American troops arrive

On 7 December 1941 Japanese bombers crippled the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Within days the British warships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk, Hong Kong fell by Christmas Day, and on 15 February 1942 Singapore surrendered. Four days later more than 250 people were killed when Darwin was bombed, and some New Zealanders feared that Auckland might be next. Te Ara says the fall of Singapore shattered confidence in the worldwide reach of the Royal Navy. Prime Minister Peter Fraser appealed to Winston Churchill for help, but Churchill was in no position to give it. On 5 March 1942 Churchill asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt to send a division to New Zealand on condition that the New Zealanders stayed in Egypt, and on 24 March Roosevelt cabled that 'we are straining every effort' to send forces. Te Ara says the deployment of US forces to New Zealand was considered a safer alternative to bringing the 2nd New Zealand Division home from the Middle East. For the Americans, New Zealand was a main base in the Pacific Ocean theatre, a source of supplies and a staging post for operations against Japan.

The 'invasion' began unannounced on 12 June 1942, when five transport ships carrying soldiers of the US Army sailed into Auckland's Waitematā Harbour. The first of them to land was Sergeant Nathan E. Cook, chosen as a namesake of the explorer James Cook. On Sunday 14 June the USS Wakefield brought the 1st Marine Division into Wellington, and army units to Auckland and Marines to Wellington remained largely the pattern for the next two years. NZHistory says that between June 1942 and mid-1944 there were between 15,000 and 45,000 Americans in the country at any one time; Te Ara puts the total who were stationed in or visited New Zealand at more than 150,000. Newly arrived troops practised landings on the Petone foreshore, at Eastbourne and on Māhia Peninsula, and 19 hospitals were set up to take almost 10,000 patients. Wartime censorship kept the American presence out of the newspapers until November 1942.

The Americans were paid about £5 a week, twice what New Zealand soldiers received, and they brought what NZHistory calls a minor economic boom. Dry cleaners, florists, taxi drivers and milk bars did well, tipping appeared, and towns near the camps began opening grill rooms and milk bars on Sundays. Many families invited servicemen home for weekends, and the visitors courted New Zealand women with taxi rides, flowers and gifts of nylons. NZHistory puts the number of women who married American servicemen at about 1400 in one account and about 1500 in another; Te Ara gives 1,500. Many New Zealand men resented these 'bedroom commandos', and there were brawls in Wellington and Auckland. The best known, the 'Battle of Manners Street' in Wellington on 3 April 1943, was hushed up at the time. The 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand says it began when servicemen from the southern United States allegedly refused to let Māori servicemen drink in the Allied Services Club, that over 1,000 troops and several hundred civilians were involved, and that at least two men were killed. NZHistory says no one was killed or seriously injured.

Some Americans came from southern states where 'Jim Crow' laws kept African Americans apart, and white southerners did not feel comfortable drinking and eating with Māori. Many of the fights involving American servicemen appear to have been with Māori men, especially soldiers, and there was trouble when Māori women were regarded as 'fair game'. In late 1942, after reports of unpleasant incidents, Te Puea Hērangi approached the Americans, and groups of officers visited Tūrangawaewae Marae at Ngāruawāhia three times between November 1942 and February 1943. On 27 March 1943 some 500 Americans went to the Ngāruawāhia regatta, where the Māori King, Korokī, presented gifts to Fraser, who passed them to the senior American naval officer. Americans were also welcomed onto marae in Gisborne, and Wellington's Ngāti Pōneke Young Māori Club sang for patients at the Silverstream hospital.

The American presence began to thin towards the end of 1943, as Japanese advances were turned back. At dawn on 1 November 1943 the Marines sailed from Wellington to capture Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands (Kiribati), where more than 900 Americans were killed and more than 2000 wounded. Silverstream hospital was handed back in April 1944, the last major force, the 43rd Division, left Auckland three months later, and the naval base at Auckland closed in October 1944. In Te Ara's view the war meant New Zealand would now rely more heavily on American power, and in 1951 New Zealand, Australia and the United States signed the ANZUS security treaty (see The ANZUS treaty is signed). A plaque on the Wellington waterfront, made in 1951, commemorates the arrival of the US Marine Corps, although it gives the date as May 1942.