There is little information available about Raymond Starr. Archives New Zealand notes that “a biography will be added soon.” There are no publicly available photographs of him.

We know that he was born in Hamilton in 1918 and died there in 1989. He was a professional sign writer. According to the Auckland Museum Online Cenotaph he was a Corporal in the 36th Infantry Battalion, and participated in the invasion of Mono Island. After the war he returned to Hamilton where he ran art classes from his studio. He exhibited at the Auckland Society of Arts and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.

Archives New Zealand presently has only three works displayed on the page dedicated to Starr, including a pencil drawing of the Allied Cemetery at Falamai on Mono Island (Figure 1), which was the basis for a later pastel work in the collection of the Army Museum at Waiouru (Figure 4).

Figure 4

After the war, the remains of the New Zealand servicemen were disinterred and moved from Mono Island to the War Cemetery in Borail, New Caledonia. Originally it appears that there was going to be a more substantial and permanent cemetery at Falamai, as shown by a plan, discovered at New Zealand Archives, labelled 2 N.Z.E.F. I.P (Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force In Pacific) Cemetery (Figure 2). It is notable that space had been allocated for enemy dead as well.

A photograph of the actual cemetery (Figure 3) shows that it was not quite as picturesque as Starr’s romanticised version, nor as neat and tidy as the envisioned by the architect’s idealised version in the Army Archive. Little wonder the decision to move the inhabitants to Borail was made.

Starr used his strong drawing skills to record his immediate surroundings, as seen in his pencil drawing of a huge banyan tree in the jungle in Figure 4 published in the after-war commemorative booklet of the 36th Battalion. Stippled light accentuates the massive trunk and boughs of the ancient tree, firmly rooted to the jungle floor: a timeless presence that will surely outlive the war. Japanese snipers would hide for days in the towering heads of these trees in the Pacific and pick off unwary Allied soldiers as the opportunity presented itself.

Figure 5

Starr also appears to have enjoyed representing important events after they occurred, using his memory or imagination to relive the events, to create a dramatic rendering of the scene, first in pencil and then sometimes in paint. We see this in his pencil drawing of “Allied and New Zealand Opposed Landing on Mono and Treasury Islands” (Figure 6).

Another pencil drawing by Starr shows a representation of the famous “Bulldozer incident” at Falamai on the day of the invasion when American Aurillo Tassone drove his machine, the blade raised to deflect bullets, over a Japanese machine gun nest, crushing and killing the twelve soldiers within (Figure 7).

Starr was a skilled watercolorist, the equal of Russell Clark in his powers of observation of men going about their daily duties, as this Army Museum work showing a soldier preparing a foxhole shows (Figure 8).

Starr’s most ambitious painting however is his watercolour depicting the invasion of Mono Island on 27 October 1943 (Figure 9).

This is a complex painting and was probably produced after the war when Starr returned to New Zealand. In it Starr has attempted to record the events of the day as if they are happening simultaneously.

We see LST 485, the same vessel Russell Clark depicted nosing into the jungle to unloading his painting”Landing Ship Under Fire” (refer to “Migration of War Art” section of website), drawn up on the beach with trucks and supplies being unloaded as a Japanese “Betty” bomber attacks the ship (Figure 10) while itself being harassed by a P38 Lightning (Figure 11).

In the background another LST is raining fire on Japanese positions ahead of four beached LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) Higgins invasion boats. Curiously pointed vapour trails track the trajectories of the shells to their target onshore. In the foreground an anti aircraft gun is opening up on the attacking Japanese planes. An anonymous stricken fighter plane plummets toward the jungle in the distance.

Moving from left to right, our eyes are lead on a roller coaster ride of lines lifting up with the AA gun in the foreground and the curve of the mortars being launched from the ship in the background, down with the diving P38 and the trail left by the mortars, then up again with the AA gun firing on the bow of the ship and the bomber climbing out of frame on the right. Stabilising the composition, acting as a sort of visual anchor, is the vertical line of the nosediving fighter plane in the centre of frame.

Starr has attempted to recreate a sense of the action and drama of the invasion by cramming as much detail into the picture as possible. The painting is historically accurate in that offical accounts record, for instance, the attack on the LST 485 (although it was hit by mortars and mountain guns, not aircraft). But, while it may have seemed so on the day, when it is likely that time seemed to become compressed for the combatants, it is unlikely that all of these events happened in the same instant, as depicted here.

“The written word is scarcely able to convey a total picture of an opposed landing. So much is happening in so short a time in so many places. Noise predominates…the crack of rifle fire and the stutter of machine guns; the crunch of exploding mortar bombs and the angrier bursts of artillery shells…the regular beat of moving vehicles and machinery and the throbbing engines of the landing craft are almost lost in the confusion.” (Quoted from the Official New Zealand War History in “Operation Goodtime and the Battle of the Treasury Islands, 1943” by Reg Newell.)

Starr has created a mini-masterpiece using the technique art historians of the Pre-Renaissance period refer to as “double”, “multiple”, or “continuous” narrative. Rather than a “snapshot” recording of a single moment in time, such as a camera would create at the click of a shutter, several events are conflated into an image which in a sense is a more accurate portrayal of the situation as a result. The “written word” may not be able to convey a total picture of such a scene, but paint and brush can come close.

This small painting by Raymond Starr is a New Zealand classic and deserving of inclusion in any history of New Zealand war art. The fact that it is virtually unknown is in a way a reflection of the forgotten status of the country’s War in the Pacific itself.