African American Soldiers in the W.W.II Pacific Theater Photo Album

[African American Segregated Military] [W.W.II] Photo album of Black W.W.II soldier Charles Turner at Camp S101 and in the Pacific Theater during W.W.II with an all-Black Navy unit in the Pacific Theater. Disbound, with stiff leatherette boards separated. 113 black and white silver gelatin photos split between 28 album pages plus around 30 loose photos. These Photos taken during the Pacific campaigns throughout Melanesia, Papa New Guinea, and the Philippines, with at least one taken at the Bougainville base. This black soldier was named Charles Turner and was trained at Camp S-101 in Pennsylvania. His unit is not named but is depicted in around 20 mostly group photos, and there are also shots of Imperial Japanese soldiers in W.W.II uniform. His unit is tight-knit, with several group photos with captions naming his friends. One photo in Bougainville shows a soldier posing next to a sign that dedicates Marine Drive to the "Fighting Marines", built by the 53rd Navy Combat Battalion 1st Marine Amphibious Corps. The Bougainville and Guadalcanal,campaigns were a series of land and naval battles of the Pacific campaign against Japanese forces in the South Pacific from November 1943 through August 1945. There are many photos of the landing of military troops and equipment, in the Pacific theater islands, other images of Allied military units, one with a military convoy passing by while a Japanese dead soldier in still laying on the street. A grisly image shows an African American US Army First Sergeant holding up the decapitated head of a Japanese man. This album also features several photos of the Melanesian and Polynesian people, particularly the women, in the region, as well as the black troops posed with some Japanese civilians outside a Japanese building. About a third of the album are mostly photos of life back home, mainly of African American friends or army personnel and some family members. It documents life in a black community in the 1940's. Also comes with a later letter from a Delores, written with motherly concern, sending a few "Kennedy halves to help buy a little food" and coordinating family visits. The album pages chipped and not good condition but the 113 Photos are generally of high quality and in very good condition. The album documents the contribution of black military personnel in a segregated armed force in the Pacific theater and in the immediate aftermath of the war, but also African American life back home in the 1940's.