Army Service Command (ASCOM) City, near Seoul, South Korea, February 1959: Radiologist Stanley S. Friedman — according to the 121st hospital staff one of the few radiologists in the Far East — assists with the reading of X-ray plates for several hospitals in South Korea. Friedman and his department average about 3,000 X-rays a month themselves.

The 121st Evacuation Hospital — commanded by Arnold L. Ahnfeldt — has been the doorway to treatment and recovery for U.S. servicemen and Republic of Korea military personnel, Army and non-Army U.S. civilians and Korean nationals. With its three fully equipped X-ray rooms and portable units, as well as a laboratory and mobile blood unit, the hospital and its staff take care not only of its own patients, but also of those from other hospitals.

Incidentally, today’s World Radiography Day, the anniversary of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895. So happy 130th anniversary to the X-ray! Roentgen was awarded the first Nobel prize in physics in 1901 for his discovery.

Pictured here is a scan of the original 1959 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 the vast majority of 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 — with the exception the negatives of some 190 pre-1964 photo assignment found recently. Stars and Stripes’ archives team is scanning these prints and negatives to ensure their preservation.

Read the original 1959 article and see all the prints we scanned here.

Looking for more of 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/

previous coverage

• From the archives: 121st is equal of any big-city hospital