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Hawaii, ca. 1935–40. 151 silver print photos, 2.25” x 2” to 4.5” x 9.75”, several hand-colored. Many with typed captions. CONDITION: Very good.

An appealing 1930s Hawaii album compiled by an aerial photographer in training and based at Wheeler Airfield on Oahu in the halcyon days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This album opens with photographs of the Wheeler Field Photo Laboratory, several planes (including the B-18 Douglas Bomber and the P-26 Pursuit Ship), important buildings (the Schofield Chapel and the Beer Garden), and members of “Our Photo Class K-3B,” posing, working with, and repairing their cameras. K-3 cameras were developed in the 1920s for both vertical and oblique photography, and were “the standard Army and Navy cameras of their day.” The album also includes shots of U.S. naval ships (including the “Good Old [USS] Republic,” which made regular runs to New York from 1932 until 1941), buildings (including several hospitals), planes, and a tank.

Other photos show scenes of everyday life in Hawaii for a serviceman in the 1930s: the compiler and “friend Steve” during leisure time and in various locales (“standing on the Sister Stones, Wahiawa,” “in line at the Waikiki Theatre,” and even napping); landscape and urban views (of “Rainbow Falls, Kauai,” “Honolulu Harbor,” “Honolulu Street,” “Diamond Head,” and elsewhere); and other subjects of interest (the ship “President Pierce, Honolulu Harbor,” “Papaya, my favorite fruit,” and a military band playing at the harbor). Several snapshots show social gatherings, sometimes with white women, although a particular highlight was evidently an evening spent on the beach with a topless, brown-skinned, ukulele-playing beauty, who is featured in several images. The last shots in the volume show the compiler in uniform, on the wharf, and aboard the S.S. Chirikof.

REFERENCES: “The Sky Spies,” at the National Air and Space Museum online.

Item #8078

On Hold

Price: $850.00