Preserving New Zealand's Voices of World War II

Abstract

During World War II, the Mobile Broadcasting Unit of New Zealand's armed forces recorded interviews and reports about the fighting and the day-to-day business of war, as well as thousands of simple messages home from servicemen, and a few women. Today, the 1600 surviving Mobile Unit discs form part of the sound archives of Radio New Zealand, held by audiovisual archive Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. In this "sidebar" article which is a companion piece to "Voices from the War," the author describes some of the challenges she has encountered in capturing sound from the 80-year-old lacquer discs in the Mobile Broadcasting Unit collection.