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.
A massive crowd of US Marines wearing lifejackets, seen on the top deck of a US warship. Sailors practice gunnery drill, firing a missile from a large, mounted gun. Soldiers load racks of four smaller missile rounds into a mounted gun magazine, which is being fired. A soldier at the dock drives a tractor pulling a trailer loaded with US military sacks. Marines watching the unloading of the ship at the Wellington dockside.