Seabee's

My grandfather served in the Seabees in the South Pacific - the Philippines more than anywhere.  He took photos of EVERYTHING while in the service: Everything from the topless native girls in Hawaii to the worst of the gore of combat clean-up, hundreds of photos of all sorts. 

He had photos of foxholes that had Japanese soldiers - or rather their remains - after being burned out with flamethrowers.  Most of the war-subject photos he had to sneak back into the states because they would be confiscated on sight if found.

One very memorable photo was when he was on deck during Japan's surrender, where General MacArthur and crew were at the table with the Japanese Emperor signing the papers, standing in his black suit and tophat.  Again, he "snuck the shot" as there was to be no unauthorized photographing of the scene.

My grandmother was so appalled by much of the graphic stuff that she burned many of them, only a handful of the photos survived her purging.

My sister has many of these.  I might be able to get her to make scans of them.  I keep meaning to but it gets put on the backburner.

VLS (Verlinden) carries a line of 1/35 scale WWII construction equipment/conversions.  I remember seeing a photo of a CAT dozer in their FSM ad a few months ago and some conversion kits to turn a 6x6 into a dump truck.  I'm sure these would work great for a Seabee dio.   VLS also carries various palm tree kits as well and photoetched palms.  FSM had an article several several moons ago about using florist tape and wire to create palm trees, but that was before the advent of photoetch.

There are two Seabee musuems, one in Port Hueneme CA. and another in Gulfport M.S. Everything you ever wanted to know about a Seabee can be found at these two places.  They keep sending me requests for donotions so I'll see if I can get a web address.  I'll try to get back with you on Tues.