I'm going through an oral history of WWII and came upon this:
"Well, ninety of them—Marines killed ninety of them. They won’t tell you all that stuff, but we did. They killed three or four of us. We killed ninety of them, those … South Africans and the British Eighth Army. We had blocked off seven blocks, wasn’t nothing they could do about it but let us fight it out. And then the Eighth Army took their bunch and moved them further out and let the Marines hold on. What started the fight? I was there in the fight. Well, they had this big movie. So we was in the movie and the British National Anthem come 11 on, you know, playing their song and everything. And we stood up to it. We honored it. Then the American National Anthem came on playing the national anthem. They booed it, and when they booed it they was in trouble. The fight started there in that theater when they booed the American flag. Before it was over, we’d killed ninety of them, and they never did boo our flag anymore. That was the end of the booing of the American flag. That was in New Zealand."
I want to learn everything I can about this incident. I keep getting hits for the Battle of Manners Street - it is not that. This stemmed from different motivations and took place in a different city (the incident I'm looking for happened in Auckland). This happened shortly after Guadalcanal and before Tarawa.
Thank you for your help!
Are you able to provide the source for this annecdote?
Either way Manners Street was far from the first or last booze, pride, and temper fueled incident in Australia or New Zealand between the host nations and American servicemen.
New Zealand's official history even notes a few scrapes in Auckland that over time could have evolved into the outright battle recalled here. 3 especially do fit the window you mentioned after the WATCHTOWER landings in August 1942 and November 1943 when the Gilbert and Marshalls campaign began which included GALVANIC and Tarawa. There were certainly as almost always more than a few points of tension between thousands of relatively cash flush US men dumped in county for weeks or months while thousands of local men were in Europe or Africa, and this did reach a peak in 1943 as US numbers reached their max and many New Zealand men were allowed to finally return home on leave to broken relationships, engagements, understandings or more along with more routine clashes of culture.
Auckland also saw its share of conflict, with a drunken brawl in October 1942, bottle throwing and pistol shots in Shortland St five months later, and a stabbing in Queen St in May 1943.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/us-forces-in-new-zealand/yankee-boys-kiwi-girls
Its also odd they claim that South African troops were present. No large formations from SA ever served in the South Pacific or were garrisoned in New Zealand. Indeed like NZ at the time in 1942/43 South Africa in addition to a modest air force and contribution to the Royal Navy was fielding just one division sized force in active service down from a max of two and some independent units due to manpower issues, and in 1943 converted it to the 6th SA Armored Division which would fight in Italy.
We can note however that yes, censorship both by US and Allied command and local civilian leadership did keep news of incidents from spreading often, and even then usually late in most instances, or only passing references.
Some additional quotes expand on some fo the incidents above.
An article in a weekly paper during February 1943 was not repeated by other papers. This ‘Shots in Shortland Street’ stated that in the early hours of 10 February an altercation in Auckland between New Zealand and American servicemen over women flared into bottle throwing and ‘several scarcely playful bouts of fisticuffs’, subsided for a few moments while reinforcements were whistled up, then ‘according to an onlooker’ pistols were drawn and it appeared that two men were wounded though on which side was not clear.
And:
There was a ‘serious affray’ in an amusement park in Auckland’s Queen Street on the evening of 3 May 1943 between Maoris and American sailors, in which a Maori and a Negro were both stabbed, the latter seriously; a Maori who had incited others to fight was sent to prison for two weeks.
Hope that helps, and please share the source of the story. could very much help in answering!
You may find this useful/interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7chl4d/is_this_claim_about_racial_tensions_in_the_uk/