Documentary causes flood of emails

More than 60 emails from viewers poured in after a recent television documentary highlighted University of Otago research involving Pacific babies of US servicemen and efforts to trace family members.

One email writer told Otago historian Prof Judith Bennett the televised account of efforts by the former babies to locate lost family members, including the World War 2 servicemen fathers, would "bring tears to glass eyes".

Prof Bennett, of the Otago history department, is leading an all-women team in a three-year project to research official documentation about the children of American servicemen and Maori and Pacific Island women, and to interview as many of them as possible.

Backed by a $917,000 Marsden Fund grant, the researchers are searching government, military and church records to try to find the children, and will interview as many as are willing to talk about their lives.

Earlier media coverage, including an Otago Daily Times article in January, sparked inquiries from about 50 children or their relatives.

These children included several people of mixed Maori-US heritage, as well as Samoans, Cook Islanders and Fijians living on those islands and in this country.

When the "very moving" documentary screened on TV One's Sunday programme on August 28, the flood of emails had already begun when she started work at 7.30am the next day.

"I didn't stop answering emails until 5pm. They're still coming in."

Many came from New Zealand European children of US servicemen, or relatives of the children.

One email applauded government funding for the Otago project, which would be "further research that heals Pacific families".

The powerful public response vindicated the decision to pursue research in this previously little-investigated field, Prof Bennett said.

"This is a story that talks to everyone, because everyone's in a family of some kind."

Where relatives were untraced, over time, people felt "there's a gap in their life, a question mark".

"They want to know where they fit in."

A serviceman father had often become part of the woman's family and "found it very hard to leave" after the war.

US immigration restrictions meant it was hard to bring wives home from the Pacific immediately after the war, and very few of the men "had the ways and means" of later returning to the Pacific.

As a public service, Otago researchers this week launched an internet site - http://www.otago.ac.nz/usfathers/ - where people can seek information about their US fathers.

The advent of the internet and increased access to electronic databases in recent years was making it easier for New Zealand and Pacific children to trace their American fathers, she said.

• Prof Bennett will also give a public lecture on her research at the university's Castle 1 lecture theatre at 5.30pm on September 21.

john.gibb@odt.co.nz