Incredible Images from World War II

        I was in junior high school in New York City in 1949 when I got my first camera, a Kodak box camera. A few months later, I bought a Kodak Retina. That camera marked the beginning of my love affair with rangefinder cameras.  In the years that followed I owned and used five different Leicas, two or three Voigtlanders, a few Canons, a Mamiya C330, a Crown Graphic, a Rollei 35, a Polaroid, and many others, the names of which I can't remember.
       I used those cameras over a period of more than sixty-five years in many different locations and conditions. But none of my experiences came close to those experienced by a young Australian soldier who became a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II.
        In 1940 when he was still underage, George Aspinall joined the Australian Army and was posted to Singapore in 1941. As a going away present his uncle gave him a Kodak 2 folding Brownie. The camera had a 6.2 lens and captured eight 3 1/2 X 2 1/2 exposures on 620 film.

George Aspinall , circa 1980s

        On February 15, 1942 when he was just nineteen, Japanese forces accepted the surrender of British and Australian forces in Malaya, and Aspinall became a prisoner of war at the age of nineteen.  
        Determined to record the abysmal conditions in which he and his fellow prisoners were forced to live, and even though he would have been executed if the Japanese had caught him, the young soldier managed to hide his camera from his captors and capture and process what has been called "the most comprehensive photographic record obtained by an Australian prisoner of war of the Japanese." At the end of the war, many of these images were used as evidence at the War Crimes trials that followed.
        Aspinall's story is truly amazing, especially when you consider that he captured his images using Xray film he cut to size for his camera and then even managed to process the negatives in what can only be called impossible conditions. And that's putting it mildly. Remember that he was using a Kodak 2. How much more basic can you get? A pinhole camera, maybe.
        I hadn't known about Aspinall until I stumbled onto a book titled Changi Photographer: George Aspinall's Record of Captivity by Tim Bowden. Published in Australia, the book isn't readily available here in the States, but you can find it on the Internet if you're interested in seeing a series of extraordinary photographs that were taken under extraordinarily difficult conditions.

        Closer to home, Michaelantonio (Tony) Vaccaro was drafted into the U.S. Army early during World War Two when he was just twenty-one. Assigned to the 83rd Division, he served as a combat

Tony Vaccaro, circa 1940s

infantryman in Europe for nine months. But that's not all. At the same time he was in action as an infantryman, Vaccaro captured approximately 8,000 images of the war. And to make the young soldier's story even more interesting and incredible, the camera he used was an Argus C3.
      If you've served as an infantryman in a combat zone, you can appreciate the significance of Vaccaro's achievement, especially when you realize that very often he had to develop his negatives in an infantryman's steel helmet!
       Affectionately called "The Brick," the Argus C3 has also been called "The Model T of Cameras." Although it had just five shutter speeds and a 3.5/50 lens, it was sturdy and dependable. You can still find working units for sale for just a few dollars.
        After the war Tony Vaccaro enjoyed a long career as a commercial photographer and teacher. Interestingly, he kept his war photos out of the public eye until the 1990s when they were first shown in Europe. Later, he was the recipient of many awards. You can discover more information about this extraordinary infantryman/photographer on the Internet.
     
        After I read about Tony Vaccaro and his incredible achievements, I regretted having sold the Argus C3 Matchmatic I once had in my collection. It would have been interesting to have seen what kind of results I could have achieved with it.

COMING SOON: The Yashica YK