Rainbow Corridor meets its destiny

Ross Goldsworthy and Ken Wright guide a vintage US Army Jeep down Middlemore Hospital's Rainbow Corridor. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Back in 1943, expecting a flood of casualties from the Pacific War, a military hospital was built on the site of today's Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu.

United States Military efficiency demanded the hospital's corridors be wide enough to allow Jeeps to enter via a ramp and drive along it with stretcher loads of wounded.

It was not used for that purpose as the theatre of war shifted from the South Pacific and a New Zealand base was no longer needed.

But yesterday, the intention was put to the test in a fitting tribute to the old building which has been retired.

As a pipe band played the Stars and Stripes, Ross Goldsworthy and Ken Wright easily guided a World War II vintage Jeep from the Museum of Transport and Technology along the polished floors of the Rainbow Corridor.

United States Consul-General Randy Berry spoke of the links between his country and New Zealand and veterans from the American forces and the Maori Battalion unveiled a commemorative plaque.

A hospital spokeswoman said that in 1943, the Government requisitioned 24ha from the Auckland Golf Club for the hospital site.

It was near the main trunk railway line for rapid transport of casualties and above a bountiful spring of fresh water.

At war's end in 1945, the United States Government sold it to the Auckland Hospital Board for £60,000 and it became part of Middlemore Hospital when it opened to the South Auckland public in 1947.

Middlemore's first patients included 24 servicemen with chronic war injuries who were transferred from the Soldiers Annexe at Auckland Hospital. Clinical services based in the 1940s building were relocated to a block, with 14 operating theatres and a high dependency unit.

The spokeswoman said the old building would be demolished.