“I knew he’d been over in the war and got killed over there, but the information I got [recently] is a lot more than what we had,” he said. “I had heard of people, who had German names, changing their name during the war because they were getting picked on.”
Ancestry/Supplied
Ancestry researcher Jason Reeve says many of Arthur’s close relatives were forced to register as aliens” in what was a hostile environment for Kiwis with German names. During the war, there was increasing hostility in New Zealand to anyone of German descent, or anyone with a German-sounding name. Parliament passed the Registration of Aliens Act in 1917, under which “aliens” – anyone not a British subject “either by birth or naturalization” - were required to register with their local Aliens Registration Officer at the police station, and report to them regularly.