In 1944, John Roberts was commissioned a Second Lieutenant at the Signal Corps Officer Candidate School. Shortly thereafter, Roberts received certification from the Signal Corps Photo School as a still photographer and, after a few months of training, was shipped overseas as part of a combat photo unit.
Roberts’ unit was eventually sent to cover the invasion of Japan. However, shortly after the photo company passed through the Panama Canal, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski.
Instead of recording the bloody battles of the invasion as they expected to do, Roberts and his crew instead “became photo recorders of the life and operations of the U.S. Occupation Army in Japan,” says Roberts.
Throughout the next year, Roberts spent time in Tokyo, Kyoto and Yokohama, often without official duties, which left him free to document the chaos left in the wake of the rapidly departing American forces.
“My duties before going home were light with freedom to wander with my own jeep and cameras as the army fled home,” says Roberts. “They were parked side by side and bumper to bumper on the many vacant Japanese air fields… “
Through the end of this month in Amherst, some of Roberts’ photographs (and a few by other U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers), featuring images ranging from portraits of rice farmers and classic Japanese landscapes to fire bomb damage and Hiroshima at Ground Zero, are on display in A Soldier Remembers Japan, 1945-1946.
These photographs were printed after digital conversion from four by five-inch negatives and small prints by Pivot Media of Florence.
Through March 31, Jones Library, 43 Amity St., Amherst, (413) 259-3090, www.joneslibrary.org.