During the Second World War people of German, Italian and Japanese descent were interned on Matiu (Somes Island) in Wellington Harbour. As German internee Charles Klingenstein explains, conditions at first were tough. However, in the last years of the war things improved and the internees were able to grow vegetables and earn pocket money by making small objects for sale. The man shown here is making pāua-shell jewellery.
Transcript
Interviewer: Well Somes Island, apart from the fact that you were imprisoned as it were, was it an unpleasant place to spend four years.
Charles Klingenstein: Weather-wise, very much so. It was a horrible place. Stuck up in the middle of Wellington Harbour, cause you know what Wellington's the weather's like, it's not exactly the best! But in the early stages, yes. Because we always confined to the perimeter of the camp itself behind the barbed wire, which didn't give, well we would be allowed out for about an hour outside the wire. But we couldn't go down on the beach or anything just round the bits of tracks around the top of the island and they were fairly well-patrolled, you couldn't go down below. But in the latter stages it became almost pleasant, we were allowed down on the, well all around cos it was just a rocky sort of the coastline, bit of a beach right at the back end. You were allowed round there and we could wander around all that more or less to our heart's content. Yes, latter stages it was quite good.
Interviewer: What did you do?
Charles: The start, nothing we only had the three days a week the [?] used to come in and deliver goods and any visitors of anything we had to unload that. And apart from that it was just more or less maintenance work. But the latter stages we had a vegetable garden, which was quite good. Bit of a valley, up dug it and put spuds it down and what have you. It was a remarkable place for growing vegetables, it was almost just like magic, never been- just virgin soil I suppose. But no, we didn't have much to do really.
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Reference: 29740
Image: W. Wynne Mason, Prisoners of war. Wellington: War History Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1954, plate facing, p. 339.
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