A Last Secret
Killing New Zealand Coast Watchers
Forgotten Sacrifice:
The Untold Story of the Coast Watchers
During World War Two, New Zealand deployed a 17-member team of civilians and soldiers to the Gilbert Islands—now Kiribati—in the South Pacific.
Then, they abandoned them to their fate.
Captured by Imperial Japanese forces, these men met a brutal end. One fateful afternoon, all 22 New Zealanders and three others were executed in accordance with the Bushido code—ritually slain by the sword. While their deaths briefly sparked outrage in New Zealand, no effort was made to recover their bodies, and their story faded into obscurity. But for one family, the memory never died—and one man took justice into his own hands.
Charles Owen, a quiet soldier with a speech impediment, should never have been among the fallen. His older brothers, both veterans of the Great War, had always protected him. Yet, 19 weeks after that harrowing afternoon on Betio, his brother, Corporal Jack Owen, found himself face to face with Japanese prisoners-of-war in Featherston, north of Wellington, New Zealand.
History records the event as a riot. But the truth is far darker.
Jack Owen, a guard at the camp, opened fire on the unarmed prisoners in front of him. Without orders to fire or cease, his sub-machine gun tore through the ranks of captives. Other guards followed, but the majority of the 48 dead fell to Owen’s bullets.
“It was all over in a moment,” Second Lieutenant Keith Robertson recalled. “Except for one soldier with a lust for blood. He searched the huts for any Japanese who might be hiding. He found one poor, scared individual and promptly blew his brains out.”
A Last Secret unearths a long-buried chapter of wartime history—a story of betrayal, slaughter, and retribution that has remained hidden for decades.
Prologue
1.Raiders
2. Secret mission
3. Sailing through the Gilberts
4. Settling into posts
5. Atoll life
6. Love and war
7. Japan moves in
8. Japanese occupation
9. Americans arrive
10. Moving against coastwatchers
11. Slaughter
12. Featherston POW ‘riot’
13. Battle of Tarawa
14. Where are the men?
15. Families told
16. Carrying the memory
17. Another massacre
18. Forgotten secret
ALSO BY MICHAEL FIELD
Mau: Sāmoa’s Struggle Against New Zealand Oppression
Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji’s 2000 coup
Swimming with Sharks: Tales from the South Pacific Frontline
The Catch: How fishing companies reinvented slavery and plunge the ocean
The right of Michael Field to be identified as the author of this work in terms of Section 96 of the Copyright Act 1994 is hereby asserted.