An Anzac Day service marking the final parade of a Hawke's Bay branch of the 28th NZ Maori Battalion Association turned particularly emotional yesterday as a crowd of about 200 awaited the hakari afterwards on a marae near Hastings.
The service was at Ruahapia Marae, the final parade of the Heretaunga branch which is being called to a close following the death last October of Rangi Whaanga, who had been Ngati Kahungunu's last surviving member of D Company.
His brother, Jim Whaanga, was among those present as family filled in time between wreath-laying and playing of the Last Post that closed the service by queuing with the frames and photographs they'd placed in front of the wharenui late-morning.
Then in succession they related some of what they'd been told, of and by brothers, fathers, uncles and grandfathers who had gone to war, in many cases losing their lives overseas or coming home wounded and shell-shocked and, in some cases broken, all in voluntary service fighting for rights which branch chairman Gordon Paku said were not really given until the British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948.
The act changed the status of people born in New Zealand from British subject to New Zealand citizen. The men had fought as volunteer British subjects for "the right to citizenship, in their own land", Mr Paku said.