Souvenirs and other three-dimensional, tangible artworks, or “memory objects” as Nicholas Saunders refers to them in his book on World War I soldier-art “Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War”, were in many ways synonymous for the serviceman. The terms “souvenir” and “artwork” were interchangeable. Following the traditions set in the Great War, soldiers continued to appropriate souvenirs to take Home with them, assuming they survived the war. Some made substantial collections without giving much thought about the problems of taking them from place to place in their kitbags or how they were ultimately going to get them back to New Zealand. In his diaries my father mentions objects that he had acquired – such as a couple of Bakelite hand grenades and an American leather bomber-jacket – that we never saw growing up, and which were possibly disposed of during kit-inspections before he left New Caledonia

In the Pacific, as in the Great War, there were essentially two distinct types of souvenir: “found” (or plundered) items such as Japanese swords, pistols, items of uniform (not to mention body parts), and the hand-crafted object, created from spent shell casings, bullets, sections of Perspex aircraft canopies, pieces of Bakelite from disused electronic equipment, coins, or natural materials that came to hand such as wood, coconut shell, paua-shell and tortoise-shell (Figure 1).

Figure 1

The heart-shaped pendants in Figure 2, as well as the “Onward New Zealand” one, use perspex most likely from an aircraft canopy. The kiwi bird has been cut from a New Zealand sixpence coin. An interesting feature of the carved giant-bamboo piece in Figure 3 is its similarity in form to the carved bone pencil holders shown in Figure 6 of the World War I Souvenirs section of this website.

One kind of souvenir which would have been easy to store and light to carry was a piece of usually locally produced embroidery. Making and purchasing embroidery on black velvet was popular among World War 2 New Zealand soldiers serving in the Middle East, where decorated cushions, possibly inspired by connotations among more art-educated servicemen from popular Orientalist imagery of harems produced in late nineteenth century art, were common. Allowing for the fact that much of this work was produced by local craftspeople specifically for the soldier market, this form of soldier-art was also more common in North Africa and the Middle East because of the freer availability of sewing materials including coloured threads and fabrics (Figure 4).

Soldiers in the Pacific War rarely did needlework however, which makes my father’s (self-admittedly basic) attempts all the more interesting:

“… I did my washing, finished a letter to Dell and then ‘lo and behold, I did some needlework’. I had a handkerchief with the name of a town on it, ‘Bourail’, and I wasn’t allowed to post it home, so I had to take the name of it off and I’m putting (wife Adele’s) name on it, also ‘Nouvelle Caledonie’… I had to experiment a bit to find a stitch that looked O.K., towards the finish I was getting the hang of it.” – Harry Stone, Nepoui, New Caledonia, Friday April 23^rd. 1943, Diary No. 1. (Figures 5 and 6).

While most of the embroidery, particularly the competently executed French / Free French flags on one and the flowers on the other, has obviously been completed by a very skilled hand, the surprising thing is that Harry was prepared to “have a go” at an activity which would have been seen, especially by a typical New Zealand male at the time, as quintessentially woman’s work. What also makes my father’s attempts at embroidery interesting is that having probably purchased the handkerchief from a local New Caledonian needleworker running a souvenir cottage industry, he then proceeded to personalise it with his own design, partly in order to get it past the censor to send it Home: apparently it was officially acceptable to refer to New Caledonia in correspondence with family back in New Zealand, but not to a specific location, in this case Bourail, the location of a major Kiwi army base.

For Allied soldiers who preferred to make their own souvenirs, there was no shortage of materials to work with. The metallic skin of downed aircraft – especially if it was an enemy aircraft – was popular. Figure 7 shows a metal shield made from the skin of a Japanese plane commemorating the invasion of Vella Levalla by the 14^th. Brigade on 15^th. August 1943. The section of metal in Figure 8 was cut from a Japanese aircraft by an American serviceman and has the design for a letter-opener knife drawn onto it. One can but speculate on why Private Flemming did not complete the piece.

The use of material taken from the wreckage of enemy aircraft to make souvenirs recalls the melting down of Persian armour by ancient Greeks to create the Serpent Column discussed in the chapter on War trophies and Souvenirs. By doing so, the craftsman is appropriating and symbolically devouring a part of the defeated enemy. In pre-European Maori, as well as several other Pacifica cultures, an enemy’s physical body would even be ritually consumed to acquire the “mana” (in Polynesian, Melanesian, and Maori belief an impersonal supernatural power) of the defeated warrior or tribe.

One creative New Zealand 34th. Battalion soldier appropriated an aluminium Japanese water-bottle and personalised it with the engraved Maori greeting Kia Ora and other Maori iconography, a map of New Zealand, a kiwi, and details of the places he had been sent to (Figure 9).

Like their predecessors in World War 1, servicemen during World War 2 made souvenirs for a variety of reasons, and for many the principal one was to make some extra income by selling work to their comrades. As in the Great War, American servicemen excelled at the souvenir trade during their time in the Pacific. New Zealand Guadalcanal veteran Harry Bioletti described seeing tables of collectibles and souvenirs for sale on market days organised by Americans around the perimeter of Henderson Field. The range of goods for sale was impressive, from Japanese helmets and bayonets to imitation samurai swords made from the leaf springs of wrecked Jeeps to model planes made from rifle bullets and shell casings.

Many New Zealand servicemen got into the market too, supplying souvenirs with New Zealand themes for the Americans, who were much better paid, to take or send home as mementoes of time spent rubbing shoulders with the men from Down Under. Bioletti recalled that even in the New Zealand Army camp, there were souvenir manufacturers who were able to supplement their army pay by some thousands of dollars. At least one man was able to purchase land for his first house with his profits on his return to New Zealand.

While cash sales in American dollars were preferred, simple bartering was common too. Swapping was an endemic part of army culture. My father didn’t smoke or drink, but he had a “sweet tooth” and was very partial to milk chocolate right up until the time he died, so he traded his cigarette and beer rations for chocolate. In some parts of New Caledonia, New Zealand troops were partly paid using a system of hand drawn, numbered, tradable canteen coupons, probably reproduced on a Gestetner machine, that became a kind of substitute currency. This was because the American coins, being made of real silver, were commonly melted down for making jewelry (Figure 10).

Visits to and from the other New Zealand troops or from the Americans serving at the airfield or on the anti-aircraft guns would often result in swapping sessions. American clothing was keenly sought after by the Kiwis, and my father records acquiring a leather bomber jacket and other items which he had to dispose of during final kit inspection before leaving Stirling Island in 1944. In his final diary, Harry describes another kit inspection before leaving New Caledonia to return to New Zealand, with large piles of surrendered clothing being burnt in the camp square.

“We got our base kit bags today – everything is in perfect order in them but I was surprised to see how much junk I had collected. Dumped a lot of it. There is a big fire going in the middle of the parade ground, burning rubbish, non-issue gear etc., now and then someone throws live bullets into the fire and they go off with a bang, bits of case and the bullets themselves go flying through the air, so it pays to approach with caution.” (Harry Stone, Bourail, New Caledonia, Friday May 5^th. 1944, Diary No. 3)

A man was discovered with 300 rounds of American ammunition in his kit. In a possibly apocryphal later addition to his account of this incident, Dad claimed that when threatened with the serious charge of being in possession of non-issue equipment, he turned in the American rifle hidden in his tent that he had also been hoping to smuggle home.

If the story is true, it is quite likely that this soldier was from a farming background and had a valid use for a high performance, modern rifle. Most soldiers however, simply wanted to take home a token or “memory object” that would connect them with their wartime experiences in later years. In 1944 overseas travel was not the comparatively simple and inexpensive matter it is today, and most men did not expect to ever return to the Islands (Harry Stone never left New Zealand again after his return from the war).

A three-dimensional, tactile object, something that could be displayed on a cabinet, bookcase or mantelpiece, had for most returned servicemen a more powerful resonance and stronger connection to a place or experience – without reliving it – than a drawing or painting of a scene. Servicemen would make, trade or buy something which carried associations that mentally and spiritually connect them to places and experiences they had not only survived, but also left behind, physically and temporally, if not psychologically.

Except for servicemen of more macabre tastes, an art-work that had been hand crafted by a serviceman or a local resident was likely to be more highly valued than something that had been found on the battlefield or liberated from a Japanese soldier’s corpse.

Most of the basic forms of soldier-art produced in World War 2, including those made in the Pacific, had their origins in the trench-art of World War 1, which most regard as the “Golden Age” of trench-art, although the particular designs changed as a result of new technologies and different circumstances. Objects such as cigarette cases, cigarette lighters, letter knives, vases, dinner gongs, model planes, tanks and boats all had their precursors in the trench-art made in the Great War of 1914 – 1918.

It is interesting to ponder what factors might have contributed to Second World War soldier-artists adaptations of these basic forms twenty-five or thirty years later. Perhaps there was partly a subconscious recognition that the war they were involved in was in many ways an extension of the First World War and a resulting sense of connection with their comrades from that earlier conflict.

Perhaps the makers were inspired by seeing examples from the Great War still in family collections, or local military museums, or perhaps seen in books or cigarette cards. Harry had a collection of cigarette card illustrations carefully glued into Diary No. 3, probably as a result of his youthful interest in the aircraft of the day, but also because of the importance of being able to recognise and distinguish friendly and enemy aircraft (Figure 11).

To some extent the basic forms of soldier-art were dictated by the raw materials themselves: an artillery shell casing naturally suggests a vase or ashtray, bullets are easily perceived as aircraft fuselages. As in the earlier war, the irony of making miniature models of the war machines out of the very materials they were using to fight the war must have been attractive.

Sometimes it might have been a matter of simply being inspired to copy an example made by a mate, or perhaps, as in my father’s case, the experience of seeing the actual aircraft the models were based on flying overhead on a regular basis.

“A P38 fighter plane flew down the valley at tree top height today, the air just screamed as it went by. We haven’t seen fast planes in New Zealand yet.” (Harry Stone, New Caledonia, Friday May 28, 1943)

The P38 was a particularly popular form to base a model on because of its twin fuselage configuration. There is little evidence of a template or pattern being passed around, even though the form remained essentially the same where ever it was made, whether in Europe, North Africa or the Pacific: two .303 rifle bullets for the twin outer fuselages, one for the cockpit fuselage, another for a stand to mount the model on, and the bottom of a larger artillery shell for the base which could serve as an ashtray. The photograph in Figure 12 shows a diagram of the aircraft and the necessary parts set out prior to assembly.

So how did a Gunner Stone go about making a model of a P38 Lightning and a Mitsubishi Zero out of rifle bullets and scrap metal, miles from civilisation, in the steaming jungle of Stirling Island? Acquiring the materials would have been relatively straightforward, but how did he find the tools and equipment to manufacture the model?

In his diary written on Stirling Island Dad mentions going to No. 2 gun and “getting a bit more soldering done”. It is likely that the soldering iron he used would not have been an electric device but one heated up on a kerosene “primus” stove Figure 13). I remember watching him using one of these heavy tools when I was a child. The gun crews certainly had basic tool kits to keep the guns operational, and for more demanding repairs there were well-equipped workshops with more advanced equipment. He also mentions receiving “a couple of files” from Home, sent by his father.

Figure 13

In other services, such as aircraft maintenance, more advanced precision tools and skills made it possible to create finer quality items like jewelry, as RNZAF aircraft mechanic Ron Hermanns was able to do at Henderson Field. His tools were so precise that he was able to cut out details from New Zealand coins, such as the Maori warrior on a one-shilling piece, as the basis for pins and badges (Figure 14).

Figure 14

But there was another source of tools and technical advice for those miles away from major airbases but fortunate to be based next to an American airstrip like my father: the Seabee’s camp.

The Seabees (Construction Battalion, hence C.B.) were U.S. Marines in charge of bulldozers, excavators and other machinery who were responsible for making roads, airstrips, wharves and buildings as quickly as possible after an Allied invasion had taken place. A movie glorifying their exploits staring John Wayne and Susan Hayward called “The Fighting Seabees” was made in 1944 (Figures 15 – 17).

Older than the average serviceman, often with sons in the armed services themselves, the Seabees were generally more experienced too, not least when it came to making some extra income. They had easy access to materials, tools and equipment, which could be turned to making collectable objects from discarded war materiel in their spare time. It is easy to suppose that something of a father-figure relationship could have developed toward the younger soldiers around their bases and that they would be very willing to help out with tools and advice when they could.

The 87th. Seabees were set up right next to Harry Stone’s gun emplacement on Stirling Island, with the 82nd. at the other end of the island. They had been responsible for getting the airstrip on the island cut out of the jungle and operational within weeks of the invasion. In Diary 3, Harry mentions visiting the Seabee camp to borrow equipment to make his models with.

The tradition of selling war relics and souvenirs is still evident in Guadalcanal. The rusting evidence of the war is never far away, a reminder of the huge expenditure invested by the Japanese and Americans to retain control of the strategically vital Solomon Islands (Figures 18 – 20).

The photographs of souvenir tables (Figure 21 – 23) were taken in Barana village square on Mount Austen, south of Honiara, during my visit in 2010. The scene of vicious fighting after the Japanese were driven back by Americans using tanks, Mount Austen is a popular spot for tourists to visit. The villagers search the jungle for relics and visitors are pressured to buy. They are very conscious of the earning potential of the objects and even photographs of the tables are charged for. I had not applied for permission to take collectibles out of the country so was reluctant to purchase anything, but I had to pay to take these photographs of the trophy tables.

The only souvenir that I did obtain was a short section of “bumble wire” that my taxi driver scrambled down the hillside on Edson’s ridge with his wire cutters to get for me (Figure 24). During the battle for Edson’s Ridge this barbed wire stretched along the ridge between the Americans and the Japanese. The Americans attached tin cans to the wire which were intended to rattle when the Japanese stumbled against it as they came up from the surrounding jungle at night. The marine surveying the jungle from Edson’s Ridge in the image, taken in the same location, being held by Stanley Auger, my taxi driver and guide, has a roll of barbed wire laying on the ground in front of him (Figure 25). The iron stanchions driven into the ground to support the barbed wire are still evident on the side of the hill (Figure 26).

I found this short piece of barbed wire to be a moving memento of the battle for Edson’s Ridge, much more resonant than the war helmets and drink bottles on the souvenir tables: a desperate fight which really did mark a turning point in the War in the Pacific.

The RAMSI (Regional Aid Mission in the Solomon Islands) peacekeeping forces were withdrawn from the Solomons in 2017, but during the four years the task force was stationed there, as in Europe during World War 1, souvenirs were made by the local populace to cater for the military personnel stationed on Guadalcanal.  At the time of my visit in 2010, local craftspeople were very aware that Australian and New Zealand soldiers returning home were likely to want to take a handcrafted memento of their time in the Solomons with them, just as soldiers in Europe in the Great War did, and souvenirs were accordingly tailored to demand like the “New Zealand Defenc Force” shield seen on a tourist stall at the Mendana Hotel in Honiara in 2010 (Figure 27).

Figure 27