Collection consists of a photograph album, marked "property of Staff Sergeant Maynard Miller" that contains approximately 200 photographs of African American soldiers in Tokyo and other locales in occupied Japan during 1946. Most of the photographs include captions with identification, nicknames, and G.I. humor. Several photographs depict African American soldiers with Japanese girlfriends. Other images depict Army living quarters and equipment, clubs, Hirohito's palace, zoo animals, crowds on Japanese election day, and tourist destinations in and around Tokyo. Also included in the back of the album are carbon copies of two vividly eloquent letters complaining of discrimination -- one about Senator Bilbo and "the Negro problem" in Mississippi (1 p.), and another addressed to the Commanding General, Eighth Army, complaining of discriminatory practices barring African American soldiers from using the swimming pool (3 pp.). Acquired as part of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.
The Maynard Miller photograph album of occupied Japan was received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as a purchase in December 2009.
This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.
