Colonial Museum interior, Museum Street, Thorndon, Wellington in 1910. Photo: Supplied/Alexander Turnbull Library
Over 80 years ago, the largest ever evacuation of New Zealand's cultural treasures was undertaken during World War II.
Tens of thousands of priceless artworks, sacred Māori artefacts and irreplaceable documents were ushered out of our cities' biggest museums and institutions, and into safe houses over fears the South Pacific could become the next target of enemy attacks.
Helen McCracken has worked in cultural heritage in New Zealand for over 30 years, the past 10 of which were spent with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.
McCracken is also studying for a PhD in disaster research, where she will examine the planning for cultural heritage protection in emergencies.
She told RNZ's Nights ahead of World Heritage Day today that during war times, libraries and museums were often targets.
"A population is very attached to its cultural heritage, one of the first ways in which you can attack a community is to destroy what it values.
"It helps the enemy undermine what that community values and wants to save - cultural heritage is often a target."
She said the story of our country's largest treasure evacuation actually began before the war in 1934, when aerial attacks became a real possibility.
Members of the Māori Battalion in Wellington after serving in World War 2. Photo: Supplied/Alexander Turnbull Library
Countries began to think about what aerial bombardment would mean if another war were to break out, and that's when the evacuations began.
"In New Zealand we evacuated things like paintings, bookings, manuscripts, small objects, pounamu collections that were of high value.''
McCracken said Te Tiriti was also evacuated to Masterton's Public Trust building in late 1941 at the direction of the Department of Internal Affairs. Te Tiriti stayed in Masterton until the end of the war.
She said evacuations were led by library, museum and government staff, and the collections were taken out of the central cities and into smaller townships.
But McCracken said it wasn't until 1941 that the war cabinet at the time "actually agreed to consider what evacuation might be for our valuable historical collections".
Dominion Museum storage area, Museum Street, Wellington in 1932. Photo: Supplied/Alexander Turnbull Library
Collections started to be returned from about mid-1943, after the war in the Pacific began to turn a new page.
The Alexander Turnbull libraries collections did not return until 1946, as many of the building in Wellington were used for war purposes, so there wasn't a place for them to return to, McCracken said.
The Dominion Museum and National Art Gallery collections could not return until 1949.
McCracken said it was a good reminder to be prepared as New Zealand "has a pretty good spread of natural hazards".
"We have to think about how we will prepare for those events because they could happen and at any time.
"I think for me researching how we can better protect our cultural heritage, it's very useful to go back and look at the past and think about how we have protected things in the past, because I think there are common themes that we can see - even in the last 80 years - that we can draw upon for lessons on how we might prepare for the future."
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