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.
Silent footage shot on 16 June 1943 at the coast of Paekākāriki. A large US Marine force lands on the beach, bringing artillery and tanks. After this exercise, a simulated attack is carried out. Three US warships are seen on the horizon, from which a second wave of US Marines arrive in numerous landing boats at dusk. Landing boats carrying troops of 1st Battalion, 10th Marines and heavy artillery, approach the beach. Troops of the 2nd Marine Division await camouflaged in the scrub on the sandhills above the beach. Troops of Marines are on the beach, along with tanks and jeeps, brought to shore on tank lighters. Tanks breach the barbed wire foreshore. US Airforce planes fly low over the beach. Members of the 1st Battalion in full kit haul heavy artillery on carts along the shore. Disassembled artillery components are carried over the sandhills by hand. A US Army tank drives off a tank lighter into the surf. Tanks climb sandhills and scrubland. A minefield on the foreshore is detonated in the simulated attack. A landing party of Marines is seen racing for cover from their landing boats. An injured Marine is attended to on the beach. A landing boat full of Marines is seen disembarking into the surf while other landing boats are seen navigating the waves.