On 15 November 2014 several thousand people gathered in Kelvin Park, Gisborne, for the opening of C Company Māori Battalion Memorial House. A project undertaken by Ngā Taonga ā Ngā Tama Toa Trust in partnership with Tairāwhiti Museum, the house is dedicated to the memory of the men of C Company who served in the Second World War. It displays photographs of these men and their home marae along with photographs of other men and women of the Tairāwhiti region who saw active service during any of New Zealand’s wars, and other taonga and military memorabilia. The opening took place almost 100 years to the day after the first sixty Māori volunteers from Tairāwhiti left Gisborne for the First World War.
The ceremony also marked the launch of the Māori translation of Dr Monty Soutar’s history of C Company, Nga Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship, first published in 2008 (Ngā Tama Toa = he toto teke, he Tipare Here kit e ūkaipo: Kamupene C, Ope Taua (Maori) 28 1939-1945).
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