The Years Back - 9, The Unquiet Ocean (Episode Nine)

Strong words, but with an almost total lack of arms, they and bombastic defiance was almost all we had.

– Narrator Bernard Kearns, on Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s reaction to the fall of Malaya

We found in fact that we had three enemies to contend with: the Japanese, the terrain, and not the least, disease. It was a very primitive form of warfare.

– Trevor Bailey, on fighting in the jungles of New Guinea

We have our hope for the future as a free nation of free people, and we are dangerously angered that our earth and home should thus be menaced by an aggressor so advanced in the art of destruction, and so reduced in the ideals of human progress. New Zealand is ready!

– From a wartime newsreel

For years we in New Zealand had been given empty assurances from London and Washington that we were not in real danger, but then in a few weeks we saw the downfall of Malaya, Hong Kong, of Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Suddenly the Pacific was in a turmoil. Suddenly it had become ... the unquiet ocean.

– Presenter Bernard Kearns

We had a good team of fellows who used their ingenuity and we kept things going. In some cases I used to wonder myself how it did happen, but it did happen.

– Andy Chandler recalls the RNZAF's ground crew