Tauranga soldiers honoured

REMEMBERING: Michelle Whitmore has helped create an exhibition showing the experiences of Tauranga people in World War I.PHOTO/ANDREW WARNER

A new World War I exhibition will be an opportunity for Tauranga people to honour and pay respects to their forebears.

The exhibition focuses on the experiences of Tauranga soldiers who fought in the Great War and the families involved, said exhibition manager Michelle Whitmore.

"It's the individual stories that allow us to connect and make the whole harrowing experience somehow more real," Ms Whitmore said.

"We think of Tauranga now as a thriving city but 100 years ago it was a small township so there was the magnitude of the impact of the war on a township that small."

Ms Whitmore said the idea for the exhibition came to her last year.

"It became apparent that it would be good for the city to have a more permanent exhibition for World War I.

"This is an opportunity for people to come together and to honour and remember and pay their respects to our forebears, and the sacrifices that they made. Hence the decision to really focus the exhibition on the experiences of people in Tauranga."

A plan for an exhibition was created and Ms Whitmore took it to TECT to ask for support

TECT agreed to fund 60 per cent of the project.

Ms Whitmore also got corporate backing from Pak'nSave Tauranga and Papamoa, Holland Beckett, Staples Rodway, Carrus, Tauriko Business Estate, Tauranga City Council, Classic Flyers NZ and Eves.

The exhibition is being supported by NZME. through the Bay of Plenty Times and radio stations ZM, Newstalk ZB, The Hits, Radio Sport, Hauraki, and flava.

"Tauranga does have something of significance to honour the period and the sacrifice of the soldiers and their families involved in the war.

"There is going to be some poignancy to what we're doing and some reverence around the exhibition. We've got some things in there we think will be really quite special."

The whole concept had been designed in conjunction with the WW100 committee and cultural heritage co-ordinator Fiona Kean.

Ms Whitmore said Ms Kean had ensured everything in the exhibition was an accurate reflection of the situations of Tauranga people.

Ms Kean was instrumental in the creation of the exhibition called From Tauranga to the Trenches, in two shipping containers, which were being refitted for the new exhibition.

One of the key parts of the exhibition was looking at the Bay of Plenty Times' role during the war, Ms Whitmore said.

"The Bay of Plenty Times covered the war and was the avenue for people to write about their fears and frustrations and their thoughts on the war.

"There are letters to the editor in some of our clippings," she said.