Online Cenotaph is a military database of Aotearoa New Zealand service personnel. Managed by Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, the database includes more than 247,000 individual records spanning the South African Wars to today. It is utilised and enriched by veterans, whānau, genealogists, and researchers alike.
November 2020 marks 25 years of telling the stories of military veterans and their comrades. We are excited to recognise this significant milestone in digital commemoration while also considering the platform’s future potential.
November 2020 marks 25 years of telling the stories of military veterans and their comrades. We are excited to recognise this significant milestone in digital commemoration while also considering the platform’s future potential.
Victoria Passau and Madison Pine interviewing Malayan veteran Peter Gallacher for an upcoming Online Cenotaph profile. © Auckland Museum, photographed by Richard Ng.
The Online Cenotaph enables the public to add information directly into every field. It aims to meld the official histories and personal memories of more than 120 years of military history into a single resource. Over the past five years the database has gone from strength to strength and receives a monthly average of 170 enquiries, 100,000 unique page views and contributions of 1,200 images, notes and data points.[1] But it is not all about “big dumb numbers”: we also share the stories of veterans through blog posts and social media.
At present we are busy sourcing and creating records for post-1945 conflicts including the Allied occupation of Japan, the Korean War, Malayan Emergency and subsequent service in Malaya and the Indonesian Confrontation. Post-1945, veterans who served overseas did so as part of a professional defense force and there hasn’t necessarily been the same interest in this service compared to WWI and WWII. We find many veterans are still looking for recognition of their service, and wanting to share their experiences. We have really enjoyed working with veterans and their families and hope to complete more interviews over the next few years.
At present we are busy sourcing and creating records for post-1945 conflicts including the Allied occupation of Japan, the Korean War, Malayan Emergency and subsequent service in Malaya and the Indonesian Confrontation. Post-1945, veterans who served overseas did so as part of a professional defense force and there hasn’t necessarily been the same interest in this service compared to WWI and WWII. We find many veterans are still looking for recognition of their service, and wanting to share their experiences. We have really enjoyed working with veterans and their families and hope to complete more interviews over the next few years.
Contribution made to the record of Niuean service person Taukilo.
As well as interviewing individual veterans we are working closely with Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand to increase our understanding of these lesser-researched conflicts through a programme of digitisation and transcription—so watch this space!
Want to share your stories of military service personnel? Please get in touch. We have worked with many libraries and archives to enrich Online Cenotaph over the past 25 years and we are eager to integrate more resources into our collection.
Want to share your stories of military service personnel? Please get in touch. We have worked with many libraries and archives to enrich Online Cenotaph over the past 25 years and we are eager to integrate more resources into our collection.
 | To learn more about the Online Cenotaph, join us on August 11, 2021 at 2.00 pm for an online event with Victoria Passau. Registration is required so please register here: Online Cenotaph Webinar. Victoria Passau Collection Manager, Online Cenotaph vpassau@aucklandmuseum.com @v_passau - Twitter |
[1] Statistics and Usage: https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/about-online-cenotaph/statistics-and-usage
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