Original Items: One-Of-A-Kind. This was an incredible discovery for us here at IMA when we cracked open this album. As we flipped through the pages we saw a glimpse into Pre War Japan as well as Wartime Japan. The pictures show images of civilian life, military training, soldiers firing rifles, running through obstacle courses and so on. As we went deeper into the album the pictures also got deeper, showing Japanese casualties, poverty in the Philippines, Americans posing with pictures of skulls at the Manila Dungeon and many more.

This album appears to have been captured by an American during the war and had added personal photos as well as descriptions and annotations in English.

The best feature of album was in the stack of loose photographs from the album that was enclosed on the back page. There were postcards in the patriotic “Victory” manner with Japanese Kanji writing on the sides, giving the description of each card. As we got towards the bottom of the stack there were pictures of ships, very familiar looking ships, American ships.

All pictures of the American ships have identifier descriptions on them in Kanji and we did the best we could with translating the USS Arizona one.

The Ships From Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor Featured In This Album:

• USS Arizona: US Battleship “Arizona” 32,600 -Naval Battle of Hawaii Departing San Francisco
• USS California

Other Target Ships

• USS Lexington
• USS Enterprise

Other pictures include harrowing images of the aftermath of the invasion of Leyte, Japanese troops maneuvering and various aircraft images. One of the most interesting image is of a rocket being fired and you can even make the shape of the rocket out as it was fired from the launcher! The rocket appears to be a 30 cm Wurfkörper 42 Spreng being fired from a 30 cm Raketenwerfer 56.

The 30 cm Raketenwerfer 56 was a German multiple rocket launcher used in the Second World War. It served with units of the Nebeltruppen, the German equivalent of the U.S. Army's Chemical Corps. Just as the Chemical Corps had responsibility for poison gas and smoke weapons that were used instead to deliver high-explosives during the war so did the Nebeltruppen. The name "Nebelwerfer" is best translated as "Smoke Mortar". 694 saw service from 1944–45 in all theaters except Norway.

It would appear that this album was liberated by members of the US Army Air Corps. A few of the photos feature an American soldier with an Army Air Corps patch visible on his left sleeve.

This is a beautiful album that comes ready for translation and display!