In the early 1990’s Gaylene Preston asked Judith Fyfe to interview her mother Tui Preston about her wartime experiences. She sensed there was something Tui was not telling her. This was the genesis of a huge oral history project, Women in World War II, in which Judith and a team of interviewers collected oral histories from something like 78 women around the country, recording in English and Te Reo Māori . The interviews are in the Collection of Oral History & Sound at the Alexander Turnbull Library, a resource for understanding the experiences of ordinary women during the war years. Gaylene Preston made the film, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, which is screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival, with the stories of seven of the interviewees. Seeing and hearing them speak fifty years (then) after the war alongside arrival footage brings home the extraordinary value of understanding the impact of war on individual people and families – what happened to them and how they coped. Very grateful for this extraordinary work. The film as important today as it was when it was made. Aro Video have the film to rent on their AroVision video on demand / watch at home service.