Vintage Military - Part 79

 World War II in the Pacific

You've already seen multiple posts about World War II in the Pacific in my Vintage Military series.  Today we see some miscellaneous photos that weren't in previous posts.

Guadalcanal was covered in a previous post, but that post didn't include the photo above, taken by LIFE photographer Ralph Morse, of soldiers bathing in a stream in Guadalcanal in 1942 or 1943.

Someone colorized that black-and-white photo.  Here's the colorized version.

Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands was taken from the Japanese in February, 1943.  This photo of soldiers and marines bathing in the sea is dated July 12, 1944.

Here's an undated photo from Eniwetok showing Marines showering.

This photo is labeled "Naked men bathing in the Mariana Islands."  The Mariana Islands included Saipan, Guam, and Tinian.  Those islands were taken from the Japanese from June to August 1944.

U.S. forces retook the Philippines from the Japanese between October 1944 and June 1945.  This 1945 photo by LIFE photographer Carl Mydans shows Americans bathing outdoors who had been prisoners of war of the Japanese and were then rescued by Filipino guerrillas.

We end with three photos by LIFE photographer J. R. Eyerman of U.S. Marines showering in a Marine camp on an unspecified Pacific island in 1945.

I do not know if any of these photos by LIFE photographers were actually published in LIFE magazine.  Probably not.  The LIFE logo in the corner merely signifies that the photos were from the LIFE photo archive.

LIFE never published photos showing frontal male nudity, but it occasionally published rear male nudity.