Our Opinion – Mum’s war work remembered

I’ve been thinking about my mum for two reasons recently – Mother’s Day is coming up, and Anzac Day has just gone.

My mother was in the Women’s Royal NZ Naval Service (Wrens) – although she never went to sea. Instead, she was one of a select group who operated a secret station from a remote farm in Rapaura, near Blenheim during World War II.

All we ever knew about her wartime work as we grew up was that it involved morse code, that she was selected because she was a fast typist and that they all put on weight eating fresh cream and butter from the farm, which she felt guilty about as times were tough for most during the war.

Mum was clear that the Defence Force was keeping its secrets close, and many years after the war, that was all she would say. I could tell though, that she was proud of whatever it was she did there, and that it had been an exciting part of her youth.

She was released from that Oath of Silence by the Defence Force in 1982, a full 40 years after the station in Rapaura was set up, and just two years before her death. She, and several of the other Wrens, were interviewed for a book and articles that revealed what those women had been up to.

My mum and the seven other women had to learn Japanese Katikana code because they were identifying Japanese callsigns from stations or vessels.

Their work was coded and passed onto the Navy office in Wellington over a Scrambler telephone. It provided insight into signals from enemy forces that were near NZ shores.

All of it was top secret – the farmhouse was enclosed with a 2m-high barbed wire fence with a locked gate and guard. An aerial was concealed in trees close to the house having been shot up into the branches using a bow and arrow.

It was important work – the caption on one of the photos of those Wrens reads “Had the Japanese High Command known about these Wrens and the work they were doing, there is little doubt that it would have put a price on each of their heads.”

The station was closed in May 1944 but I am sure that the two years my mother spent doing that work were immensely important – to her and the others (some of whom became her lifelong friends) but also as a contribution to NZ’s wartime security.