North Korea, June 1952: The original caption of this image — captured by U.S. Army photographer Guy Kassal and published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, June 21, 1952 — read “Shanghai Heights — Division combat medics give treatment to Thunderbird infantry wounded on the second day of the Shanghai Heights battle west of Chorwon.”

Although we do not know exactly when and where the image was taken, “west of Chorwon” would indicate that it was in what is now North Korea. The “Thunderbird infantry” reference indicates that pictured here are the men of the 45th Infantry Division.

Many of the news photo prints in our archives do not have exact date and place information included and information is gathered through notes from the photo department scribbled on the back of the print, articles the image ran with and independent research into the subject matter.

Although we prioritize the preservation and scanning of our own material, given their historic importance we made an exception for the images in our collection of the Korean War taken by these military photographers. Few of our own images from that war survived as all pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963. The prints created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department to run in the print newspaper are the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those early decades.

In this month of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, we share some of these historic images with you.

Looking for Stars and Stripes’ coverage of the Korean War? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/