Tua'ipulotu Willie Cuthers (with blue hat) with his family at his grandfather's grave. L-R: Nephew Lachlan, sons Eli and Kele. Friend Dr Mae David, wife Dr Danise Cuthers, daughter Antonia, father-in-law Paula Taumoepeau and Mae's daughter Omaio.
Tua'ipulotu Willie Cuthers (with blue hat) with his family at his grandfather's grave. L-R: Nephew Lachlan, sons Eli and Kele. Friend Dr Mae David, wife Dr Danise Cuthers, daughter Antonia, father-in-law Paula Taumoepeau and Mae's daughter Omaio.
As he placed a special plaque onto his grandfather’s grave, acknowledging the old man’s role as a wartime coastwatcher, Tua’ipulotu Willie Cuthers says he felt a sense of relief.
“We fixed it to the grave and I don’t think it was emotional, but I had a good feeling of: ‘It’s finished. It’s complete’.”
It was a full-circle moment for Kiwi police officer and academic researcher Cuthers.
While studying in 2019, he discovered that his grandfather - William Kiri Cuthers - had been a teenage coastwatcher in the Cook Islands during World War II.
Cuthers had grown up knowing his grandfather was a radio operator, but not to the extent of what it turned out to be.
In 1942, a then 16-year-old William Kiri Cuthers from Arorangi, Rarotonga, was trained as a coastwatcher and posted to a remote outer island in the Cook Islands - Mitiaro - as a coastwatcher.
He was among other coastwatchers - many of them teenagers also - set up in the coast-watching system of 58 stations around the Pacific, including in the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Fiji, Samoa, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Tonga.
William Kiri Cuthers' was just 16 when he was posted on a remote island in the Cook Islands as a coastwatcher.
They acted as one of the first lines of defence for New Zealand during the war and their main task was to communicate back any sightings of what could be enemy ships or aircraft - while also staying alert and awake.
His efforts, as well as dozens of other Pacific Island wartime coastwatchers, would not be recognised until some 80 years later.
Earlier this month, the Cuthers family returned to Rarotonga to install the official plaque, which reads: “William Cuthers. NZ Coastwatcher 1939-45. Died 9.9.1989. Aged 64 years.”
‘When it started it was about me and my grandad’
Cuthers described it as an intimate gathering with just a few of them present - including his wife Dr Nanise Cuthers and their children.
In one of the family photos captured at the grave that day, Cuthers’ young nephew Lachlan can be seen giving a salute.
A young Willie Cuthers pictured with his grandfather William Kiri Cuthers, who served as a coastwatcher in the Cook Islands during World War II.
William Kiri Cuthers’ Cook Islands coastwatcher plaque is the first to be installed in Rarotonga.
The first plaque of its kind in New Zealand was unveiled over the weekend - that belonging to Cook Islands coastwatcher Pu Banaba, whose plaque was put on his father’s grave in Auckland.
“When it started, it was about me and my grandad. But then when you find out all those other names, you sort of thought more about them.”
The NZ Defence Force has put together an online historical record of all those Pacific coastwatchers and is working to contact their families to ensure they receive special recognition certificates and plaques.
Asked if his own groundwork to make this happen might be recognised, Cuthers chuckled.
“I just try to lay low,” he says.
“If there are other families out there that haven’t made contact with the Defence Force and they know that their ancestor was a coastwatcher, please do.
“It’d be awesome for them to be able to commemorate their ancestor like everyone is starting to do now.”
Tua'ipulotu Willie Cuthers (with blue hat) with his family at his grandfather's grave. L-R: Nephew Lachlan, sons Eli and Kele. Friend Dr Mae David, wife Dr Danise Cuthers, daughter Antonia, father-in-law Paula Taumoepeau and Mae's daughter Omaio.
