Source: Radio New Zealand
Juliana Keefe has spent more than 25 years preserving the legacy of the 28th Māori Battalion, ensuring the stories of her father, his three brothers and fellow soldiers are not lost. RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
This story is part of a series sharing the voices of whānau of the 28th Māori Battalion, keeping their memories alive.
Inside Juliana Keefe’s home, shelves of albums hold decades of history.
Photographs of soldiers sit alongside handwritten notes, cemetery records, and carefully labelled names. Each page reflects more than 25 years of work documenting men of the 28th Māori Battalion – including her father, Private John Keefe.
“I want to keep it alive,” Keefe said.
“So my family know, and they can’t be forgotten. Because if it wasn’t for them, where would we be?”
As a child, her understanding of her father’s wartime experience was limited to a single detail, the scar he carried home.
“When we were little kids, he used to go outside with no shirt on, and we used to play with his scar,” she said.
“And we used to say, ‘where did you get this, Dad?’ And he would say ‘war’.”
It was not until decades later, at a Māori Battalion reunion in the 1980s, that she began to understand what that meant.
“That’s when I started learning about him and his brothers … and then I started going to several reunions and meeting lots of soldiers. After that, I got interested in it.”
Private John Keefe was injured during the Battle of Crete while carrying a wounded German soldier to friendly lines. Supplied / Juliana Keefe
Her father John Keefe enlisted in 1941 at the age of 20. He trained at Papakura Army Camp before being deployed to North Africa, where Allied forces engaged in campaigns against German troops led by General Erwin Rommel.
Three of his brothers, Wi Keefe, Peter Keefe, and George Tau Ta (Andy) Keefe, also served.
“I asked him, why did you go overseas? He said, it was the excitement of going and seeing something new.”
That sense of adventure soon gave way to the realities of war.
“He said the bullets were like bees flying past you,” she said.
“And he said, ‘it was either me or him’.”
Keefe pulls out a Wairoa Star article from 1995 about her father. It recounts one moment early in his service that would stay with him forever. After missing a convoy due to a night of drinking, he later learned it had been bombed.
“I remember the date was October 23, 1941, the convoy I missed was bombed and many soldiers were killed,” he said in the article.
“All through the battles you could say I was pretty lucky, I had some very close shaves.”
His service took him from North Africa to Italy, where he fought in difficult terrain and close combat. At Tebaga Gap, he came across the body of Second Lieutenant Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngārimu VC, who had been killed in action.
“You could have sworn he was alive, but he had been killed in action. His whole regiment were a band of courageous soldiers,” he said.
In Italy, at Orsogna, Keefe experienced the intensity of frontline combat, including river crossings under fire and encounters with German tanks.
“We had to back-track and re-group as we didn’t have a hope against their tanks,” he said in the article.
Juliana Keefe says preserving these histories is important, because “if it wasn’t for them, where would we be?” RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
For Juliana, many of these details came later, through conversations and the stories her father chose to share.
“He mainly talked about his mates,” she said.
“He talked about what they did and where they went.”
She recalls her father telling her about losing one of his close friends from Wairoa, John Hapeta, who was caught in a cross-fire with the Germans.
“But you never had time to mourn, it was kill or be killed, mourning for mates comes later,” he said in the article.
One of the most significant moments he spoke about was Christmas Eve, 1943.
He and a few of his comrades were nearly back at their line when they heard a horrifying scream. Thinking it was one of their own, they went to investigate. However, it was a German soldier who was badly wounded. They loaded him onto a stretcher and were carrying him to friendly lines when a mortar shell exploded nearby.
Keefe was struck by shrapnel in the back and knocked unconscious, before being transported to a hospital in Italy and later returned to Aotearoa aboard the hospital ship Maunganui in March 1944.
“He thought he had met his maker,” Keefe said.
“He saw them, he saw the Germans, but they still fired on them.”
After the war, John Keefe trained as a joiner. The impact of dust on his lungs led him to leave the trade and join the railways, where he worked for many years in Waikōkopu, Māhia. He married Julia Griffin in 1949 and raised three daughters.
Keefe describes her father as a quiet and hardworking man.
“He was a very quiet man … just kept to himself,” she said.
“He loved fishing … and he used to teach us how to play cards. We could never beat him, because he knew how to cheat,” she laughed.
Although he spoke openly later in life, she said his experiences were not always shared during her childhood.
“It wasn’t until Mum passed in 1984 that every time I’d go back, he’d start telling me stories,” she said.
“That’s how I started writing.”
For more than 25 years, Juliana Keefe has been compiling the history of the 28th Māori Battalion, including records of her father, John Keefe and his three brothers. RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
Those stories became the foundation of a personal archive that has continued to grow over decades.
In 2000, Keefe travelled to Italy to retrace the footsteps of the Māori Battalion through the Second World War.
“It was very emotional, especially going to Cassino,” she said.
At Monte Cassino, she stood among rows of white headstones beneath the ruined abbey.
“Those were some of the saddest sights that I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It was a sobering sight that I will never forget.”
Since then, she has travelled multiple times to Italy, Greece, Egypt and other locations connected to the Battalion’s service. Each trip has added to her collection of photographs and records.
“Every cemetery I’ve gone to, I’ve done pictures, and I’ve tried to get photos of the men and their headstones,” she said.
Her work has also connected her with other whānau, including those still searching for answers about loved ones.
In some cases, names are found on memorial walls rather than graves.
“When they have memorial walls, that means they can’t find the bodies,” she said.
“It’s sad … really sad.”
– any way we can have this along the side? RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
Back home, she continued documenting the lives of returned servicemen, including members of her own whānau.
She speaks about the harsh realities many Māori soldiers faced when they returned home. While their Pākehā counterparts were given land and homes, Māori “got nothing”.
“My uncles …They’d be drunk, and I’d hide in the shop till they went past,” she said.
“I didn’t understand what was wrong … now I understand. It would have been hard for them, and there was no help for them. They didn’t have it in those times.”
She said the effects of war extended beyond the battlefield and into the lives of those who returned.
Her father carried those experiences quietly, sharing pieces of them over time.
“He was a man of few words,” she said.
“But when he did talk, well, I certainly listened. But I could have asked more … but it’s too late. You don’t think about that when you’re young.”
She recounts a moment shared with her father. He was looking through one of her albums and came across a photo of one of his dear friends headstone.
“I looked up at him, and he had this faraway look in his eye. And I said, what’s wrong, Dad? And he said, what a waste.
“We both went to North Africa. We went to Egypt, and had to go and get killed in Italy.”
Juliana Keefe says her father “was a man of few words… but when he did talk, I listened.” Supplied / Juliana Keefe
In his later years, Keefe returned home to care for him. What began as a short-term plan extended to nearly three years.
“It was amazing looking after him,” she said.
“He was good to me.”
John Keefe passed away on 31 December, 2004.
Today, his story lives on through his daughter’s work.
Her collection now includes thousands of photographs and documents, gathered from cemeteries, archives and whānau.
She is considering donating the material to a museum to ensure it remains accessible for future generations.
Honouring tūpuna for future generations
With no surviving members of the 28th Māori Battalion, she said the responsibility to remember now sits with whānau and communities.
“[Anzac is all about] memories, thinking about all those men, women. You know, the women suffered just as well as the men. The men might have gone to war, but the women had a hard job. And I know the people who had the hardest was the East Coast, that’s why all those women are strong.”
At the Porirua RSA, photographs of her father and his brothers are now displayed each Anzac Day.
“That’s the first time something like that has happened there,” she said.
“I feel brilliant. I feel proud.”
The archive Keefe has built is for her seven mokopuna and four great mokopuna, and for the generations that follow.
Ka maumahara tonu tātou ki a rātou – we will remember them.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
