Family seeks identity of World War II soldiers in photos

A family from Maine seeks to learn the identity of soldiers
depicted in photos taken during World War II that were
discovered in a lost cache of photo negatives found when
their father died in 2014. They hope to share the images
with families of those in the photos. COURTESY PHOTO

By Ed Pierce

The identity of soldiers in a recently discovered cache of photographs taken by a U.S. Army veteran from Maine continues to elude his children who are looking to connect names with the images.

Richard Perkins of Maine passed away at the age of 92 in 2014 and he left behind a treasure trove of hundreds of photos he took while stationed in Hawaii with the U.S. Army in the early days of World War II.

Trained as a radio operator, Perkins was stationed at Fort Shafter in Honolulu, and he worked at an underground base inside of Diamond Head there. According to his family, except for a few stories, Perkins seldom talked about his military service or his time in Hawaii with his relatives.

Fort Shafter has served as the home of the senior Army headquarters in Hawaii for more than a century. Construction began in 1905 on the former Hawaiian crown lands that were ceded to the United States government after its annexation. When the post opened in 1907, it was named for Major General William Rufus Shafter, who led the United States expedition to Cuba in 1898. It’s estimated that hundreds of soldiers from Maine passed through Fort Shafter or were stationed there during World War II.

In cleaning out his home after he died, Perkins’ daughter, Alice Smith, and his son Dana Perkins, found a large tin container under his stairs containing rolls of film negatives that had been developed, but not turned into photographs.

A few years after their discovery, Dana Perkins scanned each of the negatives into his computer and he then printed up hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of World War II taken by his late father.

The images show many different people and locations in Hawaii including military members serving in the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, along with civilian USO performers, and Hawaiian residents and local children who lived in the area surrounding the U.S. Army base at Fort Shafter.

Trying to identify the individuals their father captured on film has proven to be a significant challenge for Alice Smith and Dana Perkins though.   

They have spent the past few years attempting to learn as much as they possibly could about the people and locations in the photographs. Along the way, they have received a generous amount of assistance from Milton Migita, a curator at the U.S. Army Museum in Hawaii, and also they have been helped by the general public, who have either heard about their story through media accounts or through a number of online groups pertaining to World War II and other social media posts and stepped forward to identify some of the people in the photos.

Dana Perkins said that each of the photographic images that were discovered in Maine are now available for review by the public as he compiled them into a book that is posted online. He said the original negatives, images, and three different photo albums have been donated to the U.S. Army Museum and the National Park Service in Hawaii.

Many of the people and faces in the photographs remain to be identified and it is the goal of Alice Smith and Dana Perkins that someone in Maine will recognize their father, grandfather, uncle, mother, grandmother, aunt, or some other friend or relative in the photos and the family of veterans in the photos can share the image of their loved one.

The photos can be viewed online at: www.WW2PacificVeteransProject.org

Should you recognize anyone in the photographs after viewing them, please contact Alice Smith or Dana Perkins through the WW2 Pacific Veterans website, or by writing to them at: World War 2 Pacific Veterans Project, PO Box 789, Biddeford, ME 04005 or by email at info@ww2pacificveteransproject.org <