Back ../images/stories/usforces/usforces-010-tn.gif Listen now to Roy Murphy talk to New Zealanders who married American servicemen, at a reunion in New York: meeting US servicemen; going to dances.
Romantic liaisons between American servicemen and New Zealand women inevitably developed. The soldiers were starved of female company, and the Kiwi women often found the American men brought good manners and exciting new habits like taxi rides, ice-cream sodas and gifts of flowers.
The end of the American invasion was a gradual process which started in the last months of 1943. For some New Zealanders it was a relief to see the men go; for others it was an occasion of sadness and, before long, grief as many Americans died, especially in the invasion of Tarawa Island.
