page_title: Henare Ngata
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Henare Ngata / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir Apirana Ngata, and his son Henare Kohere Ngata, at their Victoria University College graduation ceremony in May 1948. Apirana Ngata received an honorary Doctorate of Literature. His son received a Bachelor of Arts.
context_page_description: Sir Henare Kohere Ngata KBE JP was a Māori leader and accountant. A prisoner of war in Germany after his capture in Greece, he returned to New Zealand to finish his university studies and became an accountant. He held directorships and chaired boards in the Gisborne Region. He was particularly knowledgeable about Māori land issues and became a forceful advocate and legal expert. His alma mater, Victoria University of Wellington, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his legal knowledge in 1979. Ngata was knighted in 1982 for services to the Māori people. He tried to follow his father, Āpirana Ngata, into politics but was unsuccessful when he stood in the 1969 general election.
context_section_description: Ngata was born in 1917 in Waiomatatini, a locality in the Waiapu Valley and on the south bank of the Waiapu River in the Gisborne District, New Zealand. His iwi was Ngāti Porou. He was named after Henare Kohere, who had died in WWI in France in 1916. His parents were the politician Āpirana Ngata (1874–1950) and the community leader Arihia Ngata (née Tamati, 1879–1929). Ngata was their youngest son and of his 14 siblings, 10 survived to adulthood. The lexicographer Hōri Ngata (1919–1989), his nephew, was his eldest brother Mac's son. Whai Ngata was Hōri Ngata's son.
  Ngata received his education at Waiomatatini School, Te Aute College, and Victoria University of Wellington, from where he graduated in Bachelor of Arts in 1947 and a Bachelor of Commerce in 1948. He tertiary studies were interrupted by WWII, but against the expectations of his father, he did not enlist immediately. He had a new girlfriend, Lorna Mete-Kingi, whom he had met at Victoria. He enlisted in October 1939 and received his military training at Trentham Military Camp. Before he went overseas, he married Mete-Kingi at Putiki near Wanganui on 24 February 1940. With the rank of sergeant major, he left New Zealand as part of the 28th Māori Battalion in May 1940. He initially went to England, then to Egypt in 1941 and later that year to Greece. On 29 April 1941, he was part of the large group of Māori Battalion soldiers captured by German forces. They remained prisoners of war in a German camp until they were liberated by American forces in 1945.
  Disturbed by his war experienced, Ngata wanted to go back to Waiomatatini and not have contact with others. His father, though, directed his to finish his university studies, so the couple moved back to Wellington. On 7 May 1948, Ngata and his father both graduated; he with his bachelor of commerce and his father with an honorary doctorate in literature (LittD).
caption: Ngata Sr and Jr both receiving their degrees in May 1948
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