JAPAN.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Photograph album compiled by Paul Eugene Shearer, US Navy, while serving in Japan during the occupation. A thought-provoking album that offers an insight into the Afro-Japanese cultural exchange during the Allied Occupation. Shearer was a Black US serviceman with Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron 120, stationed at Iwakuni, 40 km southwest of Hiroshima. His album includes images of the Japanese countryside and people, fellow personnel, his Japanese wife Hisako, and family back home in the States.Shearer (1935-1999), born in Madison, Kentucky, grew up in Cincinnati, spending his later years in California (he is buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery). His ownership inscription gives his rank as ADJ2 or Aviation Machinist's Mate (jet engine mechanic). From around 1954, his unit, FASron-120, supported the US fleet's airborne capabilities. A few shots show him in uniform driving that workhorse of the US military, the 2½ ton 6x6 truck, adapted as a tanker.Some of the early shots show him with Hisako, and a fellow serviceman with his Japanese girlfriend. One image pictures the latter clutching a jazz album: George Shearing's Latin Escapade (1957), reflecting the fact that "postwar Japan embraced the music of its former enemy" (Van Nguyen). "The postwar period includes some of the richest chapters in the story of Afro-Japanese cultural exchange. The culmination of the Pacific War and the onset of the Allied Occupation of Japan made for heady times in the encounters between African

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