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48.79 Gigabytes

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Bill Einreinhofer provided the following description:

As part of the process of producing my latest Public TV documentary -- Valor and Memory, scheduled to air on PBS TV stations in November 2024 -- I spent countless hours researching additional footage stored in the National Archives (NARA).

Searching for NARA footage is more an art than a science. You never know when you are about to stumble upon "gold," although it may not have anything to do with the subject you're actually researching. That is the case with the collection of March of Time newsreel outtakes.

Time magazine was one of the most popular, and influential, American weekly news magazines during much of the 20th Century. Its founder and owner, Henry Luce, was born at a Christian "mission station" in north China. Not surprisingly, news from China was frequently featured in both Time magazine and its newsreel series March of Time. Luce wanted to both report on events in China, as well as influence American policies in the Asia-Pacific region. As a result, there were certain themes repeated over and over.

One was support of the Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, even after 1949. Another was opposition to British and Dutch imperialism. I have located dozens and dozens of reels of unedited footage covering these subjects, both pre-WW2 and post-war. This "raw" footage not only provides in-depth exploration of the subject material, but also reveals the editorial process used to create the March of Time newsreels. (This video is different from any full March of Time episodes already in the USC Libraries collections).

Equally exciting, there is a rich collection of post-war Japanese footage from the period 1946 to 1966. It is a window into the incredible changes experienced by Japanese society during this period, including Japan's transformation from "America's bitter enemy" to "America's trusted ally."

Much of the footage was shot by Japanese camera crews working for the American military or civilian news agencies. Major themes include economic conditions immediately following the 1945 Japanese surrender, the introduction of democracy, the key role Japan played in support of the U.S. military during the Korean War, and the rapid climb "up the value chain" Japanese industries experienced between 1946 and 1966.

Some of these stories are truly remarkable. During the Korean War, there was a desperate need for blood. Far East American commander Generali Mathew Ridgeway was filmed appealing for blood donations. U.S. soldiers joined in the effort, in interviews on Armed Forces Radio. Special blood labs were set up in Tokyo, and blood drives initiated. Among the donors were Japanese civilians. Six years earlier American military personnel had decimated Japan's cities. Now many Japanese were donating their own blood to help save the lives of American soldiers.

There are also scenes from a "Bride School," where the Japanese wives of American servicemen learned what it was like to be an "American wife." And how a battle-hardened U.S. Marine became Santa Claus for a group of war orphans.

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Each of the descriptive records in this series includes a Scope and Contents note provided by Bill Einreinhofer describing each file's content.

All of the files under this series are public domain. Bill Einreinhofer also donated a file within this series containing parts of a March of Time film. The March of Time film is under copyright. The USC Libraries kept the description of the March of Time file in this series, but removed the digital file from the USC Digital Library. An access-restricted copy of the March of Time file is preserved in the USC Libraries' separate Digital Repository system.

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