Introduction

Since 1972, a significant number of personnel have passed away following their military service for the New Zealand Defence Force in South Vietnam during years from 1964 to 1972.

An official nominal roll was never maintained of personnel who served for New Zealand Defence Force during the Vietnam war. It was by chance a military officer intercepted pay books on their way to destruction. From those books the officer created an unofficial nominal roll listing those who served and with which sub-unit. Some names on the list are repeated within various sub-units where an individual served more than one tour of duty.

A count of all names determined that just over 3200 personnel actually served, given those with two or more tours of duty.

Purpose

The purpose of this site is to list deceased New Zealand Defence Force personnel following their service in South Vietnam in order that a pattern of causation can be determined, such as deaths from cancers.

Of significance in the early 1980's an apparent causation of death was from abnormal health diseases and disorders, especially from cancer types that were uncommon, such as soft tissue sarcoma. At that time the stastical records indicated the USA population norm for that cancer as being 4:100,000. Forty years later, in 2010, the United Kingdom had a population of 62.77 million people, of whom 3300 were reported with soft tissue sarcoma.

Another factor highlighting issues among Vietnam veterans was an apparent disparity of the abnormal health diseases and disorders within that group and those who had served only in Malaysia and Borneo and not Vietnam. Initial root cause analysis by the Korea and Southeast Asia Forces Association indicated that the abnormal health diseases and disorders were NOT evident among personnel who had served in South East Asia but not Vietnam.

The New Zealand Ministry of Health in 2013 indicated the life expectancy at birth was 73.0 years for Maori males and 77.1 years for Maori females; it was 80.3 years for non-Maori males and 83.9 years for non-Maori females.

NOTE: The author has not regularly updated the listings since 2016 due to occupational and health reasons.

The listing is on the basis of:

• Service number
• Last name
• Initials
• Age
• Sub-unit
• Reported cause of death [Causation]
• Year of death
• Other reported medical conditions

The list does include those killed in action during tour of duty in South Vietnam.

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The recommended information can be viewed by clicking on the link below:

    Deceased New Zealand Vietnam veteran details.

Royal New Zealand Engineers

Total served: 000

Total deceased: 09

Percentage deceased: 0.0%

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No.	Service No.	Last Name	Init's	Year	Age	Sub-unit	Causation	Other Conditions
001	592052	Chapman	C B	1993	NK	RNZE Det RNZE	Heart Attack	NK
002	926005	Lay	E D	1989	NK	RNZE Det RNZIR	Accident	NK
003	Y37588	Milligan	R D	1988	NK	RNZE Det RNZE	NK	NK
004	35162	Retimana	P E	2006	NK	198 WORKS RNZE	NK	NK
005	785751	Hughes	R J	2008	NK	HQ V Force RNZE	NK	NK
006	37919	Milliken	D R R	2008	68	RNZE Detachment	Cancer	NK
007	39424	Townsend	F. W.	2009		RNZE Detachment		NK
008	37228	Rawiri	F.	2009		RNZE Detachment		NK
009	39403	Harris	D. E.	2009	65	RNZE Detachment		NK