Featherston Camp was New Zealand’s largest training camp during the First World War, where around 60,000 young men trained for military service on European battlefields between 1916 and 1918.
Two kilometres north of the quiet little Wairarapa town of Featherston, a small memorial garden marks the site of a riot that resulted in the deaths of 48 Japanese prisoners of war and one guard. A further 63 prisoners were wounded.
A plaque commemorates the site with a 17th-century haiku:
Behold the summer grass
All that remains of the
Dreams of warriors.
This Mah Jong set and box was hand-crafted by Japanese prisoners of war at the Featherston POW camp during the Second World War. It was given to Jack Rapson, who served as a guard at the camp.
Rows of barracks at Featherston Military Camp, taken c1918.
This plaque near State Highway 2 outside Featherston is part of a small memorial garden that marks the site where 48 Japanese prisoners of war and one guard were fatally shot on 25 February 1943.
Transcript of the haiku on the plaque:
Behold the summer grass
All that remains of the
Dreams of warriors.
Steve Watters, 2006
The memorial garden marks the site of a riot that resulted in the deaths of 48 Japanese prisoners of war and one guard on 25 February 1943.
Steve Watters, 2006
During the First World War Featherston was the site of New Zealand’s largest military training camp, housing 7500 men. It was dismantled after the war but re-established in 1942 to house 800 Japanese prisoners of war (POWs), most captured in the South Pacific.
