ANZAC DAY HERO: Battler saw NZ action

BRENDAN WEBB
One of the dwindling number of survivors from the 28th Maori Battalion, Darcy Nepia, of Hastings, twice saw battle before he even reached the theatre of war in Europe.
The two battles he witnessed were not against the Germans or the Japanese. They involved American soldiers and New Zealanders and both involved fatalities.
Darcy Ngarimu Peters - a great-uncle of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters - was a 14-year-old living in Gisborne when he decided he was off to war.
Arriving in Wellington he tried to join the territorials but his birth certificate gave the game away. His mother in Gisborne was notified and a welfare officer was sent to Wellington to send Darcy and a mate home. The officer accompanied them on the electric train to Paekakariki where the duo were to wait for the 8.30pm steam train to continue their journey to Gisborne. They waited, but never got on.
They headed back to Wellington and young Darcy again went to sign up, this time using his mother's maiden name of Nepia, and got into the Wellington Regiment when three months short of his 15th birthday.
About two years later he left the territorials, joined the Maori Battalion and witnessed what became known as The Battle of Manners Street on April 3, 1943.
Now 81, Darcy Nepia remembers he and his mates riding on dodgems down by the Royal Oak Hotel. He says it was the United Club that was the haunt of servicemen.
On the day of the battle, he and his mates had been on their way back to the club when they had to wait at the intersection of Cuba and Manners streets. He remembers a military policeman directing traffic as they waited to cross.
Moments later, some American soldiers, a little worse for wear after drinking at the club, walked out on to the road and tried to direct the traffic too. The provo pushed them aside and that, Mr Nepia says, is when the battle started. As fists flew, he remembers being hit and then grabbing a lead piece hanging from the webbing belt of one of the Americans, and used it to knock his attacker down. The battle raged from Manners Street to the Basin Reserve and even as far as the Haitaitai tunnel, he says.
"Any Yank on the street was beaten up - and any of our chaps who were on their own."
The battle lasted for four hours before military police restored order.
The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand says many Americans were injured and at least two were killed. Wartime censorship meant local newspapers were banned from reporting that incident and others in Otaki in October 1943 and Cuba Street on May 12, 1945.
Darcy Nepia is dismissive of the theory that racism by Americans from southern states was behind the fights. He says there was a lot of tension over the presence of the well-groomed Americans and their attraction to Kiwi women, many of whom had boyfriends and husbands fighting overseas. Mixed with alcohol, it became an explosive brew.
Mr Nepia was to find himself in a second battle with the Americans across the Tasman while en route to the war in Europe.
His ship berthed at Fremantle, Australia, and as luck would have it, an American ship bound for Pearl Harbour berthed alongside.He believes it was the same group of Americans who had been involved in the Wellington fracas.
With feelings still running high over the Manners Street clash, a brawl broke out the next day in a hotel. Mr Nepia became one of four witnesses for a court martial following the brawl. He was not told the outcome of the court martial but he and others heard that four American soldiers were found guilty of murder and later executed at a beach.