Highly controversial: New book on Māori war hero

In May 1943, Lance Sergeant Haane Manahi of the 28 Māori Battalion was recommended for a Victoria Cross by four Allied generals, including Freyberg and Montgomery. However, the award was later mysteriously downgraded in London to a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

In a new biography of Manahi, AUT Professor of History Dr. Paul Moon details Manahi’s astonishing feats of bravery at Takrouna, Tunisia, and uncovers the events surrounding the VC recommendation and subsequent downgrading.

By his own admission, Dr. Moon says his book will be highly controversial: ‘For the first time, the identity of the person who struck out Manahi’s VC is revealed, as are the later refusals by New Zealand politicians to rectify the situation’.

Dr. Moon describes the actions of two New Zealand governments since the 1990s as amounting to ‘a cynical, shameful and protracted act of betrayal’, against not only Manahi but the whole of the Māori Battalion.
In an effort to ensure that Manahi’s VC was not awarded, one government minister recently went as far as to imply that Manahi had committed a war crime at Takrouna.

The book launch for Victoria Cross at Takrouna: The Haane Manahi Story will be held in Rotorua on Saturday, 30 October Dr. Paul Moon will be joined at the launch by members of the Manahi whānau.

Victoria Cross at Takrouna: The Haane Manahi Story (Huia Publishers)  will be available in bookstores from Friday, 29 October 2010 and will retail at $45.00.

About the author

Paul Moon is Professor of History at the Faculty of Māori Development, Te Ara Poutama, at Auckland University of Technology and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London.
Dr Moon is well known for his writing on New Zealand and Māori history, of biographies and on the Treaty of Waitangi, and he has worked on several Waitangi Tribunal claims.
His books include two studies on the Treaty of Waitangi, biographies of New Zealand governors William Hobson and Robert FitzRoy, a biography of Kotahitanga leader Hone Heke Ngapua, and a trilogy about Tūhoe tohunga Hohepa Kereopa.