Occupied Japan Photograph Album: Sendai, Japan. Sendai, Japan: No Publisher, 1945.
Oblong photograph album 10 ” x 7”. Purple textured paper over boards; grommet and cord binding with brown craft paper leaves. Photos held in place with mounting corners. A total of 193 black and white photographs:
159 smaller photographs (2 ” x 3”) 34 larger 4” x 6” prints (many of which are enlargements of smaller photos included in the album). Many photographs have notations written on the back in both ink and pencil; including place names and names of people. Photographs depict activities of the U.S. military instillations at Sendai, Japan during the U.S. occupation of Japan 1945-1947; primarily U.S. Army Camp Fowler and Camp Schimmelpfennig. Photographs include camp life and military activities as well as many scenes of the local people and Japanese life immediately post WW2. Also included, at the end of the album, four pages of Japanese currency and Military payment certificates. Military payment certificates, or MPC, were a form of currency used to pay U.S. military personnel in foreign countries. They were in use for a limited time after the end of World War II; (the MPC in this album expire in March 1947 which helped to date the album). Also laid in front of album: three unrelated newspaper clippings from The New York Times and the New York Tribune dated 1952 and one clipping from 1961 announcing the birth of Sammy Davis Junior’s daughter. Background and Context: On July 10th, 1945, 123 B29 bombers, under the command of General Curtis Emerson LeMay, indiscriminately carpet-bombed the region of Sendai with incendiary apparatus. Much of the downtown area and nearly three thousand members of the civilian population of Sendai City burned or suffocated in the attack. In August 15th, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan. In September 1945, Camp Schimmelpfennig was set up in Nigatake, Sendai; the largest base of the Allied Command General Headquarters (GHQ) north of Tokyo. The recovery plan, after the ferocious bombing by LeMay, was to rebuild the city. The staff of GHQ stationed in Camp Schimmelpfennig were a mixture of engineers and architects who played pivotal roles in the city planning and revitalization of Sendai City.
Price: $500.00