MOST OF THE IMAGES in this book were taken by photographers of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The Signal Corps was a branch of the U.S. Army that served both the Army Ground Forces and the Army Air Forces. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the entry of the United States into the war, the Signal Corps had to expand rapidly. It gathered men and women from Hollywood, workers at electronics and telephone companies, and groups of pigeon breeders and trainers. Several famous Hollywood directors went to war to record the troops’ actions. Some Signal Corps soldiers worked in the United States at several training facilities and in communications offices around Washington, D.C. Others were assigned to troop divisions and central communications centers in Europe and the Pacific.
Soldiers in the Army Signal Corps were just behind infantrymen on the front lines. Their photographs and film footage informed people at home and have provided invaluable primary source documentation about the war.
The commitment of 16.1 million U.S. troops in World War II and the integration necessary among all the nations fighting on each front meant that communication was essential. The Signal Corps rallied more than 350,000 uniformed men and women to create training films for soldiers and newsreels to be shown in American movie theaters, to disseminate lessons in using crystal radios, to set up communication systems between the front and the rear of troop movements and battles, and to coordinate communication among air, ground, and naval units. During the course of the war, the Signal Corps refined the use of radar to detect incoming aircraft and developed code-breaking machines that tackled enemy messages.
More than five thousand WACs, members of the Women’s Army Corps, served in the Signal Corps both at home and abroad. Also among the Signal Corps were Native American “code talkers.” These men spoke a language that few others knew and that was largely unwritten. They relayed messages to other Native Americans, who would translate the messages for their English-speaking officers. Anyone listening who was not a native speaker would not understand the message.
Communications systems were built to connect Washington and London with General Eisenhower’s traveling headquarters, and with offices in all Allied and neutral countries. More than ten thousand men and women monitored radio communications from around the world and passed on intelligence.
Another major responsibility of the Signal Corps, specifically the Army Pictorial Service, was to film and photograph combat operations. The corps supplied pictures to the news media, ensuring that the public had a dramatic visual sense of what was happening. Most members of the corps were trained first as soldiers and then as photographers, so they carried guns and cameras. Many of the cameras these soldiers used were purchased from or donated by private citizens, since there was not enough time to mass-produce them.