While War in the Pacific National Historical Park has a voluminous collection of photos of Guam during the war years, the collection has long lacked images from other important and significant Pacific campaigns. Having recognized this shortcoming a concerted effort has been made in the last two months to broaden and expand the historical photo collection. The expansion and growth of the photo collection will empower WAPA and AMME to be able chose and select from a more diverse and complete photo collection when they plan for publications, interpretive exhibits, or their future museum.
The first step in broadening the photo collection focused on obtaining images from the Micronesian region. In order to accomplish this goal, a partnership was established with the Micronesian Seminar in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia. With the establishment of this partnership, WAPA was invited to view and scan images from their extensive WWII photo collection. The resource-gathering trip to the Micronesian Seminar occurred in January and this effort yielded over 1,200 new images to the War in the Pacific photo collection. Thanks to the Micronesian Seminar, WAPA was able to gain amazing images from places such as Chuuk, Enewetak, Ulithi, Majuro, Peleliu, Saipan, and Tinian. While the images that were obtained were phenomenal, the research institute’s holdings, due to its scope of collection, focused exclusively on Micronesia. The addition to the WAPA collection was substantial, but this institute’s narrowly defined geographic interest would prohibit WAPA from obtaining images non-Micronesian campaigns.
In order to gain photos from battles and campaigns such as Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, Midway, Wake, Leyte, Okinawa, Bougainville, Corregidor, Tarawa, and Japan, it seemed a trip to the National Archives would be necessary. While War in the Pacific Curator Tammy Duchesne was eager to visit and utilize the world-renowned still-photo collection at the National Archives in College Park, the size of the task was immense and overwhelming for one person. Luckily, a long standing partner would offer the assistance and help needed to make the trip a huge success.
Always eager to help War in the Pacific NHP and American Memorial Park, the parks’ cooperating association, the Arizona Museum Memorial Association, expressed interest in traveling to the National Archives in a joint-trip to be able to optimize the effort. In order to be able to gather as many images as possible in a short time it was decided that Tom Shaw, president and CEO of the Arizona Museum Memorial Association, Ray Sandla, Publications Manager of the Arizona Museum Memorial Association, and Tammy Duchesne, Museum Curator of War in the Pacific NHP and the American Memorial Park in Saipan would travel and work together to be able to accomplish as much as possible in a short time.
The trio arrived in the DC area on Sunday, February 23rd and reported to the Washington Naval Yard first thing the following morning. Over the next three days, Shaw, Sandla, and Duchesne reviewed the photo collections at the Naval Historical Center and the USMC historical center. In these three days the team was able to scan 71 photos from Guam and 192 images from Saipan. The team worked seamlessly as the photos were selected and scanned and then the captions for each photo were typed in a laptop. The images obtained from Guam were unique from the ones that were already in the WAPA photo collection in that they showed the Chamorro people after they had been freed from Japanese occupation and these photos showed the positive interactions between the civilians and the military during the rebuilding of Guam post-liberation. These images will allow WAPA to interpret a more complete story of civilian life immediately after the liberation of Guam.
Following three successful and busy days at the Washington Naval Yard, the photo-gathering team went north to College Park, Maryland where they would spend the following four days selecting and scanning images from the National Archives. Once the process of identifying, requesting, and retrieving images was understood, the team began to work indefatigably for almost ten hours each research day. The immensity of the holdings and the inexhaustible supply of amazing images made the task of selecting images very difficult, as it was obvious that it would be impossible to scan all the images that were interesting or pertinent. Wearing white gloves, Tom, Ray, and Tammy flipped through thousands of photos representing various campaigns and themes as they identified, scanned, and captioned those which would most benefit the War in the Pacific, American Memorial Park, and the USS Arizona Memorial historical photo collections.
Although eyes became fuzzy at the end of each day’s work, the results were well worth the fatigue. Over the course of four days at the National Archives, over 682 photos were scanned. These photos are from a variety of locations and campaigns including Cape Gloucester, Bougainville, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Wake, Midway, Leyte, Okinawa, Tarawa, Tinian, Coral Sea, Baatan, Corregidor, the Aleutians, Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and Manila. Many photos were also obtained of war dogs, Navajo Code Talkers, aircraft art, combat photographers, and victory celebrations following the surrender of Japan.
By obtaining these 845 new images during the recent photo-gathering trip to the Naval Historical Center, the Marine Corps Historical Center, and the National Archives II in College Park, War in the Pacific NHP, American Memorial Park, and the Arizona Museum Memorial Association will be better able to educate, inform, interpret, commemorate, and teach about the campaigns, stories, events, and people who participated in or were affected by the WWII in the Pacific. This broadening of our photo collection will allow us to tell a more well rounded and complete story which will honor and commemorate those who served in geographies formerly underrepresented.
