The Battle of Manners Street

This is just a little bit of New Zealand history.

This is mostly unrelated to anything else I’m talking about, it’s just local history.

The Battle of Manners Street

Soldiers and civilians slugged it out on the streets of Wellington during the ‘Battle of Manners Street’, the best-known clash between New Zealanders and American servicemen during the Second World War.

Drunk Allied servicemen fighting each other on a Saturday night was not a good look, and news of the brawl was hushed up at the time. One young man who said he was a former member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force was convicted of being drunk and disorderly and fined £2 when he appeared before a magistrate on Monday morning. He was granted name suppression ‘in view of his record’.

On any day during the two years after June 1942, between 15,000 and 45,000 American soldiers and sailors were based in New Zealand (see 12 June), either before or immediately after experiencing the horrors of war in the Pacific.

The ‘American invasion’ led to a clash of cultures. Romantic liaisons developed between American troops and New Zealand women, about 1500 of whom married Americans during the war.

Many New Zealand men, especially soldiers serving overseas, resented the popularity of these American ‘bedroom commandos’. Some soldiers from southern US states viewed non-white people as inferior and tended to regard Māori women as 'fair game'. Tensions erupted into brawls in Wellington and Auckland.

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/battle-manners-street

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There was actually also a problem to do with Maori men being barred from the Allied Services' Club on Manners Street. Presumably because the American soldiers were trying to chat up women in there?

-David's comment

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The Battle of Manners Street, Wellington, 1943

This riot, which has passed into Wellington legend as “the Battle of Manners Street”, took place on the evening of Saturday, 3 April 1943. It began at the Allied Services' Club in Manners Street (now the Manners Street Post Office) when, it is alleged, servicemen from the southern United States refused to let some Maori servicemen drink in the club. When the Americans removed their Army service belts to emphasise their point of view, New Zealand servicemen joined in and the “battle” spread into the streets. American military police, who arrived to restore order, took sides and used their batons. The fighting spread to the A.N.A. Club in Willis Street, where belts and knives were used, and into Cuba Street. It has been estimated that over 1,000 American and New Zealand, troops were involved, as well as several hundreds of civilians. The battle lasted for about four hours before order was restored by the civil police. Many American soldiers were injured during this affray and at least two were killed. The “Battle of Manners Street” was the ugliest riot in New Zealand's history.

The “Battle of Manners Street” was not the only clash between American and New Zealand troops in New Zealand cities. About the same time there were two similar riots in Auckland, and a further clash occurred outside the Mayfair Cabaret, in Cuba Street, Wellington, on 12 May 1945. There was also a clash between a small party of American servicemen and Maori civilians at Otaki in October 1943.

In no case has the result of any of the ensuing inquiries been published; and, owing to the strictures of wartime censorship, no reference to the riots appeared at the time in local newspapers.

https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/riots/page-7

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I actually lived within walking distance of the marines' base in Paekākāriki when I was in Raumati Beach, Paraparaumu.

-David's note

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Everywhere Americans go, there are problems when it comes to relationships and women.