Wow! Am I impressed! Yes, Peter is right, I looked at the two images
side by side and he's right, they are the same place; I thought the one
building in the older image might be diagnostic and sure enough, it's in
the newer images, just surrounded by skyscrapers; but the shot was taken
from just about the same place. So Hong Kong it is.
How this came about is fit for a post here, especially since it's
Friday; the collection is from a man who was a non-commissioned officer
on the USS West Virginia before WW II (and the father of a friend of
mine). He was on the WV at Pearl Harbor, survived, was assigned to a
destroyer, the USS Mugford, went through the big naval battles around
Guadalcanal, survived that (even though the Mugford was bombed and
heavily damaged), and stayed in the Navy until after the Korean war. I
remember talking to him many times and he would gladly tell tales of
"joss houses" in Shanghai, but if you asked him about the war, all he
would ever say was "I lost a lot of friends." He died about ten years
ago and his son gave us the collection.
So in the collection were some stills obviously taken during the filming
of a movie, showing cameramen and so on. I remembered from a visit to
Pearl Harbor a couple of years ago about a movie filmed on a battleship
before the war, but I couldn't remember the ship nor the movie. I asked
on the AMIA list (Assoc. of Moving Image Archivists) and got the title:
"Here Comes The Navy," 1934, starring James Cagney, which was filmed on
the USS Arizona. So Reo, who was a signalman, must have gotten copies
from a friend on the AZ. That post prompted a reply from a retired Navy
officer who looked at the collection online and sent us a long list of
identifications. I should digress at this point and say, mea maxima
culpa, the data entry and the captions were done by one of my staff
members, who was in her early 20s, with the help of a list from the
family (speaking of the recent thread) and she listed all the ship
photos as "battleships," when they were heavy cruisers, destroyers,
attack transport ships, even an LCVP; and I never had the time to go
back and change them (and in my defense I only recently learned how to
make changes in the database). Interestingly, too, our source pointed
out that some of the photos, which Reo must have taken from the Mugford,
might have been the last photos ever taken of some of those ships, many
of which were lost in those sea battles and air raids. Another thing
the retired Navy officer wrote was regarding those photos that I sent to
the list, which the family thought might be Pearl Harbor; he said,
emphatically, that it was not and suggested Noomea, or I should have
thought, Noumea. But I couldn't see anything online that looked like
the photo. Somehow I was sure the tall building would be the key and
thanks to Peter, sure enough, it was.
The value of the archives list(s)! How did we ever do our jobs without
it? Plus, as I always think, to quote the Cat In The Hat, "I bet with
my Net I can get those Things yet!"
Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
office: (801) 585-3073
FAX: (801) 585-3976
[log in to unmask]
http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo
A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
*or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html
Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>