Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Carlson family materials
- Description
- A collection of 447 photographs in two albums and other material related to the U.S. Navy in the Philippines and New Guinea during World War II. The photographs were made by commercial photographer and sailor H. Leroy Carlson, who created the albums as an inventory of his images for sale as souvenirs and postcards. A printed catalog with descriptive captions accompanies the albums. The first volume contains photographs taken in Finchhaven, British New Guinea (April 1944), and Hollandia and vicinity, Dutch New Guinea, from 1944 to 1945, including Japanese prisoners of war. The second volume of photographs were taken in the Philippines (1945), with scenes in Mindoro, Manila, Luzon, Tacloban, San Antonio, and a U.S. Navy receiving station. Images depict New Guinea and Filipino people in portraits and daily activities, along with street scenes, shops, rural villages, houses, tropical gardens, wedding celebrations, fishing, and other activities. Images in the Philippines include bombed-out buildings, schools, churches, a Chinese cemetery, indigenous Mangyan people, and Javanese (Indonesian people). U.S. military personnel are seen working, in barracks, on navy ships, and participating in recreational activities. Three of Carlson's 16mm motion picture films are also part of the collection: one of the naval Seabees Camp in New Guinea during World War II; and two home movies of Carlson family trips to New York, Nicaragua, Yellowstone, and Canada. Other personal materials are: a volume of clippings (1947-1949) of Carlson's photographs published in Lake Tahoe, California newspapers; the Cine-Kodak Magazine 16mm movie camera used to shoot the films; and several snapshots, negatives, color slides, and miscellaneous ephemera related to Carlson and his family. A hand-held Airequipt automatic 35mm slide changer (1950s?) for viewing color slides is also part of the collection.
