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Project Te Aurake — The Return from American Samoa to New Zealand

[photo: Leua Aiono Frost]
reporters@samoanews.com

The seven-member New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) team yesterday surrounded the gravesite of Royal New Zealand Navy engineer 1st Class Russell Moore, who was buried at the Satala Cemetery, American Samoa in 1956.

Moore died in an accident on the survey vessel HMNZS Lachlan in 1956 while on board the ship in Pago Pago Harbor. He was 19 years old, according to the NZDF, which sent a team to American Samoa to begin repatriation of Moore’s remains. The team arrived over the weekend.

The repatriation is part of project Te Auraki (The Return), under which personnel buried overseas after January 1, 1955, are brought home to New Zealand, according to the NZDF news release.

A ceremony was held yesterday at the Satala cemetery. The US Army Reserve, the Department of Parks and Recreation, and Lt. Gov. Lemanu’s Office assisted the NZDF.

Last week, two Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel were dis-interred in Fiji.

All three personnel repatriated from Fiji and American Samoa are due to return to New Zealand, to be handed over to their families at a ramp ceremony at Base Ohakea on May 7.

Read yesterday’s story NZ Defence Force begins repatriation of Navy engineer in American Samoa for details.

The expert dis-interment team includes bio-archaeologists and forensic anthropologists drawn from New Zealand universities and New Zealand Defense Force odontologists (dentists) along with a NZDF doctor. [photo: LF]