100 US Army Occupation Japan Photo Lot Yokohama 1949 Military Photos Ephemera For Sale

This listing is for a collection of photos that have been sitting in a box for about 75 years. They were all taken by my grandfather during his time in Occupied Japan in 1949. These are the remaining photos after I went through the collection and kept the ones I wanted for myself.

I didn't think to count each size before packaging them up, but roughly half are the larger size shown in the first image, with the other half made up of the smaller sizes pictured. There are approximately 100 photographs total.

There are also a few newspaper clippings from Pacific Stars and Stripes from when Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General J. Lawton Collins came through on an inspection tour. There are several photos depicting what appear to be practice formations for the pass in review as well.

Also included is a Christmas card featuring a photo of the USAT General William O. Darby is included. The interesting thing about the ship is that she had previously served in the U.S. Navy as USS Admiral W. S. Sims (AP-127). She was decommissioned by the Navy on June 21, 1946 and subsequently turned over to the Army for operation by the Army Transport Service, where she was renamed General William O. Darby. The Navy reacquired the ship on March 1, 1950, and on April 28, 1950 she was reinstated on the Naval Vessel Register as USNS General William O. Darby (T-AP-127). There is no writing on the inside or outside of the card.

There are also a few mystery photos that I haven't been able to identify. After going through the box, I noticed that my grandfather captioned most of the photos before sending them home to my grandmother. Things that weren't captioned were generally obvious, and things he didn't know about usually had some remark to that effect.

That makes me particularly curious about the photo shown above of a woman seemingly being shown around. My first thought was Eleanor Roosevelt, but from my research she did not visit Japan until 1953, so it isn't her. My guess is that it may have been someone recognizable to people at the time, since otherwise I would have expected my grandfather to write something about who the woman was or why he photographed her. Maybe it's someone interesting; maybe it's nothing. I don't know, but figuring it out was a fun side quest while going through a box that had been sitting in a closet since my grandfather passed away in 1997.

The photographs vary considerably in subject matter and photographic quality. This isn't a curated collection of professional photography. These are personal snapshots taken by a U.S. serviceman living in Japan during the occupation: military life, people, scenery, streets, buildings, ships and everyday things that caught his attention. Some are captioned on the back and some are not.

Everything in this listing comes directly from my grandfather's personal collection and has remained with our family since 1949. I am selling the group together as one lot.