The Years Back - 11, A Place in Asia (Episode 11)

I think the problem was in New Zealand’s basic lack of concern for the welfare of the island peoples in those days and a complete lack of knowledge of how to be a colonial power. The dead hand, you might say, of the New Zealand public service was spread over all the islands trying to run them in the same way as they ran New Zealand.

– Sir Guy Powles, diplomat

We began, also, to seek markets in Asia, to make trade agreements. To realise at long last that we were not a piece of Europe stuck by accident in the Pacific Ocean. That we had, in fact, a place in Asia.

– Bernard Kearns, Presenter

We came along to Hiroshima, where our train stopped. And to our amazement it was just one terrific area of devastation, charred trees, and we never ever imagined that this could be done by one particular bomb. The thing that really worried us was the condition of most of the children that were begging at the carriage windows, maimed and burnt and limbless and so on.

– Warrant Officer Jim Rendell, NZ Occupation Force