Tokyo, 1960: Service members George Rosenblatt and Leo Kuehnen take a photograph of a Japanese woman holding up her parasol. Touring Tokyo with his camera, Pacific Stars and Stripes-Korea bureau photographer James Vestal captured on film the impressions of the city that servicemen on Rest and Recuperation leave get. Vestal’s photographs show the visiting servicemen’s fleeting glimpses of the world’s largest city. Vestal joined other visiting staffs from Korea, photographing them as they covered the city.

Pictured here is a scan of the original 1960 print created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department to run in the print newspaper. The red marks indicate the crop lines. Only the middle part of the image would appear in the newspaper. As all pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963, the prints developed from the late 1940s through 1963 are the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those decades. Stars and Stripes’ archives team is scanning these prints to ensure their preservation.

Looking for Stars and Stripes’ historic coverage? 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/