Burning Kodachrome slides and erasing history

[Archiver]

The current thread about Nick Ut and the Terror of War image brought something else to mind, a flickr thread from 2008. The OP asked about the best way to destroy the hundreds of Kodachrome slides that were taken by his Japanese war photographer father in law. The OP mentioned a batch of slides labeled Pinkville 1968, which refers to the My Lai Massacre, the largest massacre perpetrated by the US in Vietnam, indeed, anywhere in the 20th century. The fact that his father in law still had photographs of My Lai suggests that they have not been seen elsewhere.

SLIDE FILM (*Not Xpro*)

Rules are ... * Slide Film shots only !! * No Xprocess (Cross process) shots please !! * Please add a tag with film type to your shots posted in this group. (ex. KODACHROME200, KODAK ELITE Chrome100, FUJICHROME ASTIA100) All photos not corresponding to the rules above will be removed ...

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The OP wrote:

"Is it safe (environmentally) to burn slides?

"Here's why:
My wife's father was a long-time war photographer and photojournalist for the Japanese press. He was active in the Korean war, French-Indochina, (later the Viet Nam conflict,) Japan, the Philippines and Central America, especially Nicaragua from the mid-fifties until about 1990 or so. As you can imagine, back then, there were a lot of photos to be taken that wouldn't exactly be publishable, given the standards of the times. Still, like any good journalist, he took his photos. The things he shot are, for the most part, what you'd expect, but there are things he saw and photographed that would make Abu Ghraib look like games at a children's birthday party.

"Before he died, he asked me, (knowing my interest in photography,) to make sure these images never see the light of day. "Burn them all" was the phrase he used.

"So here I am, left with a large filing cabinet of slides that I need to destroy. I took a few handfuls of slides and tried to burn then in a bin outside, but the smoke was surprising—thick and foul-smelling. (Those were just a fraction of the stuff he asked me to burn first, the pictures labeled "Pinkville, 1968". Horrible stuff that should never be seen.)

"I've considered shredding them somehow, or pouring a solvent on the lot, but I need to make sure that what I do is permanent and eradicates the images beyond retrieval. I'd also like to do this in a way that doesn't harm both the environment or my own health.

'(Ideally, by burning, as that was his dying request.)

"Any suggestions?"

There was quite the debate between those who thought the OP should honour his father in law's dying wishes and burn everything, and those who thought that preserving vital documentation of war was more important. I was firmly on the side of preservation, despite the photographer's wishes.

The irony is that the family ultimately decided to donate the collection to the Yasukuni Jinja war museum on the condition that the photos never be exhibited, copied or be available to the public. Yasukuni is controversial in that it permitted the enshrinement of Japanese soldiers and officers charged and convicted with war crimes.

This article is about war photographer Ron Haeberle, who's photos showed what happened at My Lai. If this is what Ron shot, what did the unnamed Japanese photographer shoot?

The Photographer Who Showed the World What Really Happened at My Lai

His pictures from that 1968 day in Vietnam showed the world what really happened at My Lai. A half-century later, they are still haunting.

time.com

(edited to correct links)

 

[boojum]

The "noble scholar" side of me says they should all be made public. We should know who and what we are. The public is not obliged to see the images. Viewing is voluntary. But to bury them is to bury history and that is always dangerous and often done to protect the guilty. The military is necessary for failures of diplomacy. Here we are lucky that our forefathers made the military swear allegiance to our founding documents and not a current head of state. Regardless, our military is not infallible and in a mobilization folks do not check too closely.

I would have liked to have seen a public display made of the least disturbing photos, the rest available for scholarly study. Hiding them under cover of a donation to a war museum is an unfortunate burying of fact and history. History is not what we always want it to be but it always is what it is.

 

[Archiver]

The "noble scholar" side of me says they should all be made public. We should know who and what we are. The public is not obliged to see the images. Viewing is voluntary. But to bury them is to bury history and that is always dangerous and often done to protect the guilty. The military is necessary for failures of diplomacy. Here we are lucky that our forefathers made the military swear allegiance to our founding documents and not a current head of state. Regardless, our military is not infallible and in a mobilization folks do not check too closely.

I would have liked to have seen a public display made of the least disturbing photos, the rest available for scholarly study. Hiding them under cover of a donation to a war museum is an unfortunate burying of fact and history. History is not what we always want it to be but it always is what it is.

I fully agree. Images like those are vital parts of history that should not be suppressed nor denied. A public exhibition or at least public access would have been far more fitting and appropriate.

What gets me is that Ron Haeberle's images are the only ones generally known to exist, and yet there was a Japanese war photographer who had his own collection that had gone seemingly unknown for decades, and now will never be seen.

 

[boojum]

I fully agree. Images like those are vital parts of history that should not be suppressed nor denied. A public exhibition or at least public access would have been far more fitting and appropriate.

What gets me is that Ron Haeberle's images are the only ones generally known to exist, and yet there was a Japanese war photographer who had his own collection that had gone seemingly unknown for decades, and now will never be seen.

Destroying documents at the request of the deceased regardless of their historical import happens. If it is their property they can ask that this be done. For some strange reason they, themselves, never do it.

 

[peterm1]

Never - repeat, never erase history! Here endeth the lesson!

 

[boojum]

This thread has taken a life of its own beyond the discussion of Ut. I think of the Viet Nam war and our involvement as a Tar-Baby, we are stuck with it and will be for a long time. It defines the time, it defines our ethos, it defines our political splits and asks the question of which direction shall we take.

I hunted down this image because it, too, is iconic, A Horst Faas shot: The Story Behind the Iconic Photo of a Soldier Wearing a Hand-Lettered “War is Hell” Slogan on His Helmet during the Vietnam War in 1965 - Rare Historical Photos The sad part is that we are not doing more with diplomacy and less with arms.

 

[boojum]

Those who are interested in the war photographer business, I can recommend Don McCullin a movie which I am watching now. It's a tough trade.

 

[skahde]

The feelings of today may and most likely will not be the same as those of tomorrow. What seems as a burden for people who have been involved may be precious fact to fight against the propaganda of the future. Never erase documents of history as they may become the basis of how future generations view the world and justify how they are acting.

 

[Dogman]

We become who we are by learning from the past. Even from the ugly and cruel. Hopefully we become better as a result.

 

[Bob Michaels]

My wife's father was a long-time war photographer and photojournalist for the Japanese press.
..............
"Before he died, he asked me, (knowing my interest in photography,) to make sure these images never see the light of day. "Burn them all" was the phrase he used.

I see the key question as does a son-in-law honor the commitment he implicitly made to his dying father-in-law? The time to debate historical significance has come and passed.

I believe a commitment made to a dying man must be upheld. Only exception would be some significant new information which is not the case here.

 

[Archiver]

I see the key question as does a son-in-law honor the commitment he implicitly made to his dying father-in-law? The time to debate historical significance has come and passed.

I believe a commitment made to a dying man must be upheld. Only exception would be some significant new information which is not the case here.

I see this point, and at the same time, I wish I could get past the importance of preserving vital history. Do the wishes of one dying man supercede the vital importance of the images he captured? We will never know, as the images are now deep within the vaults of Yasukuni Jinja and will never be seen by outsiders.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I see this point, and at the same time, I wish I could get past the importance of preserving vital history.

There was a time to consider that perspective but it is history now. You made a commitment. No matter how much you may regret it today, you made that commitment. Time to honor it.

 

[Formerly presspass]

It is up to the photographer. Admittedly, he should have taken that action himself, but they are his images and he alone can make that decision. He decided to assign that responsibility to a family member; carrying that out is the family member's decision. As a trained historian, I understand the argument for preservation, but the images creator made his wishes clear. I wonder how his family member justified his decision.

 

[Archiver]

The more I think of this, the more divided I become, although I err on the side of preservation. Images of that event are of great historical significance, and destroying them is like destroying the reminders of something that should never be forgotten. They may also hold clues about the perpetrators that were not seen before. On the other hand, there's the matter of honour in carrying out a dying person's wishes, and I wonder how I would hypothetically feel if I gave instructions for my images to be destroyed after my death, but instead they were given to a museum or other institution.

@Formerly presspass makes a good point in that the father in law ought to have destroyed the images himself if that is what he wanted. If he wanted them gone, why would he keep so many? Perhaps he had an unconscious desire for those images to be seen, so he offloaded that decision to someone else. We will never know.

 

[Mos6502]

Honestly, looking back on this, I think it may have been a prank.

 

[boojum]

It is up to the photographer. Admittedly, he should have taken that action himself, but they are his images and he alone can make that decision. He decided to assign that responsibility to a family member; carrying that out is the family member's decision. As a trained historian, I understand the argument for preservation, but the images creator made his wishes clear. I wonder how his family member justified his decision.

When I was a history student I had the good fortune to browse archives. George Washington's letters to Congress about his remuneration: costs plus not a salary. That was in the Yale archives. At the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, we saw Mathew Ridgeway's letters on MacArthur's mental state. It was not flattering. Should they have been destroyed? No. There is in these and the photographs in question a debt to history. In the case of the photographs I would guess that they were horrific and shameful. There were no war crimes trials in Japan at the end of WW II. Not because they were not justified or needed.

 

[Archiver]

Honestly, looking back on this, I think it may have been a prank.

Interesting. What makes you think that? Looking back at Jim O'Connell's flickr stream, he has a lot of photos of social life and streets in contemporary Japan, suggesting he lived there. It tallies with his claim of a Japanese father in law. I'm not sure what would be gained from a prank post about destroying historical war images.

 

[Mos6502]

Interesting. What makes you think that? Looking back at Jim O'Connell's flickr stream, he has a lot of photos of social life and streets in contemporary Japan, suggesting he lived there. It tallies with his claim of a Japanese father in law. I'm not sure what would be gained from a prank post about destroying historical war images.

As somebody who does a lot of historical research, there's some things about the story that raised my suspicions. It very well may be true, but I have doubts. If he were there acting on behalf of the Japanese government, how would it be that he still had possession of the images? If he were there as a reporter, then it makes sense he'd have the images, but then why would the story of the May Lai massacre have gone unreported in Japan until after the truth was published in the U.S.? Why would he hold on to images that he wanted destroyed? Why would the family donate them to museum that doesn't (so far as I can find) have any collections that these images would neatly fit into? I remember having the same thoughts when I read original post years ago. I suppose if I were really interested in finding out, I could contact the Yushukan Museum and ask for a catalog of their photographic materials, and see if it contains such a collection of slides.

 

[Out to Lunch]

I am more impressed with the actions of US Army combat photographer, Ronald L. Haeberle, who documented the mass killings of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai by US soldiers and, a year later shared his photos with The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

 

[Archiver]

As somebody who does a lot of historical research, there's some things about the story that raised my suspicions. It very well may be true, but I have doubts. If he were there acting on behalf of the Japanese government, how would it be that he still had possession of the images? If he were there as a reporter, then it makes sense he'd have the images, but then why would the story of the May Lai massacre have gone unreported in Japan until after the truth was published in the U.S.? Why would he hold on to images that he wanted destroyed? Why would the family donate them to museum that doesn't (so far as I can find) have any collections that these images would neatly fit into? I remember having the same thoughts when I read original post years ago. I suppose if I were really interested in finding out, I could contact the Yushukan Museum and ask for a catalog of their photographic materials, and see if it contains such a collection of slides.

I see where you're coming from, and it does make sense. There is one aspect that can be explained. There's another RFFer who's name escapes me. He was a combat photographer with the US army during Vietnam, and he carried both an issued camera and personal camera. The film taken by the issued camera was given back to base, but he kept his own personal images. He posted some of them in another thread recently and seems like a top fellow.

As far as why someone would hold on to images they want destroyed upon their death, that's a question with possibly complex answers. He could have known the significance of them but also felt repulsed by them; he might not have wanted the direct responsibility of getting rid of them and foisted that on someone else. Donating them to Yasukuni Jinja's museum kind of makes sense in the sense that it holds war time collections, although I wonder if they have anything related to Vietnam.

But having said all of this, your reasoning creates more questions. That thread has been in my mind ever since I saw it, and I hope that by posting about it on RFF, it gets a tiny bit more exposure as one of those niche photography mysteries.