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.

Post an email notice to advise us of a deceased New Zealand Vietnam veteran details.
The recommended information can be viewed by clicking on the link below:

    Deceased New Zealand Vietnam veteran details.

New Zealand Special Air Service

Updated 3 June 2019

No.	Service No.	Last Name	Init's	Year	Age	Sub-unit	Causation	Other Conditions
001	300501	Thompson	K	1983	51	4 Troop NZSAS	Cancer	NK
002	35339	Ball	E	1986	54	4 Troop NZSAS	Cancer	NK
003	41240	CAMPBELL	G J	1970	29	4 Troop NZSAS	Died of wounds	NA
004	40510	Curtis	R D	1990	49	4 Troop NZSAS	Heart attack	Nk
005	303668	Johnson	J	1994	58	4 Troop NZSAS	Brain tumor	NK
006	5284977	Keno	N	1992	55	4 Troop NZSAS	Heart attack	NK
007	678248	Meadows	R E	1996	54	4 Troop NZSAS	Brain tumor	NK
008	370084	Peti	S A	1988	51	4 Troop NZSAS	Heart attack	NK
009	337062	Smith	V T	1988	64	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
010	41158	Sutherland	G F	1991	46	4 Troop NZSAS	Heart attack	NK
11	40897	Terry	D M	1981	37	4 Troop NZSAS	Training accident	NK
012	38457	Haami	K	2000	58	4 Troop NZSAS	Heart attack	NK
013	303153	Brown	P BEM	2002	66	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
014	329877	McGee	W A BEM	2004	71	4 Troop NZSAS	Brain tumor	NK
015	305050	Te Paa	D	2006	68	4 Troop NZSAS	Cancer	NK
016	697900	Wanoa	W W	2011	67	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
017	38490	Taniora	S T	2012	70	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
018	V38544	Dickson	T.	2013	72	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
019	554298	Pewhairangi	D A	2013	72	4 Troop NZSAS	Suddenly	NK
020	X41605	J T	Murray	2014	69	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
021	41619	R	Martin	2014	70	4 Troop NZSAS	NK	NK
22	H39475	Ngapo	B BEM	2016	71	NZSAS
023	42703	McCallion	W. L.	2018	67	NZSAS	NK	NK
24	528443	Stead	E. P.	2019	80	NZSAS	NK	NK
25	475871	Adlam	J. B.	2019	74	NZSAS	NK	NK

Served with 4 Troop NZSAS but listed with service elsewhere, not included in statistical count here.

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List	Service No.	Last Name	Init's	Year	Age	Sub-unit	Causation	Other Conditions
V2	40363	Peni	L	1987	51	V2/NZSAS	Cancer	NK
V2	40218	Puia	A. S.	2019	74	V2 | 4 Tp NZSAS