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Memories
of World War II The Harry S. Truman Library is proud to present Memories of World War II, Photographs from the Archives of The Associated Press. The exhibition will run from November 11, 2008 through January 11, 2009. As veterans of World War II converged on Washington for the dedication of a memorial to global victory six decades ago, their achievements and sacrifice were further recalled in an exhibit of photographs from the archives of The Associated Press. Memories of World War II opened May 24, 2004 to the public at Washington's Union Station, a week before the National World War II Memorial was ceremonially christened on the Mall. The AP exhibit is a spectrum of 126 photos from all theaters of the war and the home front, ranging from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's classic Iwo Jima flag raising in 1945 to scores of pictures not seen in decades. Five photographers lost their lives. Seven others won Pulitzer Prizes, including Rosenthal, who clambered up Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi to take the flag-raising photo that became the emblem of American victory and one of the most famous photos of all time. "As far as we know, all of the pictures were transmitted at some time on AP wires, but some probably have not been touched since the war," said Charles Zoeller, curator of the exhibit and an accompanying book, and chief of AP's vast photo library. Founded in 1848, the AP is the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization, serving some 15,000 media outlets in more than 120 countries. In the exhibit, familiar scenes of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, along with British and American troops hitting Normandy beaches on D-Day and marching through newly liberated Paris, are juxtaposed with hidden surprises sure to evoke strong memories among older Americans. There are photographs of Hitler and Mussolini at the peak of fascist power, Winston Churchill in unmistakable silhouette, actor James Stewart being inducted into the military, Nazi SS troops herding defiant Jews after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, and Russian women laying flowers at the feet of four dead GIs who helped liberate them from a slave labor camp. Despite censorship that delayed the release of pictures and restricted caption information, the wartime cameras recorded dramatic close-ups of power and pathos, the leaders and the lost. President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Churchill sit for a group portrait at Tehran. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth clamber through London bomb rubble. Gen. Douglas McArthur wades ashore in the Philippines. In Cherbourg, France, Army Capt. Earl Topley gazes at a German soldier sitting dead in a doorway. Dead Japanese soldiers lie half-buried in sand on a Guadalcanal beach; dead U.S. Marines sprawl in the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima. Many photos credit AP staff photographers by name; others came from anonymous Army or Navy photographers. Some were killed in combat; others went on to postwar prominence in their craft. The showing
here at the Truman Library is part of a eighteen city national tour over
a four and a half year period. The exhibit contains one hundred and twenty-six
black and white photographic reproductions from the archives of The Associated
Press.
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