An Island Bay Child's War Time Memories 

During the Second World War the growing Brown family lived at  100 Derwent Street, Island Bay, having moved from Sydenham Street, in Northland in October 1939. My younger brother David and sisters Lindle and Glenda were born and I started at Island Bay School. 

The Home Guard at the Island Bay Croquet ground 

My father, Tom Brown, worked as a bank clerk in the Head Office of the National Bank of New Zealand in Featherston St, where at the height of the Pacific War he would regularly stay overnight on fire watch duty. Tom was in the first aid section of the Local Melrose Home Guard Battalion (460 men in mid 1943). He paraded, trained and drilled on the Croquet Green (now a Scout Den) at the top of Dover Street. 

The massive Island Bay road block, "Army No. 725" of Dover Street and across towards the Home of Compassion was completed in 1942 and manned by the local Home Guard. The concrete slots in the main road, to take the tank obstructing type-G bent rails, remained there for many years. These were circular holes dug into the road and then filled with concrete. Each had an H' shaped hole into which railway lines fitted. There was no inconvenience to normal traffic as the railway lines were only fitted during practices. There was a similar road block in Happy Valley, where the entrance to the tip is. 

The Home Guard was an important part of New Zealand's home defence preparations. It was formed in 1940, taken under Army control in 1941 and made compulsory in 1942. It reached a peak of efficiency and size during 1943 with 123,000 men (7.5% of our population) and was disbanded in December of the same year. It was never required to fight. 

Defence of your own locality was the role of the Home Guard. At Island Bay there were beach obstructions as well as a pill box and trenches above the sand dunes between the storm water outlet and the end of Derwent Street. There were other trenches on the hills above High Street. Signs of those trenches remained for us children to see long afterwards. My grandfather, Alexander Brown, who lived with us, was most concerned and started to dig an underground shelter after the bombing of Darwin in February 1942 and a Japanese reconnaissance flight over Wellington in March that year. But this exercise was great fun for us young children. 

Aged seven at the end of the war, I remember the day well. The children in the lower school were so happy they formed a long procession that marched around and around the lower playground and the middle level. Oldest were at the front and the youngest class like me were at the tail end. There was much noise with yelling, chanting and banging of tin lids and wooden boxes. But what I remember best were two whole days of holidays from school! Later I remember using the concrete changing sheds, near the school swimming pool, which could also have been used as the school's air raid shelter.