“Capturing the Pacific” will focus on the Pacific Theater of operations, and Walla Walla’s connection to the war. Eighty years is significant for historians because it marks a point where most people who have first-hand accounts of an event have passed. The work of preservation and remembrance is especially salient at these times, when living knowledge is lost.

The Pacific Theater saw the creation of vast technological advancement throughout all arenas, making the battles and skirmishes accomplished during World War II possible. At the end of the war the advancements stuck around, such as the transformation of Walla Walla’s airport.

Along with the conduct of individual battles, documentation of the war and the subsequent dissemination of information would not have been possible without the development of new camera technology. This technology was quickly utilized by the newly formed Army Pictorial Service (APS) and helped to make World War II the most visually documented event during its time. Those at home here in the Walla Walla Valley saw and heard of the war through these and other photographs, newsreels, newspapers, and the newly popularized radio.

Those on the front lines bore witness to the changes in technology just as readily. Soldiers, both American and otherwise, received pamphlets, cards, and other paper media. Specializing in a new field of science focused on the mind and human behavior, the American Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB) operated in the Pacific. Documents were printed and distributed to both American and Japanese soldiers, the images and text carefully worded to be compelling to its audience. These pieces of paper, cheekily called “paper bullets,” were designed to do damage with a different approach to warfare. These printed materials were used as part of larger projects, which in the Pacific Theater meant getting Japanese soldiers to consider surrender.

Fort Walla Walla Museum’s exhibit will also display some of the weapons and interesting historical items present in the Pacific theater, such as Japanese pesos and weapons. These artifacts were removed from Japanese soldiers, taken as war spoils and brought back to Walla Walla.

Through contextualizing what war in the Pacific looked like for those present, and how it was seen at home, the Museum asks visitors to consider their own relationship to technology and news. While Fort Walla Walla Museum continues to ask “why does history matter,” visitors are encouraged to explore the new exhibit with this question in mind as well. We hope that you might find your own answer.