LA to NOLA, June 1943

There are just enough Kodachromes in this stack to figure out that on June 8, 1943 Joel was in Los Angeles California with few of his camp mates.

The fountain in above slide gave away the location. This is Pershing Square in what is currently Downtown Financial Park.

I believe the fountain is gone after the area’s renovation, but the buildings are still there, dwarfed by modern Financial District high rises.

The 3 above slides have numbers 11, 16 and 22 stamped in them. Just tells us that may of them have found other owners or were simply handed out over the years.

From Los Angeles, California, the next stop of significance is New Orleans, Louisiana. Some of the slides didn’t age well, or they were poorly exposed to start with.

The rest of the slides are images from various places in Florida in June and August. This makes me to believe, without any available proof at this time, that Joel might have ended up in Camp Murphy for further training. This was a Signal Corps training camp, just like Camp Kohler (CA) with quite a few recruits moving into the Air Force.

The above slide was so underexposed, I had to to a lot of processing to make this intelligible.

Looks like more Kodachromes were shot in New Orleans, LA, as the above cardboard frames have been stamped 14, 17, 18.

Next few slides are from St-Petersburg about a week later. First slide is stamped with 21. And the following slide is the first slide of a new roll.

Joel does seem to have an affinity for water and boats. His first images of boats in the Stockton Harbor were already taken while in high school (1938)

The last slide in June 1943 in this stack, was taken in Clearwater on June 29, 1943. Cardboard frame is stamped with a 3.

We’ll have to wait till August that year to find more Kodachromes related to Florida excursions.

Till next blog post !

Cheers !

NOTE:

We do know from Joel’s gravestone, he ended up in the 9th Air Force Service Command, mostly based in UK when Joel was serving.