Archive Holds Decades Of Military Images At March Base

Posted by admin on Sep 26, 2008

In a climate controlled room at March Air Reserve Base, where it’s always 68 degrees and 68 percent humidity, a century of American military history awaits restoration and release to the public and National Archives. At last count, more than 750,000 images recorded by military photographers — still pictures and videotapes — are being cleaned […]

In a climate controlled room at March Air Reserve Base, where it’s always 68 degrees and 68 percent humidity, a century of American military history awaits restoration and release to the public and National Archives.

At last count, more than 750,000 images recorded by military photographers — still pictures and videotapes — are being cleaned up and digitized.

The images come from military bases around the world, the military’s independent newspaper Stars and Stripes, and aging World War II combat photographers and cameramen who mail long-forgotten photos and footage to March.

In addition, the Defense Imagery Management Operations Center serves as a repository for untold numbers of photographs dating to the Civil War.

Some of the more notable ones include Lincoln meeting with generals in a tent, soldiers and horses in gas masks moving through a World War I moonscape, and the battleship Arizona ablaze after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Other photos show the wounded at Omaha Beach, Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, mushroom clouds over Bikini atoll, Patriot missiles taking to the skies over Kuwait, the highway of death in Iraq, and the fight for Fallujah.

Source: The Press Enterprise

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