This is unedited raw film footage, shot by Academy Award winning US Marine cinematographer Norman T. Hatch for a US newsreel that was never completed, provisionally titled 'Meet New Zealand'. Around 21,000 Marines were stationed in camps around the Wellington region from June 1942 until November 1943. Most of their time was spent training hard preparing for the war in the Southwest Pacific against the Japanese.
The footage on this reel is silent and has been spliced together from various film reels out of chronological order. Members of the Māori Battalion and a Māori culture group performing kapa haka on an outdoor stage in Gisborne. A brief glimpse of a poi dance. Marines practicing target shooting with rifles near Camp McKay, Paekākāriki, before the scene abruptly cuts back to Māori kapa haka in Gisborne. [Scene 47] A US Marine trying to corral three sheep with a Border Collie sheepdog. [Scene 83D] Skiing shot. [Scene 50] US Marine milking a cow by hand. Mixed kapa haka dances on the outdoor Gisborne stage. [Scene 82A] Marines walking out of a chalet, grab skis and start to climb a snow slope. [Scene 83B] Skiing past down a slope. [Scene 64] Marines teeing off on a golf course. A young Māori boy is the caddy. [Scene 203] A battalion of Marines in full kit marching along a dock in Wellington, board a US warship. [Scene 182] ‘Hasty Tasty’ American coffee bar attracts groups of US soldiers walking along the street.