Halfway Home – The Rehabilitation of New Zealand Second World War POWs in Britain

Abstract

While suffering through monotony and deprivations, New Zealand Second World War POWs mentally escaped their confines by imagining their eventual return home. They envisaged returning to a world free from the woes of captivity and war. This paper examines their rehabilitation in Britain. While Britain was not New Zealand, the prisoners expected it to conform to their idealised version of home. However, this paper argues prisoners experienced difficulties during their rehabilitation, and they were destabilised when confronted with the continued presence of the war and captivity.