Grandfather's WWII photos. Is this common?

[GScholz]

The first one is just normal military "bravado" - "Kill 'em all". You have to demonize the enemy and glorify violence in such a war. Even today that is still the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5uQcU92x2o "Til Valhall!!!"

The second photo is of what looks like a victim of a flamethrower attack. This is what war looks like. Nothing special.

The third photo is more dehumanizing. Not for the beheaded Japanese man, but for the GI who thought it was a nice photo op. But again nothing special. War makes people do stupid stuff that aren't normal, because they're not in a normal world at the time.

[DaveBB]

That appears to be a native in some kind of military uniform, not a "GI".  Notice he has no boots on, he is black, and his hair is long. 

[GScholz]

Looks like a uniform to me. Sergeant stripes on the arms... Could be British Commonwealth?, but those sergeant stripes look American...

[Scherf]

More likely a Melanesian fellow - New Guinea or thereabouts. Don't know if/to what extent the locals helped out US Forces (Solomons?), however they were certainly a massive help to the Australians

And for the record, in b'fo' the (entirely appropriate) lock.

[guncrasher]

And here we see the hypocrisy of the governing authority of this board and the game itself.

Its a-ok for us all to pay for and play a WAR GAME but when it comes to the realities of the actual war that is the inspiration and basis for the WAR GAME, .... well, ...that's just off frickin' limits because in the name of family orientation we're just gonna white wash over human history.

Shoot, most kids today play console games far more violent than anything posted here or is shown in the AH arenas.

Grow a pair HiTech and let this post stand.  

we dont play a war game.  we play a game that simulates combat using ww2 equipment. and no game is far more violent than actual war.






semp

[Jack16]

The first one is just normal military "bravado" - "Kill 'em all". You have to demonize the enemy and glorify violence in such a war. Even today that is still the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5uQcU92x2o "Til Valhall!!!"
The second photo is of what looks like a victim of a flamethrower attack. This is what war looks like. Nothing special.
The third photo is more dehumanizing. Not for the beheaded Japanese man, but for the GI who thought it was a nice photo op. But again nothing special. War makes people do stupid stuff that aren't normal, because they're not in a normal world at the time.

I know what these are photos of, I was just curious if it is common to have an actual photo of these "press pictures".

That appears to be a native in some kind of military uniform, not a "GI".  Notice he has no boots on, he is black, and his hair is long.  

Looks like a uniform to me. Sergeant stripes on the arms... Could be British Commonwealth?, but those sergeant stripes look American...

I'm not sure. The photo I have is a little over exposed and you can't see the stripes on his arm. My grandfather has him labeled as a "Guadalcanal Native."

And here we see the hypocrisy of the governing authority of this board and the game itself.
Its a-ok for us all to pay for and play a WAR GAME but when it comes to the realities of the actual war that is the inspiration and basis for the WAR GAME, .... well, ...that's just off frickin' limits because in the name of family orientation we're just gonna white wash over human history.
Shoot, most kids today play console games far more violent than anything posted here or is shown in the AH arenas.
Grow a pair HiTech and let this post stand.  

we dont play a war game.  we play a game that simulates combat using ww2 equipment. and no game is far more violent than actual war. semp

That was my thought exactly... I always see people posting links to photos of airplanes that could include them burning getting shot out of the sky, yet nobody complains about them...
This game(and others) simulates war, not just equipment. Most kids these days are growing up playing games that focus on shooting, whether it be playing Aces High and shooting down planes or playing Call of Duty/Battlefield and shooting people.
Nobody said games are actually more violent then war, but I'm betting most of the children that play these games don't realize that and the parents that let their 10yr old play a rated M game are to blame. It's rated T or M for a reason.

I've heard stories of kids joining the military because they thought it would be just like Call of Duty. I can see it now... "Those terrorist are NOOOBZ, I'm going to knife them in the back and then akimo shotgun their AZZZ ." They think they'll just respawn when they are killed. It's just all fun and games. Maybe they SHOULD get a history lesson and a reality check.
Most of the things these "children" learn of war are though these video games.

They aren't all children as well. True story... I was at an gun show with a friend. We were at one table and the full grown gentleman right next to us picked up an AK-47 and said to the guy he was with, "Yo, this is one of them Call of Duty guns." ...... Really? One of them COD guns?

"Family Friendly"? If parents don't want there children to learn of "real war", don't let them play games that "simulate" it. Eventually they will learn something, whether it be a picture you can EASILY find on the INTERNET/in a BOOK or if they find themselves in the middle of one. They should be taught that war isn't a game.

And I'm really sorry if these photos offend someone. It really was NOT my intention. I assumed most here are WWII history buffs.
Would Skuzzy or another moderator please edit my post so only the links are shown and with a warning that these images might be offensive to some?

Now that my rant is out of the way, could someone please just answer my question instead of acting like a bunch of "children".

[Slate]

  Did your Grandfather work as a photographer after the war? What was his occupation? He may have served as one that you don't know about. Perhaps a search of his service record.
   Would GIs trade photos for cigarettes , ect?

[cpxxx]

I don't know exactly how it worked in the US but individuals or shops selling prints of photos was very common in the past. These days we have the internet but back people made a few bucks out of it by selling them in person.  Clearly  prints were made of many wartime photos and then sold to GIs and others and as is human nature gruesome ones sold well too.

As for their suitablility well that depends on how squeamish you are. In the past people were not so worried about that kind of thing. I remember as a kid seeing colour pictures of dead Vietnamese soldiers during the 1972 offensive. This was in the Sunday Times magazine! It made me sick to my stomach literally and while only a picture it made a deep impression on me and brought home the reality of war.

Is that good or bad?




 

[GScholz]

Knowing what war really is can only be a good thing.

[Ack-Ack]

Looks like a uniform to me. Sergeant stripes on the arms... Could be British Commonwealth?, but those sergeant stripes look American...

Probably one of the natives in the Solomon Islands that fought for the Commonwealth forces.  Most of the natives in the SWPA were head hunters and cannibals and treated the Japanese just as harshly as they were treated by the Japanese.

ack-ack

[Blinder]

See Rule #14

[Ack-Ack]

See Rule #14

[rpm]

I don't know exactly how it worked in the US but individuals or shops selling prints of photos was very common in the past. These days we have the internet but back people made a few bucks out of it by selling them in person.  Clearly  prints were made of many wartime photos and then sold to GIs and others and as is human nature gruesome ones sold well too.

As for their suitablility well that depends on how squeamish you are. In the past people were not so worried about that kind of thing. I remember as a kid seeing colour pictures of dead Vietnamese soldiers during the 1972 offensive. This was in the Sunday Times magazine! It made me sick to my stomach literally and while only a picture it made a deep impression on me and brought home the reality of war.

Is that good or bad?

Excellent post. 

[DaveBB]

So a game that simulates combat using military equipment . And don't ever lecture me about the violence of war. I was in the Marines from 89 to 97 and I saw action in Panama, the Middle East, East and West Africa and Haiti. I would have put in my 20 if I wasn't tired of being shot at by age 25.

By the enemy or your own troops?

[Groth]

 My father was an Army Photographer in Signal Corp, in europe. And copies of all those shots were in his possession, they were 'prints'. Except for newsprint copies, they would have been printed from negatives in an 'automatic' way with darkroom lackey's watching over. There was very likely copy negatives made of these images, which negatives were sent to different theaters to be mass printed. The B&W paper came on rolls in different widths. The quality of some of those prints suggest to me they were made from copy negs. I worked with all these different types in my formative years, even retouching B&W negs using different hardness pencils on machine that moved negs in circles that you could very from tiny-tiny to groosly big... I did color tinting of B&W photos as well but that doesn't apply here.
 I would postulate these images were distributed by 'higher powers' so the average 'fighting man' could see what was 'happening' in other theaters, as harsh as theses pic's may be, or were made by regular GIs in their own units darkrooms surreptitiously, but perhaps with tacit approval from some immediate higher ups. It was understood that there would be no dead allies in published photos, until Life showed some in D-Day coverage.
 Similar shots in my fathers possession had a typed 'blurb' at bottom of pic describing scene, which had obviously been pasted on original than both 'copied' and printed, some had dates, Signal Corp symbols and some even included large neg# indicating you could find original in some file somewhere, some marked 'Top Secret'.  Several I remember w/descriptive blurb were of US troops shot by germans in Battle of the Bulge while they were POWs..an incident you all may know of, and the images were rather graphic.
   JGroth