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 ArchivesRecord 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 up