Weekly Review No. 310 - Mail Run

This post-war Weekly Review boards a RNZAF Dakota flying “the longest air route in the world”: a weekly 17,000 mile ‘hop’ taking mail to Jayforce, the Kiwi occupation force in Japan. Auckland to Iwakuni via Norfolk Island, Australia (including a pub pit-stop in the outback), Indonesia, the slums of Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong; then Okinawa, Manilla and home. Director Cecil Holmes’ pithy comments on postcolonial friction and rich and poor avoided censorship, but won a warning not to rock the boat. The next year he was controversially sacked from the National Film Unit.

In the field of air transport no record could be better.

– From the narration

Key Cast & Crew

Cecil Holmes

Director, Editor, Writer

Roger Mirams

Camera

Selwyn Toogood

Narrator

Rex Walden

Narrator