This speech was given by Samoa's then High Commissioner to New Zealand, His Excellency, Fe’esago George Fepulea’i at the Catholic Luncheon Club in New Zealand on Wednesday 22 September 1982. In his speech, His Excellency touched on crucial aspects of Samoa's relationship with New Zealand, and their links to historical events during the colonial administration of Samoa, which impacted Samoan citizens.

I would like to thank you for this opportunity of addressing you today. It is the first time I've spoken publicly since the recent events involving that well celebrated Privy Council case. I don't intend to dwell in any great depth on that particular event, although the Privy Council, and a case which occurred 54 years ago this month, will be touched on. 

What I want to do today is repair a few damaged bridges in the wake of all the feeling that was so openly expressed on citizenship issue. One of the functions of a diplomat in the host nation is to try and further the bonds of friendship and understanding between the two nations. 

I would not be fooling anybody if I were to say that relations between Samoa and New Zealand - at least at the unofficial level - were currently untroubled. 

In trying to get over that I am going to adopt an approach which may, at first, seem a rather odd way of going about repairing bridges. I'm going to give a short history lesson. 

Before doing that, just let me tell you why I've adopted this approach. In all the debate on citizenship one frequently heard mention of the Samoan-New Zealand Treaty of Friendship and the special relationship which exists between the two countries. 

With due respect I believe most of New Zealanders don't understand what that means; Samoan are often seen only in terms of migrants who come here for various reasons. There is not a sufficient understanding, I believe, of the historical nature of the relationship, and without this historical understanding one cannot fully understand our point-of-view in these matters. 

Some of the details are undoubtedly grim, and, I fear to say, do not reflect at all well on New Zealand. But I am not out to embarrass you, but to show you what it means to a Samoan to talk of independence and Samoan nationhood: undoubtedly, there are lessons in this potted history for all of us. 

Certainly, some within the Catholic Church in New Zealand have seen the parallels between today’s debate on the Privy Council decision and that of New Zealand's record in Samoa. 

John Kennedy, writing in September first issue of Tablet wrote that New Zealand's record in Samoa was poor. He continued: 

“We administered that territory for 48 years. We even shed Samoan blood during the Mau movement. We put nothing into the territory. Indeed, there was not even a secondary school until the Marist Brothers opened one in 1950. We have given a certain amount of aid since independence, but we could and should have done much better." 

That, remember, is written by a New Zealander.

The 19th century history of European contact with Samoa is a complex affair, so I will not go into any greater detail than is necessary. We were an independent nation up until the end of last century, although throughout the second half, interference by the big imperial powers – Germany, Britain and the United States – was very marked in Samoa. But surprisingly another nation also joined in, in trying to influence events in Samoa and that nation, was, itself, still only a colony. That nation was, of course, New Zealand.

Even Captain James Cook had thought of New Zealand in terms of being the seat of a new southern empire and certainly many of the new colony's politicians of the last century were prepared to go along with that idea. Premier Julius Vogel managed to repeatedly irritate the Colonial Office in London by coming up with all sorts of schemes for New Zealand to annex various parts of the Pacific, including Samoa. Premier Richard John Seddon took a similar view when he proclaimed that wherever possible the British flag should float over the islands of the Pacific. 

In the event he did not get his way in Samoa, not, at least, at that time. In 1900 the United States took what is now American Samoa and Germany took Western Samoa. 

The 14 years under German rule were comparatively peaceful, although whenever anybody stepped out of line, the military rule was quick to act. One Lauaki Namulau'ulu Mamoe was unwilling to come to terms with the rule from Berlin, and when he resisted with peaceful protest, he and his family and many of his supporters - 72 in all -were placed aboard warships and exiled to Saipan in the north Pacific. 

The fate of the Western Samoa came to be determined, however, not in the Pacific, but in all the alliances and the arms race which characterised Europe at that time. With the declaration of World War I, New Zealand was asked to seize the German radio station in the hills behind Apia. Perhaps with the indignity of London's many rejections on the topic, New Zealand decided to take the radio station, and all of Samoa. 

The landing occurred on a beach on the eastern side of Apia harbour and its interesting to note who were among the first three men to land on that beach - a fellow by the name of Leary and a sapper by the name of Beattie. 

I am informed that L.P. Leary, QC, is still alive today and lives in Auckland after a distinguished career as one of New Zealand's top lawyers. His son, EB Leary, is a leading criminal lawyer, and the family I am told, has strong connections with the present Attorney-General, Mr. Jim McLay. Sapper Beattie, was an interesting chap; his son is today the Governor General of New Zealand.

That landing on August 29, 1914, was a peaceful affair; the Germans did not surrender Samoa but with only one field gun which took half an hour to load and 50 rifles - all over 40 years old - they had to be practical. So Samoa was transferred from German control to New Zealand control without a shot being fired, and incidentally not a single Samoan was consulted. 

Somewhat surprisingly some two weeks after that landing two big German battleships sailed into Apia Harbour and trained their big guns on township. In what was later seen as an extremely foolish act, the men from the fifth Wellington regiment marched across an open bridge less than half a mile from one of the battleships. Had the German admiral decided to open fire it would have been New Zealand's first military disaster, but he apparently didn't think the kiwis were worth the ammunition! 

That decision was rich in irony, for the man standing on the bridge of that battleship was Admiral Graf von Spee and 25 years later, in another war, a battleship was named after him. And as you all known, a New Zealand ship, HMNZS Archilles, played a part in the death of that German pocket battleship in the Battle of the River Plate. 

Incidentally, after von Spee sailed out of Apia without firing a shot, he sailed on and rounded Cape Horn and met disaster when the Royal Navy, in the first Battle of the Falklands, sank his fleet. 

Life in Samoa during the First World War was so quiet for the garrison of New Zealand troops that towards the end of the war they were sent without rifles. But four days before the end of the war, disaster struck Samoa and it was a terrible blow. 

The disaster came in the form of Spanish influenza which killed millions of people around the world in 1918. It was accidentally introduced into New Zealand in October 1918 by the vessel Niagara. Although many of the ships passengers were ill, quarantine procedures were relaxed, probably because among its passengers were Bill Massey, New Zealand's prime minister, and Sir Joseph Ward the finance minister.

A week or so after the influenza broke out in New Zealand the Union Steamship Co. ship Talune sailed for Samoa. En-route in Fiji the ship was quarantined because Fiji authorities feared it had the deadly influenza aboard. 

Although passengers on Talune became very ill, even before arriving in Samoa, the ship's master deliberately hid this fact from the Apia port medical officer. As it was, he carried out a most careless examination of the ship and seemed to ignore many grim facts and simply cleared the ship. 

In the following two weeks a disaster without equal anywhere in the world this century occurred in Samoa. Everybody became terribly ill and one in four, that’s over 8,000 people, died. Strangely it wasn't the young and the old who died but the parents, leaving Samoa a nation of orphans. A couple of tales illustrate the young scale of the disaster. 

A chief died in Apia and his village sent a long boat to pick up his body. None of the 17 who rowed that boat returned; they all died in Apia. An old Apia merchant, Westbrook, told of a young girl who stayed with his family returning home when she heard her mother and father were unwell. 

Westbrook later wrote, “She chatted with them, and slept between them, when she woke up in the morning they were both dead.” 

The reaction of the New Zealand administrator, Colonel Robert Logan was extraordinary. He refused help from nearby American Samoa which successfully avoided the influenza, on the grounds that he did not like Americans. 

When a girls' boarding school where all the pupils were ill appeared for help, Logan threatened to burn the school down unless the girls were sent to dig graves. But perhaps worst of all, Logan believed Samoans would, like children as he put it, get over the disaster. 

The Samoans never did and New Zealand was clearly blamed for what happened. 

Dissatisfaction took time to mature however and it was not until the arrival in 1923 of one General George Richardson as administrator that the feelings took form. Richardson had a fine military record during the Great War, but New Zealand made a mistake of a barrack square. 

He tried to change many of our ancient customs overnight and he began to somewhat high-handedly remove matai titles from people. 

One such person to be affected was one of our highest chiefs, the young Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III. He had planted a hedge outside his house which a London Missionary Society pastor objected to. So Richardson ordered Tupua Tamasese to remove the hedge. Tupua Tamasese refused, and in the end Richardson had him gaoled, his titled removed – although no Samoan recognised this action – and eventually banished him to the other island of Savai’i. 

Richardson also came up with model villages which turned the pleasant environment of a village scattered among food bearing trees into squares and ovals. People were ordered to salute white officials and a generally oppressive tone began to creep into Samoan affairs. 

Among the first to recognise the futility and danger of what Richardson was doing was a leading Apia merchant, O.F. Taisi Nelson. In 1926, while in Wellington, Nelson called on the Prime Minister Gordon Coates and appealed for the Minister of External Affairs to be sent to Samoa to investigate the deteriorating conditions. This was agreed to by the Minister concerned, one William Nosworthy.

When Nelson got back to Apia a citizens committee was set up designed to make submissions to Nosworthy. When Richardson heard of it, he condemned if as plotting and told Nosworthy not to come. Nosworthy delayed his visit which annoyed many in Samoa.

After two public meetings the citizens committee decided to send a delegation of six to Wellington to make the submissions direct to the minister. Nosworthy agreed to receive them, but to short circuit that, Richardson banished two of the Samoans to their villages and denied passports to the other four.

This action spread rumours throughout Samoa and outlying villages. In-order to get a clearer picture, many villages sent delegates to Apia - the villages of Lepea and Vaimoso, more specifically. It was from these delegates that the Samoa League arose.

The league, better known as the Mau, declared their belief in constitutional authority and in non-violent protest and advocated certain changes in Samoa.At this point they were not calling for self-government. Eventually Nosworthy did arrive in Samoa, but he refused to recognise the Mau and responded to the situation by threatening to exile Nelson.

And after Nosworthy left, Richardson began a process of banishing numerous Samoans to villages all over Samoa, and even had two leading chiefs banished to a small offshore island. But the Mau continued to grow and by the end of 1927, some 90 percent of Samoa supported the Mau. Richardson responded by blaming Nelson and in an executive action, without recourse to the courts, he exiled Nelson from Samoa for five years, along with two others.    

This made little difference to the Mau, who, in, the New Year of 1928 launched a boycott of shops on Apia’s Beach Road. Richardson panicked and called in the Royal Navy from Wellington. They arrived in the form of HMS Diomede and HMS Dunedin, both cruisers with the New Zealand Squadron.

Marines from the two ships went onto Beach Road and in an action that was peaceful and quiet rounded up 400 Mau and arrested them. The Mau did not need to resist; they knew Apia only had limited gaol space. They scored an early victory when an additional 250 Mau supporters turned up and offered themselves for arrest only to be turned away by the marines.

The Marines were fairly good humoured about the affair and eventually their captives were moved into a specially built detention camp on the Mulinu’u peninsula. The barbed wire fence ended at the edge of the beach so the prisoners could largely come and go as they liked. When it was found that the food was free many more people were showing up for meals than had been arrested.

It was at the Mulinu’u prison camp that the collective leadership of the Mau evolved to the point where Tupua Tamasese — the man banished for growing a hedge – became the Mau's leader. He refused to do any deal with Richardson and for the first time clearly expressed the Samoan desire for independence. Faced with an inability to hold the Mau, Richardson eventually had to let the Mau men go and by April 1928 Wellington had him withdrawn. The new administrator was another military man, Colonel Stephen Allen from Morrinsville. He arrived with units of the newly formed Samoa Military Police; former New Zealand soldiers armed with rifles, pistols and two machine guns.

The military police were considered a social disaster, and their open reference to Samoans in derogatory and vile language made their position clear.The Mau continued to grow, developing a form of provisional government and refusing to pay the administration taxes.

Meanwhile in July 1928 the exiled Nelson went to London and engaged Stafford Cripps, then a Kings Counsel and later Chancellor of the Exchequer, to appeal against his deportation from Samoa before the Privy Council.

Unlike Miss Falema’i Lesa, who on the other hand, appealed against being deported to Samoa, Nelson found no justice at the Privy Council. Lord Hailsham asked Cripps why Nelson, instead of leaving, had not stayed in Apia to be arrested and then file Writ of Habeas Corpus.   Cripps replied: “Is it necessary for a British subject to submit to arrest and imprisonment in order to be able to question the action of the Administrator of Samoa?”

But the Privy Council refused leave to hear Nelson’s appeal. 

In December 1928 the entire military police force, fully armed, descended on the village of Vaimoso and forcefully arrested Tupua Tamasese for tax evasion. He was dragged before court, found guilty and ordered to serve six months gaol in Mt. Eden Prison.

This action did not deter the Mau, however, and regular marches were held in Apia and the administrative procedures of Government had broken down completely. But, and I emphasise this, at no point did the Mau resort to violence. Tupua Tamasese came back to Apia in the middle of 1929 and took over once again as the head of the movement. The Mau was a matter of deep embarrassment to Allen who had been sent to ensure that it was ended and by December 1929 he was ready to act.

The occasion came on December 28, 1929. One of the exiles, one Alfred Smyth, was returning from Auckland and the Mau decided to stage a parade of welcome down on Beach Road. At the same time Allen decided he would begin to arrest the tax evaders.

Many Samoans today believe what happened that day was a deliberate police ambush. I do not know whether this was true, and a journalist associate who spent three years researching this event can find no evidence to support this view, but the effect of what came to be known as Black Saturday is beyond dispute.

The police tried to arrest one Mau man and a struggle followed. Although the struggle was of no great magnitude, a team of 18 pistol armed policemen immediately opened fire on the unarmed Samoans. As people began falling dead and wounded, some Samoans stoned the police and one policeman died.

The police returned to the nearby police station and armed themselves with a machine gun and rifles and began sniping on the parade which was on the verge of panic. Into the noise and fear walked Tupua Tamasese, dressed in white with his arms held high above his head. He called for peace and he walked up an empty road towards the police station repeating in English and Samoan a call for peace.

For reasons we cannot understand, one of the policemen aimed at Tupua Tamasese, standing alone in the street and unarmed, and shot him. The wound was mortal and he was one of eight Samoans to die that day.

In pre-Christianity days the death of such a high chief could have led to a terrible revenge, but as Tupua Tamasese lay dying in the arms of the Marist priest Father Deihl he sent the following word to Samoa: “My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in maintaining peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.”

Thoughts of revenge were immediately rejected and the Mau stayed firm to the path of nonviolence. Unfortunately Allen did not. The police were sent at 3 a.m. to the dead chiefs village; and the home of the widow and young mother Ala Tamasese was raided.

And in order to break the Mau for once and for all Allen called in the navy again. HMS Dunedin came along with an air force plane which flew the first ever L operational missions for the newly created New Zealand air force.

But the Mau did not make a stand, and they instead retreated into the bush. A chase continued for two months, and in the process two more Samoans were killed, but in the end the elements defeated the Navy.

By March 1930 the Mau came in for talks with the administration and an uneasy peace was restored. The following five years were marked by continued Mau activity and New Zealand’s refusal to recognise the right of Samoans to a voice in their affairs. Nelson returned from exile, only to be banished again on trumped up charges, this time for 15 years.

In 1935 New Zealand elected its first Labour Government. They recognised the voice of the Mau and the aspirations of the Samoan people. Nelson was told he could go home and free elections were held for local representatives. 

Although that Labour Government took much of the heat out of the situation, it still was not until 1962 that we gained the independence we believed we should never have lost.

Since 1962 relations between Samoa and New Zealand have developed somewhat. We have the Treaty of Friendship which until recently was something of a dusty relic. The 20 years of independence have seen numerous problems, such as the treatment of overstayers, the irritation of the Latos affair and, more recently, the difficulties of the Privy Council decision.

There have been positive developments as well. New Zealand makes a significant contribution in aid to Samoa, and trade between the two countries is developing; with the balance very much in New Zealand’s favour. This imbalance is somewhat offset by the very real contributions made by our people in New Zealand in the form of remittances to their families in Samoa.

Between many individual New Zealanders and Samoans a warm and friendly feeling exists. New Zealanders go to Samoa and make valuable contributions to our affairs and development and the concern and care they show towards that which we regard as important is appreciated.

And increasingly the Samoans in New Zealand are beginning to play an active role in the political, social I and business life of your nation. In many respects I wish they would play a more active role, but I suppose that in time this will come about.

I see I’ve spoken now for quite some time, so to avoid boring you further I should conclude my address here. As I said at the beginning of my speech it was not my intention to embarrass or shame New Zealanders by the outline of our recent history I've given here. I will not even draw conclusions from it all. I’m sure you can draw those for yourselves. I hope I have at least cast a little understanding to those who had enquired during the Privy Council debate for reciprocal rights of New Zealanders to Samoan Citizenship. Perhaps if you were to give us 48 years rule over New Zealand, we could then arrange for your Samoan citizenship!

But I would like to conclude by saying that A throughout the period discussed today, Samoans have believed implicitly in the values of our culture and our way of life.

Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV, a former Prime Minister, presently e Member of the Council of Deputies, and son of the assassinated Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III who as a very young boy witnessed much that I have described today, should have the final word:

In 1918 the New Zealand Herald interviewed Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV, for a feature on Black Saturday. In it he described the fatal day when he was in Vaimoso with his mother.

“When we heard the gunfire, my mother and my family were certain something had happened to my father.” He remembered his father’s strong beliefs in the power of peaceful protest. He went on to say of his father:

“He hated violence but he would stand up to any force. Many times before he had been intimidated with guns and swords. He would just say 'if you want to shoot us go ahead, we will just die here'.”

Tupua Tamasese did not apportion blame for what happened, and instead talked of harmonious relations between Samoa and New Zealand. “We have grown to regard New Zealand as aiga (family),” he said.

Now that you know the details of that old spirit of New Zealand rule, I hope, that in repairing bridges, we can in the lead so admirably given by Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV, develop a more honest, meaningful and friendly relationship.