A camera that was used in the Manhattan Project (Atomic Bomb Drop on Nagasaki)

FrankS said:
Well done Raid. This camera does belong in a museum.
Personally I wouldn't want to use any object associated with so much grief/horror.
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I agree, Frank. No matter what its inventor may have imagined for it, it was part of a mission of mass destruction, and that legacy cannot be undone or dissociated from its optics.

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This shard of a sake cup was found on the street in Nagasaki just after the bombing. It was being passed around at the annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki remembrance two years ago. I photographed it with a 1948 Serenar lens on a Ricoh GXR.
 
I also feel this way, gentlemen. The camera was used in WWII, in preparation for dropping the A bombs in Japan. I di not spend any money to get the camera, but I traded off some SLR equipment then. It was enjoyful to do the research for several years to uncover its history. It was quite fun to have discussions here at RFF and also at some other website about the history of this camera. I visited with my family the Hiroshima Museum at the site where the A bomb was dropped.
 
Never heard about this camera until I read your thread here and at Pnet. Thank you.

Very generous and thoughtful of you to possibility donate.

I served in the Navy and our ship had repair work performed on it in Sasebo Japan. While there, I took a bus to Nagasaki and spent the day photographing. Slide film. Didn't realize it that folks in Japan drive on left side of the road like Britian.
 
Raid, Before it goes have you been able to get any shots? Those huge lenses remind me of those special lenses they used to make the ultra-closeup shots at baseball games and such. Some of the pictures I've seen of them (only a few left) looked to have very large lenses also.
 
There is no film back for the camera, and it takes two large men to carry it around. The lenses are huge. Each lens may weigh 30 Pounds. I thought at first that I could have someone create a film back for the camera, but this is very costly. Also, there is no guarantee that this camera can be used for portraits or landscape photography without an enormous set of bellows.
 
I wanted from the start a good place for the camera. The camera is innocent. The users used it. It is also a 3D innovation of its time.
 
Yes, the camera is innocent. That is the best way to put it.

And you have been perhaps the best possible steward of it, and are making a researcher's (and camera lover's) contribution to the historical archive.
 
Thank you Robert. We can all learn from the experiences of others. I find such a camera worthy of being preserved for future generations. It is a less direct way (than the A-bomb proto-type) to remind people of WWII events.
 
The Smithsonian came to my mind several years ago, but I decided not go this route as they have over a million items in storage, and my camera may just be put aside. Thanks for the images.
 
If you don't want it, and you don't want a museum to have it, the other option is to sell it. Someone would be thrilled to have this piece of history, associated with the bomb.

As far as the strange "not wanting to be associated with it" comments, I concur it's just an inanimate object. But the Manhattan Project was America's largest industrial project ever accomplished. It's goal was to build the bomb before the Nazis did, because as we know with the German Vengeance weapons, the V-1 and V-2 (made by slave labor who were worked to death) WERE being used daily against civilians. If the Nazis got the bomb, they would have used it to decimate Europe. When we won the European war conventionally, the bomb was still very useful.

We didn't start the war, Japan and Europe did. By dropping the Bomb, all service members at the time had their lives spared. It was estimated that another 250,000 to half million Allies would have died trying to assault the home islands of Japan like we did at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. There....every Japanese soldier and thousands of civilians fought to the death, or committed suicide. So not only did the Atomic bomb save as many Americans as we had already lost in WWII, it saved millions of Japanese who would NOT have surrendered.

The camera is a piece of important history on how America saved the world from Japanese raping and beheading in China and the Pacific, and and the Holocaust. Don't forget why we were there, we didn't start the war. We ended it.
 
Please see what has been posted above.
The camera has been donated to the US Naval Avaiation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, Garrett.

Let's stay away from a discussion on the benefits/lack of benefits for dropping an A-bomb on people. This camera is "innocent" of any bad deeds.
 
Great, I missed that. I was stationed in Pensacola at Corry Station in the Navy. I went back this summer, and visited the USN Aviation Museum again.

Agreed, as were the people that used the camera, and the device, etc. I just need to post the truth about history when others are posting veiled attacks about our purpose for the bomb. And there were several, which no one stopped.
 
Only a moderator can stop postings that are deemed inappropritae, but no such postings were done here. There are differences in opinions on how different people view the dropping of the A-bombs, but my thread really was from the start about this unique camera.
 
It is nice that the Navy Museum is willing to take it, preserve it, and display it. Good job getting it to a place like that Raid.

ZivcoPhoto - Those are neat photos. Thanks for sharing them. If you can believe it, I live in the northern Virginia area but have yet to visit there.
 
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