 A collection of more than 190 works of the United States Navy's World War II combat artist has been specially selected to cure the United States as part of the Navy's and the nation's bicentennial celebrations. Secretary of the Navy J. William Middendorf personally chose each work in the collection from the vast archives of the Navy's Combat Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. We have about 4,000 paintings in a very extensive Navy Combat Art Center at the Navy Yard here in Washington, and we've selected these primarily for artistic merit or for intrinsic interest to best portray World War II, not necessarily in attractive terms, but in terms that I think had most meaning to those that served in it. The show Combat Artists of World War II opened in Washington, D.C. on the Navy's 199th birthday. The film you're about to see was based in part on artworks from this exhibition. On December 7, 1941, we took off from Shikus aircraft carriers 200 miles north of Balharva. I was a chief commander of all air squadrons, and first I took off. And behind me, 300 Shikus T planes were following. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash, Washington. The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Thank you for further development. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unfounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. A Second World War, when we finally gained that inevitable triumph, over 50 million human beings had lost their lives, and the power of the atomic bomb was unleashed. In the midst of it all, the fighting, the endless hours of waiting, the boredom, the loneliness, the horror, and the triumph. A small group of skilled artists practiced their trade. Men armed with sketch pads and paints, struggling to capture the experience of war for posterity. It started back with the late Lieutenant Commander Griffith Bailey Cole convincing his then Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox that he knew of this call of young men who were going to pursue fine arts as their vocations after these hostilities had come to a successful end of some sort. And he convinced him that these men would be the men to document this war as a historical graphic record in the medium of fine arts. And he knew that these were the top upcoming artists at that time back in 1941. So Mr. Cole launched the program and these men were given orders to sail with the fleet and portray the wars they saw it. And they stood deck watches and hit the beaches along with the other servicemen, the army and the Marine Corps. They got no special recognition, no special compensation. They were paid what salaries a Lieutenant J.G. was getting or what a commander was getting. And the orders were to sail with the fleet and portray the wars they saw it. These artists were sensitive far beyond their youthful age and the parents. They captured the essence of war in blood, ink and oil. I think there's a special or specific message that every artist has or can say. For instance, I don't feel that I was a combat artist. In quotes, I wasn't prepared to be a combat artist. There wasn't any schooling preparation or whatever. I found myself in combat and I requested actually to get involved. So in that sense, I was a combat artist. But in another sense, I for instance, reacted to situations visually in a different way than Cole Griffith Bailey Cole reacted and perhaps some of the other artists. Each artist does I think have an individual way of expressing himself visually. I think it was some of my best work, as a matter of fact, because of the drama, the involvement. It's difficult to find the same involvement in other activities. I think it depends on some inner kind of process. Certainly during the war, there was a great portion of the human drama, the human involvement, the reaction to what was happening to people. The struggle for the Pacific was to be as bloody and hard-bought as anything that befell soldiers in the whole history of human combat. On December 10, three days after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured Guam. On the 23rd Wake Island, on Christmas Day, Hong Kong, they spread their power to the Philippines for the Dutch East Indies to correct it. A revitalized American fleet met them at Coral Sea and at Midway. In August of 1942, American forces started to regain some Pacific territory with landings in the Solomon Islands. For the fall of 1943, American forces were prepared to begin their offensive across the Pacific. Two directions of advance were developed, one along the northern coast of New Guinea toward the Philippines, the other directly across the Central Pacific from Hawaii. The campaign in the Central Pacific would be primarily naval. It would require long overseas amphibious movements and heavy troop assaults on a few strongly held positions. In November of 1943 at Tarawa, the 2nd Marine Division encountered the coral beaches and suicide resistance that would characterize the whole theater of the Central Pacific. 3,000 men killed in three days of bitter fighting. We learned a costly lesson in amphibious landing techniques. American forces advance. On the upper prong of the assault, Kwajalein fell in early February of 1944. Anuitaq, the largest of the western Marshall Islands, also fell in February, three months ahead of schedule. To the south in the Solomon's Bougainville, each time the agony of waiting the preparations, then finally the assault. In June it was Saipan, in July, Guang. I mean, I know when I was in these landings, I was horrified that you could ever be in such a selfish and such an awful situation and seeing people dying all around was horrible. I know that the most dead I saw was at Guam and that was, well, there were so many Marines killed that the first week we had to, everybody had to stop doing what they were supposed to do. The doctors, I mean, unless they were really, but I remember I just couldn't paint. Everybody had to load up the dead in these command cars and bury them. And the horror of it all and the stink of the wall was just terrible. And I wanted people to know, I wanted people to know how bad it is so that they wouldn't go ahead and do it again, which is a hard lesson evidently for people to learn. And when it was all over, when the smoke had subsided, the dead buried. There was a little time for relaxation, for settling in on these strange islands in the Pacific. Well, the only time I was able to paint in that section of my war was at Saipan. Somebody at Pearl Harbor found my stuff and sent it to me. Before that, I had existed as a beachcomber. It was a very elegant existence. When your shirt got dirty, you went to a choice of three places to get a new one. There was no washing being done then. You went to the Marine quartermaster or the Army quartermaster or you bummed a shirt off somebody on a boat. So that's the way you got socks, underwear, shoes. I was particularly impressed with the children over there because the children almost turned up on the invasion beaches just as though they'd been left there purposely. And a lot of them were wounded, arms shot off. A great deal of them were pitiful cases. One of the first things that had to be done after an invasion was a hospital set up just for the kids. And the children were quite beautiful. In fact, the Shamaros, as a race, are very handsome people. They're mixture of races like the Hawaiians, the Japanese and the Germans have all ruled in those islands before. But the kids that survived were just as cute as they could be. And when I found one in a bucket underneath a breadfruit tree, I had to make a painting of it. Well, there's two ways of shipping things when you're in the Navy and you're in the war and you're in the Pacific. One is by air and one is by ship. And I felt safer in the air than I did on the water or on land because usually on land or on the water there was somebody shooting at you. So when I sent my paintings back to Pearl Harbor, I decided that they would fly. Breaks between invasions in the Pacific provided time for evacuation of the wounded to make ship hospitals, hospital ships, and sometimes back to the States. The improvisation and medical care that took place on the beaches left a lasting impression on all of the artists, including Joseph Hirsch. For the resourcefulness of the victims who were the patients and the people who were caring for them, the medical corps, it was constantly something that impressed me. And if there was any one motive or theme, it would be how resourceful they were and how I saw as an instrument sterilizer in a field hospital, which had been constructed out of steel, barrel and something. They didn't have to have any sterilizer at the time and they ended up with one that worked beautifully for sterilizing sheets and bed linen and blood stain, things that need sterilization. My father was a doctor and I've been in hospitals fairly often. It's quite a job to kick yourself into hospital after hospital on these trips and to see these kids. The hospital ship was especially a moving experience because there were some ugly experiences. When a boy had his face, part of his face blown off, the Navy, it would make some attempt to rehabilitate him and to rebuild his face before he got back home. And some of the attempts were not too successful and they had to have plastic surgery, many of them, after they returned to the States. At home the whole nation was mobilized to support the war efforts. Men and women from all walks of life donned work clothes and labored in the war factories, the hangars, the shipyards. For in a war like this, victories are born on the production line. They built tanks, bombs, guns, shells and torpedoes. They built ships and cannons and planes. Ships, ships of all types, carriers and cruisers, submarines and destroyers, landing ships, transport ships, battle ships. They built whole convoys to cross the seas with men and equipment to fight the war over there. The submarine, deadly prowler of the seas, came into its own in World War II. German submarine wolf packs were directed from shore headquarters to sink 750,000 tons of Allied shipping monthly. Continuous attacks were ordered in areas where sinkings were easiest to accomplish. Success over the German submarine was one of the most important factors in the Allied victory. The survival of Great Britain depended on it. To the artist, submarine activities and life beneath the sea provided a wealth of visual material. In a letter to a friend, the late Griffith Bailey Cole describes his charcoal and chalk drawing lookouts. Rolling along the blue surface of the Indian Ocean, the empty sky and the sea is searched by these lookouts. For everyone, friend or foe, a loft or a float is our potential enemy. The men at the top of the periscope spots a distant submarine on the surface. We had no record of one of our boats in the vicinity. In 10 seconds, every man is below. The hatchbang shut the deck tips forward and we've disappeared below the vast surface of the ocean. Later, we rise to periscope heights. The captain makes a sweep. Blow the tanks, equalize the pressure, crack the hatch. Lookouts up. In 10 seconds, the lookouts are frozen to their glasses, searching, searching. I've been in many types of our ships, but not even in the destroyers have I seen lookouts search like this. Thomas Hart Benton was attracted to other aspects of life on board the silent service. The food, the seemingly endless hours of boredom and the ultimate reason for being there, the attack. That were another source of visual interest for the combat artists. Each seemed to have his favorite. Albert Murray and Adolf Dain liked the shape and style of the blimp, the dirigible. For Joseph Hirsch, it was the PBY, the seaplane. Mitchell Jameson was a fan of the small, fast scouts and bombers which flew from the decks of carriers. Jameson also studied the men who flew. I would say this whole experience was something that went very deep with me. And I feel it was probably because of the attempt to identify as completely as possible with the people I was with who actually did the fighting. I mean, it's a mistake to think that any combat correspondent or photographer is in the same position as a guy in the ranks who has no choice. He has to go through the whole thing and he can't come back and say, Well, I've had enough of a time being I want to collect my memories and sort of have a detached period in which I can put things together and maybe do a little quiet writing or painting. And this would be false to claim that a combat artist or combat correspondent or photographer is truly one of the boys. He's not because he has his freedom to come back when he's had enough or when it's saturated. 1943 at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois an experiment was underway. Young black recruits from the south were brought in to be trained as sailors. Artist Huey Lee Smith recalls the experience. Obviously these people had a very limited educational background. Many of them couldn't read very well. Donating, taught them to read and to develop certain skills and literacy which made it possible for them to function as good sailors as it were. I worked in that under Lieutenant Dennis Nelson for a while. And in that program I was doing a series of graphs, statistical graphs, etc. and also a series of paintings depicting certain aspects of the training program. The painting that you refer to is sort of a montage of some of the activities. For example you'll see the young recruits with books and so on and so forth. And somebody at a blackboard and you'll see a portrait of Dennis Nelson who was at that time in charge of that program. To my recollection Dennis Nelson was well liked by everybody. He knew his business as it were. And he was a good example for the youngsters of the type of person that the Navy wanted. He was officer material as it were. I think they were originally about 10 or 15 black officers, junior officers or whatever. And this was the first time in the history of the United States Navy that this had occurred. Now of course we've got admirals which represents a tremendous amount of progress over the 30 year period. World War II was more than combat alone. It was a lot of physical labor, drudgery, boredom and loneliness. But sometimes there were moments of escape. The artists captured this phase of World War also. Convoy to Russia, Convoy to Normandy and the liberation of France. Convoy to destiny. Were the artists a supreme test of courage and skill in the face of death itself? D-Day, 1944. Sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force. You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. In company with our brave allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck. And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. I had just finished work on maps and matters, all the solar areas in Normandy, and requested actually to go in on the landings. I suppose for a very selfish reason to see what was happening and to try to record it. I had been on one end of operations, so to speak, the detached intellectual end, and it was sort of dry and a little bit on the dull side. Another thing, I felt that I wasn't really using my artistic abilities as well as I could in that particular context, and I thought if I could see what was happening, I could get some impressions of landing activities that I would be able to do something with this kind of material. So I did request to go in on the landings, and went aboard an LST in Plymouth, and we got there at D plus two. We had stopped to pick up survivors from other ships, and it was a pretty, confused, horrendous experience going in. So when I finally got there, I spent a lot of time in the foxhole, dodging bullets, and gripping my sketchbook in one hand, and trying to make some notes of what was happening. I might be drawing, and then I would suddenly have to duck under a truck or jump into a foxhole and get out of the fire activity. July 1st, three weeks after the initial landings, almost a million men and half a million tons of supplies had been landed in the Allied zones. Germany's chance to smash the invasion had failed. The Allies were firmly implanted on the continent. Through the summer and autumn months, Hitler's armies were slowly pushed back, back across France, back to the Fatherland. They launched one desperate counterattack in December, but were stopped at Bastogne. With the aid of troops which had landed in southern France from Italy, the Allied forces pushed the Germans back across the Rhine and deep into the Nazi heartland. Surrounded on all sides, with their cities leveled by continuous air bombardments, the Germans surrendered on May 7th, 1945. Less than a year after Normandy, the Nazi war machine was destroyed. The war in Europe is over. The Allies prevailed. The German war is at an end. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing. But let us not forget, for a moment, the toil and effort that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued, and her detestable cruelty calls for justice and retribution. With most of the Japanese Pacific Empire in American hands, preparations were being made for invasion of the Japanese home islands. Air raids on Tokyo and other Japanese cities got underway. By the end of July 1945, American B-29s were raiding in groups of 500 and more. 64 cities had been bombed. Leaflets were dropped warning the enemy of impending doom. But the Japanese leaders still refused peace overtures unless arrangements were written on their terms. That was not satisfactory to the Allies. Too many lives would have to be spent in another invasion, especially one on the Japanese homeland. And so the ultimate weapon was unleashed at Hiroshima on August 6th. Three days later, August 9th at Nagasaki. On September 2nd, 1945, the peace documents were signed on board the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Commander Albert Murray used the surrender scene as a backdrop for his famous portrait of Fleet Admiral Chester Nemitz. The sander took place on the starboard side. I moved it to the port side in order to get a change of lighting, which with the forward gumballs of the turrets in the Missouri, a period of shatters on the deck which simulated the Japanese ensign. It was crushed in the sense that people were now standing on it in the sense of total defeat. The Second World War is over. The Navy's combat artists captured forever with faces and expressions of the men and women who won the war.