Taonga tales

Collections of war memorabilia no longer just signify battles and bravery; they have evolved to tell us about ourselves.

- COLLEEN BROWN

Here it is. What remains of nearly 18 months of fighting hellish battles is an annotated map of the Indian sub continent, an identity pass, a signed 1943 Christmas Day sergeants' mess menu, a pay book, small piles of photos and letters, all spread across my dining table.

There's a medal, too - the Burma Star and a battered hat. This memorabilia marks the war of Ray Travers, posted to India and Burma with the RNZAF in 1943-44.

Ray was my father. In his ID photo, he looks so young, and he was. A sergeant at just 24, he commanded a ground crew who tested and loaded armaments onto the planes fighting in Burma. The map is massive. It's taped together and split at the edges.

His huge hands have folded it back into its creases so many times that it is worryingly fragile. On it, in capital letters, my father has written exotic placenames like Dum Dum, Alipore, Chittagong, Imphal, Akyab. He has marked air bases, train trips, dating many.

These are the physical mementoes of Ray's service. I carry related childhood memories - his nightmares, the recurrences of malaria, the shrapnel mottling his leg and a few anecdotes about "tigers in tents".

I consider what's covering the table. What to do now with these delicate items holding special memories for our family? Who should they be passed to, and with fragile items like the map, should we be tapping expert attention to ensure it survives another 80 years?

These questions face many Kiwi families, and with the original owners now departed, the taonga can become contentious within whānau: what is kept, who keeps it, should "important" items be shared beyond the family and, as descendants fan out and grow in number, who keeps what?

BEYOND STOREHOUSES