HAWAII 1941

My Grandfather, Col. Joseph Condon was born in 1915.  He began his military career in the United Army Air Core, which later became the US Air Force, serving in WWII and then eventually in the Korean War.  He had passed by the time I was twelve, and while I have my fond childhood memories of him, my only knowledge of his service was through the few insights my mother had gleaned from him over the years.  Both my Grandparents on my mother’s side were first generation Irish American.  

In 1940-41, a 25 year old Lt. Condon was stationed in Hawaii. I don’t know a lot of details, but I have been sitting on a reel of vibrant, 35mm slides that he photographed while he was there.  The images are a time portal.  With the look of old technicolor movies, he captured everything from luau’s to local fishermen, to lava flows.  Beyond the time capsule of documentation, many of the photographs are each beautiful images in their own right.  Over the years, I’ve gone through phases of scanning a few, testing capture with a digital camera and a macro lens, etc.  I never really hunkered down and figured everything out until recently.  

It’s an honor to be able to make them available to the public.