Transcripts For CSPAN3 World War II U.S. Army Signal Corps Photos 20240713

Remember and honor those soldier photographers who, through their images, or a witness to the postwar destruction in a world forever changed. I would like to welcome lee reynolds, the Strategic Communications officer for the center of military history. He retired at there of colonel with more than 35 years of service. Deployedeynolds was three times. He commanded the forces network in baghdad. He was the chief of Media Operations and senior spokesman for detention operations at guantanamo. Professor insistent the assistant professor of military science at the university of southern california. Please welcome lee reynolds. [applause] good evening. Thank you to the National Archives Record Administration for hosting and cosponsoring the event. Reynolds. Lee i am the Strategic Communications of the surfer the u. S. Army of military history. The center of military history is responsible for recording the official history of the u. S. Army while also advising the army staff on historical matters. Our responsibilities are to educate the public and the force, to inspire men and women to serve, and to preserve our army heritage. Nine but you to visit our website i invite you to visit our website to learn more about our responsibilities and mission. To find out more about the publications that we produce and museums we manage around the world including the National Museum of the us army that opens in four months. Mark your calendars. June 4, 2020 for the National Museum of the us army. Your proud and honored to support the 75th commemoration of world war ii. This evening, we are honoring world war ii soldier photographers from the armys signal corps collection here at the National Archives. Combatuld go well into operations by themselves and cover the events where civilian journalists either could not go or would not go. The results, as you will see, captured on film through their lenses were some of the most iconic pictures of world war ii. The images were not just used by the u. S. Army. They could be seen in newspapers and magazines and film throughout the world. By the end of tonight presentation, we will have 20 minutes for questions and answers. We will have index cards. If you have a question, please write it down on the index card. Signal us if you need a pencil or an index card. I would like to bring to the stage our Panel Members. [applause] lee i would to introduce dr. Erik villard. He is the armys principal vietnam war historian. He is the author of a recent book about vietnam called staying the course. Dr. Villard one of my other jobs is to research and produce a pair of commemorative websites for the u. S. Army and world war ii you can find on our website. In the course of producing these, which im still doing, it is going to take a while but one of the things ive found most valuable is looking through the signal corps photographic collection. They provide such a rich source of information and tell us so much about the experience of the soldier in the war we could not get anywhere else. I am pleased to be moderating a panel of experts who will tell us more about this incredible part of army history in the Second World War that is well known that is not well known but ought to be. I will introduce our Panel Members first before begin before we begin. A formerichard cahan, picture editor for the chicago suntimes. The author of no less than 24 books on history and photography. Many of them on your hometown of chicago. Some more recent books that widen the aperture. For your most recent book, which is aftershock the human toll of war, coauthor, mark jacob, who was a former editor of the chicago tribune. Wright, his own right, and author of eight books. The third author is not here tonight. I will mention him. Eagle williams has worked with mr. Cahan on many occasions. We have a trio of people behind this examination of signal corps photographers of world war ii. Is third photographer rebecca raines. 2000, she there in was there. She wrote the official history of signal corps branch, getting the message through. We are so glad to have your expertise. Panelist is kaitlyn crain enriquez. Expert in world war ii photography and knows quite a wasabout how the collection organized. Envious because she can rummage through the files whenever she feels like it. She can tell us how the collection came to the. I would like to handoff to richard and mark to tell us this journey of how they came to write and produce this book. I should tell you that i do not i am not as much of an expert as he says as a photo lover. People call me a photo historian. That is a term i did not know existed until i heard it. I like to tell stories through photographs. Photographs take us instantly up so we canus understand life events better. This book we started about three years ago. We wanted to do a book about world war ii. There is an incredible collection about world war ii. We wanted to figure out i promised to turn off my cell phone. I want to keep that promise. Boy, are you in trouble. We started about three years ago. We went through the archives. We decided to concentrate on 1945. The reason we chose the signal corps in the army is the army was on all continents across though world during world war ii, and they were on the ground in world war ii. We thought there was a continuity among army photographs and signal corps photographs. We decided to concentrate on 1945 because many of the photos photographers took of 1943 and 1944 had been shown in a lot of books. When 1945 came around and the war started waning, there is not as much attention to this book. Frankly, it is an antiwar book. I was interviewed on the radio, and somebody said i would be classified as a liberal because of antiwar. I suggested conservatives, the entire military, everybody who has a heart and conscious is against the war. I want to tell you about our journey. Men. Is a book about they were all men in world war ii, who went to war with cameras instead of guns. They were provided firearms. As every photographer said, there was no way to shoot pictures and guns at the same time. They all chose cameras, which is pretty remarkable. Most of these men were not experienced photographers. Some were along the line as they. Ere being enlisted they made the mistake of saying they were interested in photography. [applause] [laughter] they went through months of training to become photographers. Left ane they incredible gift to future generations by the photographs they took of the war because they teach us, and the subhead of the book is the human toll of war, they teach as exactly that. That is why there photographs are important. There are a couple miracles you are going to be witnessing. The miracle they took the photographs, the miracle of the photographs were saved so well in the National Archives, and the miracle that we as a future generation appreciate them and see its important. Importance. These are two of the photograph ers. They are holding Speed Graphic cameras. Those were the common cameras that press photographers that is the kind of cameras they held. Edward on the left is holding a flash unit. They did use flash but not very often. It is not the thing to have flash go off during battle. It is important to recognize these photographs were made with these primitive cameras that used four inch by five inch negatives. They could only put in two negatives at a time. They would have to switch to another magazine. Very different from photography today. Another miracle not only that they took the photographs, but they were all processed thest always very near battle scene. They were processed there, the film was then sent to london and then to paris and were transmitted back to the United States. For magazines and newspapers. They were a very important part of the war effort. If you have a chance to see the book, and a couple of people have bought it. T what makes this book so special is that it focuses on 1945. The first photograph was taken january 1 1945. Every picture shows the book like what the world looks as the war came to an end. In other thing that makes it unusual is the clarity of the photographs. If you have seen the book, you will see. We were given a chance by the National Archives to scanned the original negatives to create the book. We were allowed to do 10 scans a day. That is the rule of the National Archives. They let us do 20 because we had two people. Alyssa, are you here. Mcconnell came to the archives for several months and did a beautiful job of scanning 10 pictures a day. We stuck to the rule. Heres a four by five inch negative. We will see what it looks like as a positive. This is an execution of a german 1945 it wasmber 1, one of our harder negatives because everything is so backlit. Here is the way it looks in the book. Image only showed the area of the negative, we always area of the negative. We wanted to show the entire negative. You will see on the edge of the negative, the signal corps numbers. The signal corps numbers are the numbers the National Archives still use to find the photographs. How did we pick our photographs . Betweenguess there are 100 and 200,000 signal corps negatives from 1945. We used contact sheets at first to look at what is there. Thattact print is a print is four inches by five inches. Andas taken the negatives made it print the same size. That helps a tremendous amount. We got to see the front side of the contact prints and the backside of the contact prints. That gave us a sense of what pictures we thought we should use for the book. We were looking for starkly important pictures and artistically important pictures. The book is a rough. Is rough. We wanted to show the human toll of war, but we also looked a lot for humanity. Files the contact prints are in. It was a little bit of a challenge because the world war ii photographs are kind of combined with the korean war photographs. You have to go through a lot of looking. We left at eight by 10 prints to get a better idea of what the photographs look like. You can see the difference even a printpicture between and a scan of a negative. What we are seeing in this book are images that have never many of them have never been seen before or published before, even the ones that have been published, they have never been seen like this because they have always been seen from prints. As great as enlarged images are, they cannot stand up to scanners. Negatives, which are filled with the information and scanners love each other. 1945 and 2019. Of am i pointing the right way . S. Ke i do not want to go back. At least we had a moving. Ok we got it moving. Ok. We started to find subject areas. Each picture there are not only prints of them, but you can look at pictures through metadata. These are pictures of bridal couples. We were looking for humanity to include in the book. That led to pictures like this, which is a remarkable picture from the philippines. This is a japanese soldier and a woman. They were hiding out after battle. When they were captured, they professed their love for each other. This is an american chaplain who married a japanese prisoner. You can see a soldier in the bag playing the accordion. In the back playing the accordion. We were always on the lookout for that. There we go. I am going to go back. Next, we started to want to tell the story of the signal photographic companies. We went in to the main text area and looked out the seven companies. You can see i hope you can see this there was a large learning curve. I think i got everything wrong. They even changed my name shared every location changed my. Ame shared every locatio the scanner on the negative is open to everybody. Do not have to be everyone who walks in can scan 10 photographs a day. Are some of the items we found in the text. We found your books, we found morning reports, we found newspapers. It was incredibly helpful in telling the story of the men who wear the signal corps photographers. We started with the photographs, and then we went after the men who took the photographs. That became an important project. There were about 70 photographers who took the 300 pictures in the book. We tracked down the story of almost every one of the photographers. Everyone had passed away. There are still a couple of gnal corps photographers who are still alive. We talked to each of their families. I cannot tell you how proud they are of their parents. They went to war with such courage and left such an important record. This is our cover photo. We think it goes great with the title of aftershock because it kidfc jack, a pennsylvania who was an infantry soldier and was captured in the battle of the bulge. He was taken back to germany to work slave labor. After about a month, he escaped with a comrade and hid in a house in germany. A german officer came in and he killed the officer to remain free. As the allies were coming through, the allies found him. This is him right after. He is wearing the cap of the german officer who he killed. Yard sthis thousand are. He looks like he has been through what the whole world had been through for years. We thought he was clearly emblematic of the point we were trying to make. We tracked down his family. Memoir hed a 19 page had written that described his entire ordeal, and we used that in the book. Signal corps photographers who took these pictures were on the run a lot. They were not trained journalists. The captions really stunk sometimes. We had to do a lot of investigation to try to find all kinds of things. We had to work hard at that. We did not just want death and destruction. We wanted to give readers a sense of what it was like in the year is the world was coming to terms with how terrible total war had been over the past five or six years. Kidsis 314yearold german who were enlisted in the military because germans did not have anyone left at the time. We love this picture. The kid on the right must have been issued that overcoat recently because he has it buttoned in the wrong button. They were captured fast. We wanted to find unusual pictures. This is one of my favorite pictures. It shows a man who was missing a limb demonstrating how to ride a who had limbs amputated because of the war. Themare watching him show how they will be able to ride a bike. This is the german city of heil u the extent of the devastation of some of these cities in asia and in the philippines and all over the place is amazing. Not sure why it did that. The reason that scanning these negatives made a difference in pictures like this because you see so much definition in these half demolished buildings. The odd thing is, when we were working on the book, rich and mike and i would say, that is a beautiful picture. Some pictures really are beautiful. It was odd because these are pictures of ugliness to a great extent. They were so beautifully taken by these soldier photographers. These are troops who have been wounded in some way. They are being lowered into a Landing Craft from an aircraft carrier. You will see several quite a few pictures of injured soldiers. You also see a lot of pictures of civilians. One of the things that really defined world war ii was the extent to which civilians were killed as opposed to soldiers. According to one estimate, it was three to one civilians to soldiers. That is the thing about total war and one of the points we wanted to make is that no one is spared. This is one of the most devastating scenes. Manila in the in philippines. A guy with the crutches is one of the 30 japanese soldiers who surrendered. The rest of them fought to the death. Some of the fighting was the toughest of the pacific war. I just love this picture. It is so sad. These are chinese who have returned to the philippines to collect the remains of their loved ones. Those remains are from the chinese diplomatic corps that was in the philippines and the japanese invaded. 1941. Panese invaded in the americans left. Most of the americans left. There were some holdouts. Volunteered to take the chinese diplomats with him. They said, we have to stay. There are 100,000 chinese on the philippines island. The japanese demanded the consular staff collect a gigantic amount of money from the Ethnic Chinese on the islands chaired the diplomats refused. On the islands. The diplomats refused. Stayed in the philippines throughout the war. They did not find out until the americans recaptured the philippines. We were able to track down the daughter of the chinese consulate general. She is living in new york city. She became an american citizen. Ien we tracked her down, asked her, have you ever seen this picture . She had never seen the picture said, are youri fathers remains there . She said i presume so. Her mom was not in this picture because they had already left for the United States. She said, i can identify everyone in this picture. When you are an historian and trying to track down a fax from 75 years ago, it is amazing when you find somebody who was there. We really treasured that. A lot of the pictures show american bravery. This shows an interesting chapter in the wa. After it wasau liberated. The americans liberated the camp. The photographers are right there with them. Forof the toughest duties the photographers were taking pictures of the death camps. Depravity and how human beings have been treated. Furious. Ere they rounded up all of the ss wall. Against a they put a machine gun there. As they put the first round in, the german soldiers started running at them. Opened upan troops and shot more than a dozen of them. In what some people might view as a massacre. There was an army investigation. Nobody was disciplined over it. Obviously, it was in difficult situations. This is not the kind of picture you were going to see in 1945 in 1945 in an american publication. One of the values of the book is 2019t shows it takes a view of things that happened in 1945 and it is not a propaganda book. It is a truth book. For both good and bad. There is plenty of both. This is a really interesting picture. This is that buchenwald this is at buchenwald. This is a soviet labor who was pointing out the ss guard who was the most coral in the area he was in. It was taken by a photographer named Harold Roberts. Picture, butd this Harold Roberts was annoyed at this picture. He took it with a Speed Graphic camera. Those cameras only had two negatives you could load at any one time. So he takes the picture, gets ready to reload, and the prisoner punches the guard in the face. Harold roberts is always upset that he missed that picture. He thought it would be even greater than the picture he took. Why dont you tell the story . This is emily mary whos one of , the archives poster women. Ill explain why. But this is a photograph of her taken after she was involved in longest death march in the war. A group of mostly jewish women were marched hundreds of miles over six months. And they ended up in a tiny barn in volary, czechoslovakia. And they were liberated in the barn. A signal corps photographer took her picture just days after she was found. He asked all of the women, does anyone have a photograph of themselves before the holocaust, so we can compare the two photographs . She happened to have a little photograph of herself that she had carried in her shoe. Thats her on the right as a teenager. And so she gave the photograph to the Army Photographer to make a print and to make a copy. Somehow, the photographer was sent away, and she lost the single photograph that she had of her youth. Flash forward to about 1995, she returns to the archives as mary robinson. Shes gotten married and her husband joins her, and they find both photographs before they returned to volary for a 50th anniversary celebration. So, if you go down to the basement of the college park National Archives, her story is told. But theres a twist. My father was the doctor who helped them. You know, these women weighed about 75 pounds, and it wouldve made sense to give them food, but that was a disaster. One soldier slipped one of the women a small chocolate wafer, and she died almost immediately. Her body couldnt take it. And my father helped them come back. And i knew the story about my father, but i had no idea that there was a photograph of my father. And the reason why i couldnt find the photograph because they spelled his name wrong. His name was aaron cahan, not aaron cohan. When i found the card, i took a photograph. Unfortunately, we did not bring it tonight, that was a real personal connection for me to this whole collection. And the women wrote they did. I knew the story because the women who he helped, told my mother about my fathers work. And when they returned to czechoslovakia, i read an article about it and they said captain cahan was our hero. Ok. Good evening. Its nice to see you all here. And i would like to say, im very happy to be part of the panel tonight, with these authors of this fascinating book. And i want to thank garrett for asking me to be part of this panel. It gives me a chance to talk about the Army Signal Corps, one of my favorite topics, and a little about its background history and how the Pictorial Service came to be in world war ii. When the signal corps was founded in 1860 right on the eve of the civil war, it was given a broad mandate to provide communications for the army, not really defined any more specifically than that, and all the equipment that went with it. And over time, the mission encompassed a wide variety of functions, which i think is one of the things that makes the signal corps interesting to study. Photography would eventually be included in the signal corps purview, but that didnt happen for quite a few years. During the civil war, the army had no photographers. Wereaunting images captured by civilians like Matthew Brady. A lot of you have probably seen his photos. But the photographic process was incredibly prohibitive and cumbersome, even more so than in world war ii when the cameras were huge. They used glass plates that were very fragile as well as hard to handle. And they needed such a Long Exposure time, but there was no way you could capture action. So it would take the development of smaller cameras and the invention of rolled film, which didnt happen until the 1890s, to make combat photography feasible. Meanwhile, the signal corps did perform some photographic work in the 1870s when it took on such jobs as photographic maps for inclusion in the official records of the civil war that were then being compiled by the War Department. And in 1894, the signal corps became responsible for supervising the War Department library, which included the brady photos at that time. Because he had fallen upon Financial Difficulties later in life, he had to sell his collection, and the War Department had purchased it. So in the 1890s is when the signal corps gets a little more involved in photography even though it is not officially a part of their job. And in 1894, the signal corps added photography to the signal corps located at fort riley, kansas. They later published a manual on photography to use to teach the soldiers. The photographic function still wasnt officially assigned and wouldnt be for quite a while. The were in spain in 1898 presented the army with its first opportunity to try its hand at combat photography. And signal soldiers took cameras into the war zones and captured the fighting in cuba, puerto rico, and the philippines. But the real comingofage for signal corps photography came during world war i. In july 1917, the signal corps established the photographic section that had responsibility for both ground and Aerial Photography at home and abroad. And aviation was one of those additional functions the signal corps had for a time during most of world war i. Signal corps cameramen took still and Motion Picture images, but officers were reluctant to allow those cameramen too close to the front, so they took few photos of actual combat. Censorship was strict, and no graphic images were shown to the public at all. Nevertheless, by the wars end, the signal corps had accumulated approximately 30,000 still pictures and 750,000 feet of Motion Picture film that were used for training, propaganda, and historical purposes. So now with all this material to handle, the signal corps needed specialized facilities. In 1919, the signal corps built the Photographic Laboratory and film vault on the grounds of the army war college, now known as fort Leslie J Mcnair in southwest d. C. , which happens to be the post where the Us Army Center of military history is now located. What goes around comes around. The outbreak of world war ii, of course, created a huge demand for army photography, and required the signal corps to really up its operations in that area. The War Department finally issued regulations that give responsibility to the signal corps for all photographic work, except as specifically assigned to other branches, so a broad authority. And this time, the emphasis was placed on combat photography, and cameramen, as weve seen, served on the front lines. To administer this wartime buildup, the Photographic Division was in the office of the chief signal officer became the army Pictorial Service in june 1942. And we have a picture there of that office, i believe, after dday in april 1942, and another one in august 1941, a little bit smaller. One of the notable things as how many women were working in the office at that time because the draft had happened. The men were serving and they picked up the duties. The other thing i would like to mention about the office is that it was located on what was then known as the munitions building located on the mall, about where the Smithsonian National History Museum is today. And the War Department had its headquarters there until the pentagon was completed, and the chief signal officer had his office there. So thats what was happening. Now earlier, the signal corps purchased the former paramount studios at astoria, long island, which became the signal corps photographic center. After undergoing renovations, it opened in may 1942. The center provided a modern facility where training, film production, processing, and distribution to be consolidated, leaving the laboratory in Washington Free to focus on still pictures. While the army tried to draft professional photographers, as was mentioned earlier, there just werent enough. So to meet the demand, the signal corps conducted photographic training at astoria for both still and Motion Picture cameramen. In new york city, they had the advantage of receiving instruction from press photographers in new york. Thats where everything was based at that time, and they could show these men how to take newsworthy photos, which isnt always the easiest thing to do. The center also trained many specialists required for photographic work, such as camera repair men and maintenance personnel, as well as laboratory technicians. In early 1943, the army augmented its facilities at the war college by opening a still Sub Laboratory at the newly completed pentagon. The following year, the signal corps consolidated all its still picture Laboratory Operations there. The pentagon also housed the signal corps still picture library, with the Motion Picture counterpart located at astoria. And by wars end, the still picture library held over 500,000 photos, and those are just the ones they considered worthy of keeping. Many were destroyed. For these men working in the offices and in the laboratories, members of the Womens Army Corps worked in many film laboratories and libraries run by the signal corps. Photographsorps brought the distant war home to americans in a way that had never been done before. The signal corps photographic companies documented Field Operations around the world, and they accompanied troops on their various assignments, amphibious landings and whatever. And they usually operated in small groups so they could be in more places at once. And i believe i have that photo here. We scanned them at the archives, showing the equipment these signal corps cameramen used. Its a lot better than what Matthew Brady had. You could carry it around your neck. But it was still pretty bulky and hard to move around with. They also mentioned they couldnt carry a rifle with all this stuff, so all they had to defend themselves was a pistol and a knife. So they were pretty vulnerable out there. Now, again, as you see, blackandwhite photography was the norm for combat coverage, but army cameramen did use color to a limited extent. They had portable dark rooms that they could process still pictures quickly in the field to use for tactical purposes, to show enemy placements and things of that nature. The development of telephoto techniques as technology kept improving enabled electronic transmission photographs, so that pictures could reach washington from the front in minutes. And the pictures taken by Army Photographers illustrated the nations books, newspapers, and magazines, and the caption, photo by u. S. Army signal corps, became almost as well known as the commercial trademark. And lucky for us, the army insisted photographers include detailed captions with their pictures. Even if they werent always perfect, they did provide at least part of the time the who, what, when, and where of who and what they were taking pictures of. The government still placed restrictions on the kinds of images that could be shown, although not as heavily as world war i. And many pictures in the book i was looking at it before i came out would not have been seen by the public during the war. But they still received a much more realistic look at warfare than they ever had before. Besides capturing combat action, photography served other purposes. And one of the most important and interesting of these was by mail. Personal correspondence and letters soldiers were riding back home was microfilmed to save cargo space on ships and in airplanes. And then at the receiving end, the film was developed, enlarged, and printed into fourandahalf by fiveinch reproductions that were then mailed to the addressee. The signal corps performed a Similar Service in what they called an official photo mail. The signal corps also developed unofficial photos soldiers took and censored them as necessary. For all its accomplishments, the army Pictorial Service did face criticism. In august 1942, it came under scrutiny by the Senate Special Committee Investigating the National Defense program, which was chaired by senator Harry S Truman of missouri. Most of the controversy centered around the signal corps Motion Picture activities and their ties with hollywood, not so much still picture operations. But for a short time, the army Pictorial Service was moved from signal corps control, but it reverted back after the committee concluded its hearings in july 1943. Despite this administrative up people, the army Pictorial Service continued to function effectively. This picture shows you the kind of conditions they were dealing with. Cameramen did traveling jeeps to cameramen did travel in jeeps to get around the battlefield, but it wasnt always easy to reach where they were going. One of the things you dont see many pictures of our cameramen themselves, and there were many wounded. They were vulnerable when they were taking the pictures, kind of sitting ducks for the enemy to shoot. And this is one of those cameramen who suffered injury. In the closing days of the war, a signal corps photograph of the big three World Leaders at the potsdam conference became one of the First Published news photos transmitted by radio for reproduction in fullcolor. Of course, i dont have a picture of that tonight. Its but one of the many memorable images captured by the photographers of the army Pictorial Service during World War Two. And those men risked their lives and many gave their lives, to create an epic, visual record of the cataclysmic, worldwide conflict. They left behind a remarkable legacy that has stood the test of time, and as weve seen tonight, a legacy that still speaks to us today. [applause] kaitlyn so, i get the privilege of working with the Army Signal Corps collection. It is our largest collection. And it is the most used collection. I dont think theres a signal day ive been at work that it hasnt been requested. And in preparation tonight, i went through the paperwork that documented the transfer of the photographs to us. Yes, we keep records about records. So, the Army Signal Corps photographs were transferred to us in four different chunks. We call them sessions. They came over in four different years. But in reading the paperwork, there was a really interesting quote. I want to read it to you guys. They were praising the worth of the documents, and the worth is not just the value, monetarily, but the historic value and research value. And they wrote, this material is a part of the oldest, continuous photographic file in the history of the government, and the bestknown file because of its coverage of the military operations of the United States. Therefore, the importance of the records need not be stressed. And thats a lot to say. We have, i believe, over 18 million photographs and this is the oldest and largest collection. So, in my role at the National Archives, i work with researchers that come in, experienced researchers and novice researchers. And i help you locate what you are trying to find. Does not mean you will find it, but i try my best to point you in the right direction. When you come in, you are the expert on your subject, and im just the person who uses the information you give me to help you find the photos that you are looking for. But i always like to start with setting expectations, and things that you dont find in the signal corps collection, or in a lot of our military records. We do not have a photo of every Single Person who has served in the military. If you are looking for your relatives, there may be a photo of them, but doesnt mean their name is captioned, and therefore i wont be able to identify your relative for you. We dont have full unit photos. We have unit photos sometimes captured at bases, but we dont have those platoon photos and unit photos taken at boot camp. And the portraits that are taken at boot camp or graduations, we dont really have either. That said, we do have name indexes and the signal corps was very detailed. They kept great records of their records, so we have name indexes. If a name appears in a caption, hypothetically, it should be in the name index. The photographs are not organized by date, so i think its incredibly impressive that you found 1945 photos because those skip around. You can be in a box and see all of world war ii in one box. Its not in any chronological order. Im not entirely certain how the numbers were assigned. Sometimes we have people coming , in with a photo that they have, and they want to find the original because they want to scan the negative, but they dont have a signal corps number, so we work with them to locate, go through the indexes, and attempt to find the signal corps number. You may have noticed on some of the photographs, there are two numbers. There is a field number and a seal number. We have no way of getting from there is a seal number and a signal corps number. We have no way of getting from that seal number to the signal corps number, so its a lot of working with the subject in the image in order to locate it. Just real quick, this image, they were taking college photography. This was taken i believe in early 1945, the end of 1944. Most of our color photography for world war ii is in 1944 and 1945. There is some 1941, but i think the bulk of our collection is going to show. This is pearl harbor on december 7. I think this may be one of the earliest color photos i have found but i have not gone , through all one million photographs. [laughter] kaitlyn so yeah, i work with the public and i field questions. And i always say, you are more of an expert, they are more of an expert on the subject of world war ii, but if you want me to help you find an image, i can do that. You should come prepared if you want to do research, specifically on world war ii units, but this could be used for korean war and vietnam era. If youre looking for a specific unit, having the unit lineage helps because you can look under the hierarchy of it. If it is a regiment, you might want to know what division they were attached to. Thats very useful. The locations where they served, you can look under geographic locations. Having specific towns helps a lot. Rosters, so you can look under names, especially commanding officers. Thats really, really useful. And then subjects, types of artillery they used. You can look under various subjects. And so i always say, just come prepared because i can do some limited research with you, but if you have all that information, i can show you way more places to look instead of if you just have one name and thats it. Your research day is done. So, in terms of the signal corps, we have three copies of the signal corps print or photograph. They showed us. Theres the four by five negative. Prints,the eight by 10 and we have the four by five contact prints. We do pull original negatives, and we will pull 10 a day. And we limit it because they are the original copy and we dont want to serve too many at one time. But also, there are these drawers, so we are pulling them individually out of these drawers, and there is room for error when you are putting them back, and we want to make sure they get back in their correct locations because things have been misfiled and found decades later. And yeah, so thats basically on a daily basis. [applause] erik so, let me say a few things in addition to the great comments weve heard here. Theres three things i want to add to this. I think theyve been touched on, but i want to reinforce them. For one, the Army Signal Corps photo collection is one of the Great National treasures. I think most and im calling you out, guys most historians dont give photographs their proper due. I think theres a wealth of information. I personally learned so much by spending so much time with the photographs. I love text, no problem with text, but theres just something about the images and the information they contain. The second point is that there is information in those photographs youre not likely to else or not obtain in the same way or with the same force. For example, looking at the world war ii signal corps photos, and i go to the archives. I have a little different system. I dont have the luxury of pulling the negatives, so i stand there with an iphone, and then do my photoshop fairy dust and, you know, take out the dings and scratches and then put them on our website and social media. But the process of actually fixing them up is important because i look really closely at them. And again, youre finding stuff that you would just pass over. Variations in equipment, particularly 1945, the american soldier in europe in 1945, that raggedy character. It is not the put away, straightened out soldier. They are trying to survive in conditions that are unspeakable. So you see them wearing German Air Force jackets, right, with the fleece inside. Or theyve got some kind of nonstandard boot, or theyve got three k bar knives strapped to various parts of their bodies. And unless you look at these photos, you wouldnt know that. One of my favorite thing are tankers, what the tankers were doing to uparmor their vehicles. They are loading sandbags and Railroad Ties and all this other stuff. And so the way that they do it, you can only appreciate that by seeing it. And then the third point, probably the most important point is that every Single Person in those photos is someone, is a son or daughter or an uncle or a father or a brother, and so many of the relatives of those people are still with us. And i know this because, when i put this out on social media, within the last two weeks, two people in their early 20s contacted me going, thats my grandfather. So, its wonderful to know that there is a continuity, that people do understand this. And so keeping this photographic collection alive and making it available, i think, is really one of the best ways to honor our veterans. And then thats what tonight is about. Before we go to question and answer, i would like to show you a short, five minute video i produced using some of the photos ive scanned and enhanced and then some video segments to a musical accompaniment, which i think somehow suited the images. So, if you will stop for a few minutes and think about the contributions of the armys signal corps photographers, this is my tribute to them. [applause] at this time, well start with the questions and answers. If you still have a question, feel free to raise your hand, and people on the left or right will pass you pencils and cards. The first question is, will you accept negatives or photos from the korean war into your collection . Kaitlyn we do. Our Army Signal Corps collection starts with civil war Matthew Brady photography and goes through, i believe it ends in 1982. After that, its under the department of the defense. Department of defense records go from 1982 to 2007. All right. So the next question i have is, what were some of the most interesting things you discovered from going through all these pictures . I discovered that the war was so expensive. We live in a generation that wars are very limited, and unless youre fighting, unless you have a loved one fighting, a war is not as brutal as world war ii, or a major world war was. And we actually showed the photographs in chronological order, and they bounce around, theres pictures from europe, then the next picture might be of burma. The next picture might be of the philippines, might be china, italy, and the middle east. I read about the extent of world world war world war ii but i think i was surprised how huge it was. I think for me, it would have it would be the impact on civilians. You dont see that too much in the history books. You see a lot of the combatants and the giant armies fighting each other, but the looks on the faces of the civilians, and the aftershock, i mean every time i go through it again and look at it, they look so forlorn, they just look shellshocked. They look like they dont know what can happen next. Theyre not hopeful. For me, also having looked at probably all 55,000 or 75,000 world war i photos, as well as vietnam war, doing a comparison, one thing that stands out to me for the world war ii photos is that seemed to be almost the golden age of capturing, you know, a couple of those images at the end, the portraits. Yes, the photographer is there and the person knows that hes looking at them, so its not just capturing them in the moment, but theres a realness and a beauty to those images that i just dont see anywhere else. And again, these are soldier photographers, most of whom never received training before, working with those incredibly cumbersome cameras under incredibly difficult conditions. Ive read the journals, all these daily journals that say, bob is covered with fungus from head to toe, but otherwise were doing great. This is the kind of stuff they have to go through to get the shot. And you have to come up with that quality. Its extraordinary, so just the personalities that come out of these photos are really remarkable. Im curious about one thing, because we concentrated on 1945. And im amazed by the quality of the compositions, because most of these people were not professional photographers. And rich and i worked with professional photographers our whole life. And some of the compositions are so good. The artistry is incredible. Did they get better as the war went on . Because im not familiar with 1941 and 1942. I think thats fair to say. I think its fair to say they did. Its also fair to say they took more photos as time went on. In 1943, there were a fairly limited number of photographic units out there, and of course the number expands. So its partly, its the sheer number. But ive got to Say Something about the air of the water, but they rose to the occasion. So by 1944, absolutely, some photos that would stand right up there with anything that england has produced. And its interesting, after the war, when we tracked down families and found out what they did, how few of them stayed in photography. One became a life magazine photographer. One became a very famous celebrity photographer. Russ meyer became russ meyer, a movie photographer. [laughter] but most of them left to become journalists or printers or something allied with photography. And i think its because they had seen it all. What was there now to prove, after world war ii . What was there to photograph . And i think that they wanted to start anew and start fresh. And one can also imagine just the horrors that they had seen. And sometimes, one thing i really appreciate is those photographers who went the extra mile to write more on the caption sheets. In the movie i showed you, that towards the end, that american tanker in the turret with the machine gun, the black tanker, there were five photos, and Army Signal Corps photographer met up with this unit, the 761st tank battalion, pattons black panthers, the First Black Army unit in combat, and this is right before the First Combat Mission in november 1944, and it happens to take photos of all five crewmembers, including that person. In 12 hours, theyre all dead. They go into action. They button up, which means they close up the vehicle because theres action, and the exhaust system gets partly blocked, so they all died of carbon monoxide. So theyre found in their fighting positions without a scratch on them. It just kind of blows your mind, these incredible photographs. And who knew that 12 hours later . Its, so, when you get the back story of some of these things, it just adds another layer. Exactly. And so you mentioned the book focused on 1945, and the question here is, how did you decide on this topic . And what sparked your interest . Why war . Why world war ii . Its interesting because erik showed a picture of a soldier with a cigarette hanging, near the end, and thats how it all started. We found that the photograph was so beautiful, and wanted to focus on the end of the war. We think that its an important book. We talk about how every generation that has their own war, because we forget how bad, how terrible war is, and we created the book because we wanted to create this lasting record. Not that we were creating a lasting record, but the photographers were creating a lasting record. And we hope that people look at the book and realize how serious any war is. It doesnt have to be a total war, and thats the gift they left behind. And 1945 is not just when world war ii ended. Its when the atomic age dawned, and there is so much happening. Theres a picture in the book of jewish refugees getting ready to go to palestine. A picture of the vietnamese protesters wanting to have independence for vietnam after world war ii, which they couldnt get, if you remember. The french went back and reoccupied, and later the americans were involved in the vietnam war. So, the book is about the end of something but its also about the dawn of something. The first use of napalm, the first atomic bomb blast, so its very contemporary. The question here is, are there any africanamerican photographers in world war ii . And work any photographers were any photographers assigned to companies such as the four 42nd, the asian and japaneseamerican unit. There were really good pictures of the 442nd but theyre not my book because it happened in 1944 when they saw their best action. I never got any connection to an africanamerican photographer. There was a japanese photographer, japaneseamerican photographer who later became lbjs photographer. But he started in the middle of 1945. But thats a great question. I cant speak to that, that can speak to that, because i went out to find, among other topics, and indeed i found a number of photos. For example, the 92nd infantry division, which was an africanamerican division that saw action in italy. And the 93rd, which saw action in the pacific. The 93rd included such famous black regiments as the 24th and 25th, and the 369th, which had been the Harlem Hellfighters in world war i. But there arent that many i found a fair number, but again, unless you dug into the archives, you wouldnt know. And so i went also into records and found after action reports from the 93rd. And its a fascinating record, and photos there, as well. So yes, theyre there, and thats a part of the Treasure Hunt is to sort of go looking for and every time i go its a treat, because i almost inevitably stumble on something that i hadnt been looking for, which is cool. So yes, that and the 442nd, and the 100th Infantry Battalion from hawaii, incredible photos from them. Theyre there. Do you know how many combat photographers there were . And how many were killed in action, wounded, or missing . And are there any postwar associations that were formed for these photographers . Rebecca, do you know the answer to that . Because we had a great deal of problems figuring out how many photographers until many casualties. We estimate it was in the hundreds, not in the thousands, but im guessing 500. We counted 24 casualties, but there must have been much more, because they were on the front lines so they should be statistically have much more than a couple of dozen, but we could anecdotally only find 24. There was an interesting book called armed with cameras, about signal corps photographers features the photographic companies, and the numbers are always difficult to nail down. In fact, that came about because i was looking for someone to speak and my friend, hes now a retired professor, but i met him at some of the history conferences. Just a fantastic guy, he had written about the civil war, vietnam. I had no idea he wrote about this. I talked to him, hes fishing, im not going to pull him away. But he said these other guys that i know. But there is just a plug for this for the textual branch, there is a massive history of the Army Signal Corps in World War Two right during and after the war. Its on the second floor, that has a lot of that statistical information. But again, i encourage you to come in and read it because i dont have it on me. [laughter] is there any interest or effort to digitally enhance any of these photos, digitize them and making them Available Online . I guess the question is for me. It has been talked about. But in terms of how you decide whats going to get digitized, when you have over 18 million photographs, you tend to choose stuff thats on glass. The entirety of the Matthew Brady stuff is digitized. So glass plates and slides get prioritized. And the cost of digitization is enormous. Its not as simple as just scanning and throwing it up. It takes manpower. Those captions need a lot of, not editing, just proofreading, and its a lot of work. And in terms of negatives and prints, ideally you want to digitize from the negatives. But sometimes there are negatives missing that were not transferred to us. And so you have to go track down a print. So its not just a one for one, theres a big gap in the negative, so you need to go to the print. Its a lot of work. A question here about german photos. Were any german photos captured, and are they in the collection . We have a large collection of captured records. Its record group 242, seized records. A lot of it is heinrich hoffman, it is hitlers personal photographer. We also have eva brauns photo albums. We have not digitized those. Also theres the translation issue. We need to german speaker to translate, as well. So there have not been many formats, glass plates, 35mm, its an enormous collection. I dont think anyone has ever gone through all of it. Speaking of the connection to terminate, its an interesting story. Signal corps photographers wrote captions and always included their names in the captions, but they were never ever credited with the photographs in america. Life magazine would run it and it would always say, signal corps photography. One photographer put his negatives, a pigeon carried his negatives. It was supposed to go to london but it ended up in germany. And the germans published the photograph and gave the photographer his name credit. [laughter] also, where in the College Park Campus is the signal corps Photo Archive located, which building . Were at a2, which is in college park, right next to the university of maryland. Were on the fifth floor, cant miss it. Its the only door to walk into. The negatives and prints are housed in our building. A more recent question, are photos from military photographers today being archived . Yes, 2007 to present is that the defense Image Management center, and eventually those photos will come to us. And finally, the last question here, in the era of social media, how can you use social media to help educate and inspire using these pictures, young men and women today . Well, i mean, were on twitter and facebook for the book. The great thing about this is that this is the peoples property. All of us own these photographs. So they should be shared widely. I see eriks stuff on twitter, and i hope he sees ours. Social media is a great way to get people to stumble across something that they had no idea that they would find interesting, and then spark a passion for it. So, i really do think that it is the potential for these photographs to be seen more widely now than they were seen 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Yeah, absolutely, and im fixing them up and publishing them every day on various channels, and they appear on the cmh website. I often will publish them first on my own channel because i have subject Matter Experts around the world who help me with the captions. They say no, no, that wasnt that. That was something else. They live in france. They will go outside and take a photo. And its that thing. So especially in our busy age, youth or a 500 page book at someone, its probably not going to happen. But if you have 30 seconds to look at a picture, you find that picture interesting, you want to go deeper, you go to the cmh website to find out more, you buy the book, which is available in the lobby afterwards. There will be a signing. So, please do stop. And at libraries, bookstores, amazon, and im sure other places. But you will do your part to help spread the good word about this, again, its a Real National treasure. The cool thing about putting them online is that weve experienced already, twitter accounts that started a month ago is that people will comment and say, my grandfather did this. He told me about it and its just part of every familys story. And they talk to each other, which is great. So that you get this whole conversation thats like, nontoxic. [laughter] so, doing a little bit for good in this world. But yes, again, we will have a signing, so please do stop by. Well, on behalf of the u. S. Army center of military history, i want to thank our cosponsors, the National Archives, for the opportunity for the event here tonight. I want to thank our speakers as well, and all of you for attending. Lets have a round of applause for our panelists. [applause] for more information on the army role in world war ii, and information on the Army Signal Corps photographers, visit our website at history. Army. Mil. And as its been mentioned, join us in the lobby to purchase the book and get some signatures from the authors. Thank you all for coming and have a great night. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer during this holiday week, American History tv is on cspan3 every day. Tuesday, history through cartoons with the work of all its her prizewinning cartoonist pat solomon. Wednesday, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist pat solomon. On thursday, environmental history with a look at the 1959 and friday,er fire, the first africans in virginia for hundreds anniversary. Watch American History tv this week and every week on cspan3. Our cspan campaign 2020 bus team is traveling across the country asking, what issues should candidates address . Willwant to candidate who advocate for everybody regardless of who they are, where they come from, what their race or religion is, what their Sexual Orientation may be. I feel like that hasnt happened the past few years and i feel we need to get back to a president who will advocate for everybody. My First Priority is social justice. And what do you do to prove what do you plan to do to resolve the issues . How itssue is wealth and affects american politics. The most important issue to me is Police Brutality and student loan debt. 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Just as you, and you, and you, and millions of other people who have been caught in similar circumstances should have thought of it before. None of us are perfect. Remember, chaplain who is no longer among us. Its too bad. He should hear this story. Anybody in this knownce who has ever anybody who comes close to the perfection of our lord and savior jesus christ . , a guy in the back of the audience that are you saying you know such a person . Stand up. Who was it . He said my wifes first husband. [laughter] lady ladies and gentlemen of the senate, what if he had not showed up . What if he had refused to answer a court order . What if he said im not going to listen to the Judicial Branch . Do you know the remedy we have to resolve problems like this one president ial conduct gets out of bounds . You know where that remedy lies . It lies with us, the United States congress. You can watch more of the senate trial of president clinton sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv. Every july for the past when he five years, the Gettysburg Anniversary Committee has hosted a civil war battle reenactment at a history village depicting camp life. Next,