At the same time, lingering prejudices surfaced in families and communities critical of the perceived shortcomings especially in the domestic arena. Taken together, these issues contributed to conflicting messages being received by war brides, and, on the whole, women found New Zealand society contrived to obliterate their pasts (especially their war lives) and required them to conform to the status quo.

This is the story not of a few extraordinary women but of a mass movement of women from the mainstream of their societies. New Zealand's sample of war brides is colorful in its diversity, yet common themes run through their experience. Most found it difficult. As one war bride in New Plymouth said, “I can tell you categorically I wouldn't do it again.”⁹² This is not because she regrets her life in New Zealand. It is because she still remembers the acute pain of adjustment and difficulty in bridging the gap between her war (and peace) pasts and her chosen future in New Zealand.

Whether welcomed as bride or regarded suspiciously as having disembarked from a brothel, war was the formative experience of these women. Women, who in the wake of—often quite literally—losing their former homes, struggled against the simultaneous loss of individual identities and the imposition of impossible ideals and damaging stereotypes.

Notes

1. War bride: “A woman who marries a soldier (especially a foreign one) during a war,” in Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. 5th ed., vol. 2. New York, 2002, p. 3577.

2. Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester, NY, 1998, p. 13.

3. The unusual circumstances of war brides' marriages and migration have drawn a welter of attention from academics as well as novelists, memoir writers, and popular history writers. For example, Gerald J. Schnepp and Agnes Masako Yui, “Cultural and Marital Adjustment of Japanese War Brides,” American Journal of Sociology. 61, 1, July 1955, pp. 48—50; Anselm Strauss, “Strain and Harmony in American-Japanese War Bride Marriages,” Marriage and Family Living. 16, 2, May 1954, pp. 99—106; Petra Goedde, “From Villains to Victims: Fraternization and the Feminization of Germany, 1945—1947,” Diplomatic History. 23, 1, Winter 1999, p. 17; Raingard Esser, “Language No Obstacle: War Brides in the German Press, 1945—49,” Women’s History Review. 12, 4, 2003, pp. 577—603; Annette Potts and Lucinda Strauss, For the Love of a Soldier: Australian War Brides and Their GIs. Sydney, 1987; Pamela Winfield, Sentimental Journey: The Story of the GI Brides. London, 1984; Teresa K. Williams, “Marriage between Japanese Women and US Servicemen since World War 2,” Amerasia Journal. 17, 1, 1991, pp. 135—154; Paul Spickard, Mix Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America Madison, WI, 1989, p. 130; Suenaga Shizuko, “Good-Bye to Sayonara\ The Reverse Assimilation of Japanese War Brides” PhD thesis, Boston College, Boston, 1996, p.

22; George de Vos, Socialization for Achievement: Essays on the Cultural Psychology of the Japanese. Berkeley, CA, 1973, pp. 248, 252; Keiko Tamura, “Border Crossings: Japanese War Brides and their Selfhood” PhD thesis, Australia National University, Canberra, 1999; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, Warbride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Stanford, CA, 1986; Bok-Lim C. Kim, “Asian Wives of US Servicemen: Women in Shadows,” Amerasia. 4, 1, 1977, pp. 91—115; Elfrieda B. Shukert and Barbara Smith Scibetta, The War Brides of World War 2. Novato, CA, 1988; John Hammond Moore, Over-Sexed, Over-Paid and Over Here: Americans in Australia 1941—1945. St. Lucia, 1981; Jenel Virden, Goodbye Piccadilly: British War Brides in America. Urbana, IL, 1996; Harry Bioletti, The Yanks Are Coming: The American Invasion of New Zealand 1942—1944. Auckland, 1995; Jock Phillips (with Ellen Ellis), Brief Encounter: American Forces and the New Zealand People 1942-1945. Wellington, 1992; Carol Fallows, Love and War: Stories of War Brides from the Great War to Vietnam. Australia and New Zealand, 2002; Orapan Footrakoon, “Lived Experiences of Thai War Brides in Mixed Thai- American Families in the United States” PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, 1999; Lois Battle, War Brides. New York, 1982; Velina Hasu Houston, ed., The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 205—274; Roberta Uno, Unbroken Thread. Amherst, MA, 1993, pp. 155—200; Helene Lee, Bittersweet Decision: The War Brides Forty Years Later. Lockport, IL, 1985; Barbara B. Barrett, Eileen Dicks, Isobel Brown, Hilda Chaulk Murray, and Helen Fogwill Porter, eds., We Came From Over the Sea, British War Brides in Newfoundland. Portugal Cove, NL, 1996; Vera A. Cracknell Long, From Britain with Love, World War II Pilgrim Brides Sail to America. New Market, VA, 1988; Monette Goetinck, Bottled Dreams. Napa, CA, 1998; Dorothy McCormack Graw, A Heart Divided: A War Bride at Home in Two Worlds.

Bloomington, IN, 2004; Marygold Rix-Miller, Trophy of War. Bognor Regis, UK, 1983; Jeanne Molloy, While I Remember: Memoirs of Jeanne Olwyn Molloy. Auckland, 2001; Leicester Smith and Sylvia Smith, Pathfinder: Wings in the Crowded Sky. Auckland, 2004, MS2004/37, Auckland War Memorial Museum Library, Auckland, New Zealand (AWMM); George J. Sanchez, “Race, Nation, and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies,” Journal of American Ethnic History 18, 4, Summer 1999, pp. 66—86; Caroline Chung Simpson, “‘Out of an Obscure Place’: Japanese War Brides and Cultural Pluralism in the 1950s,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 10, 3, 1998, pp. 47—81; Regelio Saenz, Sean-Shong Hwang, and Benigno E. Aguirre, “In Search of Asian War Brides,” Demography. 31, 3, August 1994, pp. 549—559; Debbie Storrs, “Like a Bamboo: Representations of a Japanese War Bride,” Frontiers. 21, 1/2, January 2000, pp. 194—224.

4. John Costello, Virtue Under Fire: How World War 2 Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes. Boston and Toronto, 1985.

5. New Zealand Herald. (NZH) 25 July 1945, p. 9.

6. Army Secretary, Memorandum, 6 December 1945, D334/4/1/A/2, Archives New Zealand/Te Rua Mahara o te Kawanatanga, Wellington Office (ANZW).

7. N. H. Carrier and J. R. Jeffery, Studies on Medical and Population Subjects, No. 6, External Migration: A Study of the Available Statistics 1815-1950. London, 1953, pp. 38-41, 54.

8. Gabrielle A. Fortune, “‘Mr Jones' Wives': World War II War Brides of New Zealand Servicemen” PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 2005.

9. HQ 2NZEF Cairo to HQ Wellington, Telegram, 29 January 1944, AD1 320/4/4 Pt. 3, ANZW.

10. Weekly Review. (WR) no. 190, New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington (NZFA).

11. Taranaki Herald. (TH) 16 February 1946; NZ Truth. 2 July 1947, p. 9.

12. NZH, 20 March 1946, p. 8.

13. Ibid.

14. Press cutting, 18 July 1946, Val Wood Archive (VWA), Hamilton Public Library, New Zealand (VWA).

15. Robin Kay, Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45: Italy, From Cassino to Trieste, vol.

2. Wellington, 1967; Ingrid Bauer, “‘Austria's Prestige Dragged into the Dirt'? The ‘GI-Brides' and Post War Austrian Society (1945-1955),” Contemporary Austrian Studies. 6, 1998, p. 43.

16. “If the Cap Fits” WAII 1DA 426/29-40, ANZW.

17. Ibid.

18. D. H. Davis, Soldier's Guide to Italy. p. 13, MS2002/75, AWMM.

19. Bauer, “‘Austria's Prestige Dragged into the Dirt,'” p. 43.

20. Bok-Lim C. Kim, “Asian Wives of US Servicemen: Women in Shadows,” Amerasia Journal. 4, 1, 1977; Virden, Goodbye Piccadilly; Nora Smith, interview, February 2002.

21. Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War. Chapel Hill, NC, 1999, p. 122.

22. SS1/616, ANZW.

23. TH 4 January 1946, 10 January 1946, 11 January 1946.

24. Melbourne Age. 5 January 1946.

25. Ibid., 23 March 1946.

26. Ibid., 10 August 1946.

27. NZH 14 January 1946, p. 4.

28. E. J. Williams to Viscount Addison, 27 June 1946, DO35/1/98 Z484/1/2, National Archives, Kew, London.

29. Sylvia Smith, interview, 8 August 2001.

30. Generally, husbands and boyfriends were repatriated separately and in advance of their wives and fiancees.

31. NZH 12 January 1946, p. 6.

32. “Horse races” on troopships consisted of horses (war brides in this instance) carrying cardboard cutouts and moving along the “course” in response to the score on a dice thrown by the jockeys. The punters placed bets on their “horse.”

33. Press cutting, 18 July 1946, VWA.

34. A. Trevelyan, “All at Sea,” Stirling Castle Newsletter, 1946. WAII IDA 453/50, ANZW.

35. BBAE A304/831/149, ANZA.

36. Fortune, “Mr Jones’ Wives.”

37. Deborah Montgomerie, The Womens War: New Zealand Women, 1939-45. Auckland, 2001, p. 187.

38. Margaret R. Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Zonya Michel, and Margaret C. Weitz, “Introduction,” in Margaret R. Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret C. Weitz, eds, Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars. New Haven and London, 1987, p. 4.

39. F. L. W. Wood, Understanding New Zealand. New York, 1944, p. 97.

40. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History. New York, 1988, p. 42.

41. Martha Gardner, The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870-1965. Princeton, NJ, 2005, p. 225.

42. Eileen Haughey, interview, 22 August 2001; Weekly News. (WN) 10 January 1945, pp. 12—13; WN 26 April 1944, p. 9; WN 31 May 1944, p. 10; Press. 14 January 1946, p. 4.

43. Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army: War and the Gentle Sex, 1907-1948. London and New York, 2006, p. 16.

44. For a discussion of elevated position of combatants: Noakes, Women in the British Army, pp. 1—19.

45. Single women (fiancees) were more likely to have their occupation recorded on the ships manifesto. Married women (wives) were more likely to be listed as occupied in “Home Duties.”

46. WN 10 January 1945, pp. 12—13; WN 26 April 1944, p. 9; WN 31 May 1944, p. 10; Press. 14 January 1946, p. 4.

47. BBAO5552/35, ANZA.

48. New Zealand Womens Weekly. 15 March 1971, p. 34; press cutting, VWA.

49. Jeanne Molloy, interview, 19 April 2001.

50. Press. 14 January 1946, p. 4.

51. Noakes, Women in the British Army, p. 74.

52. WN 26 April 1944, p. 9.

53. NZH 9 February 1946, p. 6.

54. NZH 14 November 1946, p. 4.

55. Noakes, Women in the British Army, pp. 1—2.

56. Telegram from Minister of External Affairs, Wellington, to Acting High Commissioner for New Zealand, London, 2 April 1946, EA1 95/6/5 Pt. 2, ANZW.

57. Press cutting, M. P. McDermott private collection.

58. Brigadier W. G. Stevens, OIC 2NZEF Italy to Army HQ, Wellington, 31 December 1943, AD1 320/4/4, ANZW; Memorandum, Army HQ to Minister of Defence, 3 July 1944, AD1 320/4/4 Pt. 2, ANZW.

59. P. S. O’Connor, “Keeping New Zealand White, 1908—1920,” New Zealand Journal of History. (NZJH) 2, 1, 1968, pp. 41—65; Sean Brawley, “No ‘White Policy' in NZ,” NZJH 27, no. 1 (1993): 16—36; Immigration Restriction Act, 1908 and amendments; Kamy Ooi, “The Liberalization and End of the White New Zealand Immigration Policy, 1946—1987” MA thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1999.

60. A. E. Currie, Crown Solicitor to Adjutant-General Army HQ, 15 March 1944, refers to opinions issued by the Crown Law Office 22 October 1940; 12 May 1943; 15 March 1944, WAII 1DA 6/9/30, ANZW

61. WN 26 April 1944, p. 9.

62. WN 10 January 1945, p. 12.

63. Fortune, “Mr Jones' Wives,” p. 194.

64. Malcolm McKinnon, Immigrants and Citizens: New Zealanders and Asian Immigration in Historical Context. Wellington, 1996, p. 36.

65. In this respect war brides to New Zealand were better served than their counterparts to other countries. They were guaranteed entry and travel costs. For a discussion of the rights of war brides entering the United States, see Gardner, Qualities of a Citizen, especially pp. 224—227.

66. N. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge, 2000; Beatrice McKenzie, “Gender and United States Citizenship in Nation and Empire,” History Com-pass. 4, 2006, pp. 592—602.

67. Rix-Miller, Trophy of War. Bognor Regis, UK, 1983.

68. Nancy Dickie, August 1988, MS Box 0113, VWA.

69. Tsuruko Lynch, interviewed by Peter Boston, 21 October 1997, Auckland, as quoted in Peter Boston, “Tsuruko Lynch: From Shike to Northcote,” in Roger Peren, ed., Japan and New Zealand: 150 Years. Wellington, 1999, p. 148.

70. Peren, Japan and New Zealand.

71. Dickie, VWA.

72. The Smith family disapproved of married women in paid employment, so Sylvia's desire to get a job was also thwarted.

73. Sylvia Smith, interview.

74. Rix-Miller, Trophy of War, p. 173.

75. Audrey B. King, “The Foreigner,” YWCA Review. October 1947, pp. 14—15.

76. Wood, Understanding New Zealand, p. 97.

77. High Commissioner for New Zealand, New Zealand: The Land, the People, the Way of Life. London, c. 1945. Secretary of External Affairs to New Zealand High Commissioner, Ottawa, 16 July 1945, EA1 63/4/1, ANZW.

78. For details of New Zealand war casualties, and food exports, see http://www. NZHistory, http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/WH2Econ-fig-WH2Eco066a. html, and http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/WH2Econ-fig-chart65.html. Accessed December 2007.

79. Summerfield, Reconstructing Womens Wartime Lives.

80. Anne E. Imamura, “The Loss That Has No Name: Social Womanhood of Foreign Wives,” Gender and Society. 2, 3, September 1988, p. 292. My emphasis.

81. Maria A. Rivera, Mary Nash, and Andrew Trlin, “Here I am Everyone's Umbrella: Relationships, Domesticity and Responsibilities—The Experiences of Four Latinas in New Zealand,” Womens Studies Journal. 16, 1, Autumn 2000, p. 56; Teresa K. Williams, pp. 135—154.

82. WN 26 April 1944, p. 9.

83. Margaret Tennant, “History and Social Policy: Perspectives from the Past,” in Bronwyn Dalley, Margaret Tennant, eds., Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History. Dunedin, New Zealand, 2004.

84. WN 26 April 1944; WR No. 190, NZFA.

85. Sally Giffney, interview, 11 September 2001; Mirella Hall, interview, 19 June 2001; Thelma Roberton, interview, 25 July 2001.

86. Imamura, “Loss That Has No Name,” pp. 291—307.

87. Peter Blunden, interview, 5 December 2001.

88. Mary Emmett, interview, 1 October 2000.

89. Kath Adams, interview, 22 July 2001.

90. Regarding the difficulty of transporting “womanhood” from one international location to another, see Imamura, “Loss That Has No Name,” pp. 291—307.

91. F. L. W Wood, This New Zealand... Hamilton, UK, 1946.

92. VWA.

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Source: Abbenhuis Maartje, Buttsworth Sara. Restaging War in the Western World: Noncombatant Experiences, 1890-Today. Palgrave Macmillan,2009. — 242 p.. 2009

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