George attended the Awanui school and worked on the family farm on Quarry Rd, Kaitaia. Backbreaking work in an environment of pipe clay, sandstone and gum holes. He belonged to that generation reared on a diet of hard work and the 'mau o te whenua me te moana' the bounty of land and sea.
Part of the family farm was taken over by the Crown to construct an airfield for the US air service in WW II. This eventually became the Kaitaia airport.
Military service was a key part of the whanau. His uncle and namesake Hori Matenga served in the Maori Pioneer Battalion in WWI. His older brothers Walter and Ivan (Musa) joined the Māori Battalion and the NZ Air Force respectively.
George followed suit by enlisting for J Force at the age of 17. It would appear that the army did not thoroughly check his age. He served for two years in Japan and witnessed firsthand the devastating results of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
He referred to the landscape five months after the atomic bomb blast as 'indescribable'. It was an extraordinary contrast from the Far North environment where this 17-year-old grew up in.
George was proud of his military service but remained reticent about actual details.
During his J Force stint he was in the company of other young servicemen from the Kaitaia district, including Sir Graham Latimer and Darby Jones.
After the demobilisation of the J Force in 1946, George found civvie life too slow. He re-joined the military through the NZ Air Force as an armament mechanic. He spent time in foreign locations including the Suez Canal, Malta and Cyprus.
In 1954 he returned to the Far North and took over the family farm. He became a stalwart of Awanui rugby and played locally with All Blacks legend Peter Hilton Jones.
He taught many of his nephews and nieces to catch and net for fish on Ninety Mile
Beach.
Both the willing and unwilling were drawn into his net of food gathering for marae, sporting and RSA events. He was a firm believer in growing and catching what you eat.
On a lighter note, apparently when George finished his military service his discharge papers describe him as having brown eyes, dark hair and sallow complexion.
Presumably this was still the case in 1962 when he married Angel Smith, who still lives on the family farm. She originally came from Pukehou in Hawke's Bay. They had two sons Lawrence and Walter.
Sadly the latter passed away, however, George is survived by a robust pa harakeke, flax bush of descendants.
A significant number of mokopuna who should be proud of their koro, the 93-year-old remnant of the Japanese occupation J Force.
