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The recent news concerning the massacre which took place on Tarawa Atoll, in the Gilbert Islands group (Kiribati) during World War II, has a link to our district through the Parker family of Tauhoa. Wilfred Athol Rolf Parker (Joe) was born 1915 in Tauhoa, the son of Frank William Parker and his wife Jessie, nee McLean. He was the youngest of the family, which later moved to Whitford where his father died in 1928. By the start of the war, Rolf was farming in Okoroire with his widowed mother. He enlisted in 2NZEF 30 Battalion, and his last posting was to NZ Infantry, 8 Brigade Group, Signals Corps NZ Coastwatchers.
It’s hard to imagine the changes in young Rolf’s life, from its beginnings on a very small kiwi dairy farm at Tauhoa to the war on the Pacific Island of Tarawa, where his life was to end so violently. The army training could not have prepared him for life on the island where he had to settle in, begin his work with his mates and mix with local families. His life was to link with one of these families when he married Nei Taate not long before the events unfolded.
First, all the coastwatchers were captured, tied to coconut trees for a period of up to three or four days before being interred in a prisoner-of-war camp in September 1942. On the afternoon of 15 October, the island was bombarded by a United States warship and aircraft, and later that day, the Japanese decided to take their revenge and one-by-one the captured coastwatchers were taken out and executed.
For Nei Taate, the tragedy of losing her young husband and to actually witness the events, when she knew she was expecting his child, must have been very hard to bear. Their time together had been very short, yet she had been told all about his family in NZ, his mother who was very dear to him, and also his brothers and sister. Almost 40 years were to pass, when the daughter who was born to Nei and Rolf, Tio (Gilbertese for Joe), met a young New Zealander who came to the island to work as a Volunteer Service Abroad. Tio, who had five daughters of her own by this time, asked him to see if he could trace the family of her late father in NZ. Contact was made with a nephew of Rolf’s in the Waikato and the family made the long trip to Tarawa to meet Tio and her daughters, who were thrilled to see family of their father and grandfather. Days of traditional hospitality followed with much excitement, although the sadness of their loss was never far from their minds. I look forward to the planned building of a memorial in Wellington.
