Battle of Manners Street

Soldiers and civilians slugged it out on the streets of Wellington during the ‘Battle of Manners Street’, the best-known clash between New Zealanders and American servicemen during the Second World War.

Drunken Allied servicemen fighting each other late on a Saturday night was not a good look, and news of the brawl was hushed up at the time. One young man who said he was former member of the Royal New Zealand Air Force was convicted of being drunk and disorderly and fined £2 when he appeared before a magistrate on the Monday morning. He was granted name suppression ‘in view of his record’.

At any one time during the two years after June 1942, between 15,000 and 45,000 American soldiers and sailors were based in New Zealand (see 12 June), either before or immediately after experiencing the horrors of war in the Pacific.

The ‘American invasion’ led to a clash of cultures. Romantic liaisons developed between American troops and New Zealand women, and about 1500 New Zealand women married Americans during the war.

Many New Zealand men, especially soldiers serving overseas, resented the popularity of these American ‘bedroom commandos’. Tensions erupted into brawls in Wellington and Auckland.