COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHY: PACIFIC WWII By Phil Trupp I was a kid when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, and I remember vividly my father being drafted to fight in the Pacific as a control gunner in the U.S. Army Air Force. The Pacific seemed remote; unreal. But combat photographers armed only with cameras brought the reality home. As they stormed ashore alongside our Marines to face vicious Japanese defenses, they gave us a look at a new and fearful war. And with it came new words: kamikaze and Bushido--the concept of death before dishonor. Images of jungle warfare led to dark thoughts of my father surrounded by unimaginable menace in places I had never heard of. Five years later, I saw a startling photograph on the front page of The Baltimore Sun: an aerial shot of the Hiroshima A-bomb blast. What to make of this eerie black and white mushroom cloud? I asked my immigrant grandmother to explain it. With tears in her eyes, she whispered, It means your father is coming home. I still recall her voice and the joy that swept over me. Some of the images below are disturbing. Pictured (L-R): USS Arizona burns at Pearl Harbor; Civilians killed in car eight miles from Pearl; Kamikaze pilots, 1944; Marines enter the fight on Tarawa, 6,000 killed; Marines discover a Japanese family hiding in a cave, Saipan, 1944; Death of famous war photographer Ernie Pyle; Combat photographer PFC Norris McElroy, Peleliu Island; U.S. troops surrender at Corregidor; POWs endured starvation, torture, enslavement, and execution; Australian soldier moments before beheading; Flame thrower attack, Tarawa, 1943; Charging the beach, photo by Joe Rosenthal; Destruction of a cave on Iwo Jima, photo by Joe Rosenthal; Landing at Guadalcanal, 1942, photo by Joe Rosenthal; (15) Nurse gives plasma in aerial medical unit; Torpedoed Japanese destroyer photographed through submarine periscope, 1942; B-29 bomber aflame on Iwo Jima air strip; Japanese POWs, Guadalcanal, 1942; Bodies of Japanese soldiers strewn on a hillside in Guam following a banzai attack; Infantrymen advance on Vella Lavella, west of New Georgia; General MacArthur returns to the Philippines, 1944; Flag raising on Mt. Surabachi, Iwo Jima, 1944, photo by Joe Rosenthal; President Truman at Potsdam Conference with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, 1945. Truman announces U.S. A-bomb, calling it the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. Truman was unaware Stalin had knowledge of the Trinity bomb test well in advance of the president; Nagasaki A-bomb.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Feb 2014 19:20:51 +0000
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