Caroline and Lalie visit the National Museum of the Pacific War

A gem in the heart of Hill Country, Texas!

After Christmas, I successfully convinced my wife and dad to make a pilgrimage with me to Fredericksburg, Texas. Why? Because it's the home of the National Museum of the Pacific War, an institution I've been wanting to visit for literal years. 

Long time readers might remember that my other big historical passion besides food history is the Pacific Theater of World War II. This is usually specifically focused on either the Marines or the Allied POW experience, but extends to pretty much everything and anything. As common place as World War II history is - seriously, it's gotten to the point where it's hard telling fellow historians it's what I like to study and teach others about most because it's just so overdone - the Pacific still tends to be overlooked by textbooks, museums, and media. Visiting an whole museum that focuses on the topic promised to be really exciting and totally worth the three hour drive from Austin. 

Spoiler alert: it totally was. Read on to see pictures from our trip!

While not as well known as the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana - which I visited a few years ago with Molly in tow - the National Museum of the Pacific War has a pretty big campus, and the main building is designed to look like a submarine is surfacing outside of it. Pretty cool, right? 

As much as I would have loved spending the entire day exploring the campus, I was on a relatively tight timeline because we had a three hour drive back to Austin and not everyone has the same stamina as me when it comes to museum tourism, so we focused on going to the main gallery, and if we had time for anything else, great! If not, there was always next time. 

Excitingly, the museum did a really awesome job laying the groundwork for how the Pacific side of World War II kicked off. Since it's a topic most people don't know much about outside of watching Bridge on the River Kwai (which is not accurate and honestly one of my least favorite movies ever) or The Pacific (my actual favorite World War II "film"), the average person tends not to understand the roots of the war in the Pacific they same way they might understand how the Nazis rose to power in Germany. The first several rooms of the main galleries focused on the history of Japan going back to the Napoleonic Era, and leads right up to Pearl Harbor, discussing international relations, tensions with Korea and China, and western powers interfering in Asia. They also didn't shy away at all from discussing the invasion of Korea or China, along with a pretty graphic video with oral histories about the Nanking Massacre. It wasn't until three galleries in that we started discussing the United States on the eve of war with Japan, with interactives that included quizzes about the U.S. in 1941. Overall, a really great start to what would prove to be an extremely well done museum!

The museum was light on immersive experiences, but the Pearl Harbor exhibit included a cool multimedia presentation that discussed the role of midget submarines in the attack. Why? Because the museum is home to one of the midget submarines that participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and has it out for visitors to get right up close and personal with it. 

Unsurprisingly, it was just one of many one of a kind artifacts about the attack, including a oil splattered uniform, and part of the USS Arizona.

One of my major complaints with a lot of military museums is that their exhibits tend to focus solely on "here's an M1 Garand, here's a carbine, here's a 60mm mortar", and so on and so forth, often without any information about the weapons beyond their names and the implied fact that they were used in this part of the war. That's all well and good, but it gets repetitive, and a lot of these weapons are essentially military surplus instead of a weapon that was actually used during the war. I've always thought it was a lot more fun to see artifacts that carry a story with them, or some kind of significance beyond "this is a rifle just like every other rifle." 

Excitingly, this museum did have a lot of artifacts that actually have a lot of history behind them. Almost every artifact case included pretty detailed information about uniforms, weapons, and personal effects that had been donated to the museum. It really brings the war to life in a more meaningful way and helps visitors connect to and build empathy with the people who experienced these moments in history.

Although it wasn't the most interactive museum I've ever visited, they also had multiple stations with oral histories, maps, statistics, and quizzes, as well as artifact drawers. These are clever ways of infusing more information into an exhibit without taking up too much floor or wall space, and also allows visitors to feel like they're taking a more active role in learning instead of just passively taking everything in.

Being in Texas, it also spotlighted certain parts of specifically Texas history in the war, including the sinking of the USS Houston. The Houston was sunk in 1942 during the Battle of Sunda Strait. 368 of the 1,061 men on board survived the sinking and were captured by the Japanese, enduring the rest of the war in Japanese POW camps. 21% of the survivors would die before being liberated. 1,000 men from Houston - nicknamed the Houston Volunteers - enlisted in the Navy following the sinking, and a new Houston was launched a year later. Included in the display case was a paperweight with oil from the wreck of the original Houston.

And despite a relatively small floorplan, there were a couple bigger artifacts available to see, including several war planes. This B-25 was meant to represent the planes that participated in the Doolittle Raid against Japan as revenge for Pearl Harbor.

One of the things I love best about visiting a museum like this is being able to see new perspectives on a topic I'm already very well versed in, while also revisiting topics I love to teach others about and already know a fair bit about. I was excited to see quotes from Bob Leckie and a Wildcat like the ones used as part of the Cactus Air Force in the Guadalcanal gallery.

And Jess and I were pleasantly surprised to discover that the Australian participation in the Pacific Theater was well represented with an oral history, tank and artifact case discussing the fighting during the Kokoda Track campaign in Papua New Guinea. Most museums I've visited that discuss the PTO make it sound like it was a solely American campaign, and while it's true that the American military was way more heavily involved in the theater than most other Allied nations, it wasn't a 100% American affair. In general, the museum did a really good job of making it clear that the American military wasn't in this alone, and spotlighted the participation of British, Chinese and Filipino forces as well as Australian. It also has a fair amount of insight into Japanese perspectives on the war as well, including artifacts and oral histories presenting the other side of the battle lines.

Similarly, the discussion of America was not always one sided and sunny. The museum did a really great job of highlighting that America was not some utopia of acceptance and tolerance in the 1940's, and specifically discussed discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities as well as women. There was a whole gallery discussing the issue of Japanese internment, and the participation of Japanese American troops in Europe later in the war. Again, there was a specific focus on Texas here, highlighting discrimination against Black and Latino forces and war workers. 

In one of the more Home Front focused galleries, I was excited to find some wartime cookbooks, as well as artifacts from POW camps, including a spike used on the Burma Railway. The "Death Railway" is the railway that inspired The Bridge on the River Kwai, and is also spotlighted in The Railway Man and the Australian novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. 

Just as the Pacific Theater in general is less well known to Americans, the POW experience in the Pacific really wasn't well known or discussed in American popular culture or historical education until Unbroken was published, and as it's a topic I've really thrown myself into researching, it was both heartbreaking and exciting to see artifacts related to the incredibly hostile conditions Allied POWs suffered under while in Japanese captivity.

On that subject, I was really excited to get into the Peleliu gallery. Again, long time readers will remember my interest in the battle stems from my favorite memoir to come out of World War II: With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge. Sledge was a Private in the Marine Corps who first saw combat on Peleliu, and his memoir is one of if not the most honest, gripping, and human combat memoirs to come out of the war. I seriously can't recommend it enough if you're curious about what combat in the Pacific theater was actually like, especially as the war got closer and closer to the Japanese homeland. 

The National WWII Museum really disappointed me in their Road to Tokyo exhibit by having almost nothing about Peleliu, although you could have Eugene Sledge as your Dogtag Experience character, and it was neat to see a much bigger space devoted to the conflict here. 

Even more exciting was to see they had a replica of a letter Sledge wrote his parents while on Peleliu. I'm guessing the original is probably in the collections of Auburn University, which has a lot of Sledge's wartime papers, or still in the possession of his family.

We continued through the galleries to see artifacts from continuing naval campaigns, as well as a whole room devoted to submarine warfare, which included an interactive periscope. Lalie took a look through to see if she could identify any enemy ships.

So, the main gallery is named the George H. W. Bush Gallery. Again, we made this trip at the end of December, and we were still within the national mourning period for former President George H. W. Bush, so he was definitely on my mind as we went through the galleries and I was curious to see if he had donated any artifacts or provided an oral history for the gallery that bears his name. After passing through about 75% of the galleries, it didn't look like there was much of anything about H. W. Unlike the National WWII Museum or the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the galleries didn't generally spotlight any one person's story in depth beyond artifact labels of oral histories, but I was a little surprised not to see anything referencing the former President's wartime story. 

It wasn't until we passed the submarine exhibit where we found a small wall panel that discussed his career as a Navy aviator, and highlighting his rescue by submarines after being shot down by enemy fire. This included a scrap of a life raft with the future president's signature on it. 

Otherwise, that was about it. I guess if you want more specifics, you should head to his presidential library!

There was a lot of emphasis on why it was important for American forces to retake the Philippines, both from a strategy perspective, but also because of how Filipino civilians risked everything to protect American civilians and military personnel trapped in the islands, and how valiantly Filipino fighting forces had resisted and continued to resist the Japanese occupation. Again, this is something I was really excited to see because it's a story a lot of people just don't know. Some of my former coworkers at my old office job had some really offensive things to say about Filipinos, and it drove me insane knowing what the American military had put the Filipino people through when we euphemistically "took control" of the islands and then how brave and selfless they were in defending the islands during the war. 

The Iwo Jima gallery was similarly well done, and included a poster from the 7th War Loan tour featuring an artist's rendering of Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph which was signed by Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John Bradley. Just like every World War II museum since 2016, the labels describing this artifact and the story of the flag raising has been updated to indicate that John Bradley is not actually in the famous photograph. Confusingly, the label associated with the poster doesn't really explain why this John Bradley guy is signing the poster or on the war loan tour, and maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I am definitely curious to see how museums decide to explain the story without being over complicated, too simple, or otherwise pointing fingers about the misidentification moving forward.

Now, I'm usually very good at sticking to the path in a museum and not wandering too far without reading basically everything in a gallery, but I'll admit, by the time we got to Iwo Jima, I peeked ahead to Okinawa. Why? 

This museum first really got on my radar because I'd heard that they had Eugene Sledge's uniform in their collection and on display in their Okinawa gallery. When I tried to find this information before we left on this trip, I could find literally no reference to it anywhere on the internet, including the museum's website. I found myself wondering had I misremembered? Or just dreamed it? Or maybe it was off exhibit for conservation, or had been returned to his family? 

I tried not to get my hopes up, but I peeked around the corner and... 

There it was!

Now this probably doesn't seem like a big deal, or maybe it might sound a little weird to the non historians in the audience, but getting up close and personal to an artifact that was owned or worn or touched by your very favorite historical figure is actually pretty uncommon, unless you happen to really love a President or other super important, very widely known guy or gal. This also isn't to say that museums haven't been preserving the history of more average folks, but generally speaking, my favorite historical figures' ephemera have either not been preserved, are still in the possession of their families, aren't really on public display anywhere, or are in the possession of their tiny home town historical society, making it tricky to get down there to see them. Seriously, I went to like eight D-Day museums, including the Airborne and Utah Beach museums, as well as the National WWII Museum, without seeing a single artifact owned by Dick Winters. So this was pretty cool. 

With the Old Breed, as well as Unbroken really opened my eyes to the Pacific Theater as an interesting topic for research, while also highlighting just how little most people know about it. Reading Sledge's memoir alongside a really not awesome class about modern Japanese history that totally glossed over any discussion of Japanese war crimes made me intensely curious about the subject, and that interest basically exploded into reading everything I could get my hands on about it. Convincing my buddy to watch The Pacific led to us becoming closer friends and eventually start dating, so in a lot of ways I have Sledge to thank not just for my academic interests, but also literally for my wife and I getting married. 

Besides that, it was also really cool thinking that after literal decades of Sledge feeling like no one cared about Peleliu and the people who fought and died there, I was standing in a museum that educates all its visitors about not just that battle, but the entire theater of war and why it mattered. I totally understand why he or his family chose to donate his uniform here instead of one of the other World War II centered museums or archives.

The gallery ends with discussions about the end of the war, as well as liberation of the POW camps. One of the coolest artifacts they had on display was an American flag covertly made by prisoners of the Japanese over the course of 42 months, using a rusty nail to sew the fabric together. Included in the display cases were artifacts owned by Frank Fujita, a Japanese American who was interned by the Japanese after being captured on Java, Edith Shackelette, an Army nurse interned in the Philippines, and Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a Japanese guard at Omori who was notorious for torturing prisoners, including former Olympian Louie Zamperini. Again, these are all people I've read a lot about and with the obvious exception of Watanabe are people I really respect, so it was very cool seeing artifacts that belonged to them in the exhibit.

We got through the entire gallery in about two or three hours, and I could have spent longer. One of the benefits of going to a museum like this on a limited schedule is I'm already so familiar with the big picture history behind the exhibits that I can kind of skim read what I need to and focus on the stuff I'm more interested in. Even though we were on a tight time table (for me...), I still felt like I got to see everything I wanted to see and then some. 

Excitingly, we also discovered that their temporary exhibit was about the history of the Hawaiian shirt!

The exhibit focused on the art and design of John “Keoni” Meigs, a man with a really incredible history that includes being kidnapped as a baby and only finding out about it when he enlisted in the military. My dad is a huge fan of Hawaiian shirts and this was a really neat look at how designs are conceptualized and finally made. There were some fun print materials about Hawaii during and directly after wartime too, although unfortunately nothing I could use in my continuing research into the cultural significance of tiki bars. Probably for the best, since it's not like I can come back here and research in the collections easily!

So, you're probably wondering why Fredericksburg, Texas, right? At first glance, it does seem like an odd museum focusing on the Pacific Theater of World War II. Why not California, or Hawaii? 

Well, Chester Nimitiz was born and grew up in Fredericksburg, and as Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, his hometown does make a lot of sense to play host to this museum. 

In addition to the main galleries, the museum has preserved the old Nimitz Steamboat Hotel. It was home to the original museum before they were able to expand to the new facility, and now houses a small exhibit about the life and career of Chester Nimitz. It's a short walk away from the George H. W. Bush Gallery and makes a nice compliment to the other galleries.

The only major part of the museum we didn't have a chance to see is the Pacific Combat Zone, a newer addition to the museum's campus that focuses on larger artifacts and living history demonstrations of what war in the Pacific was like. I am so unbelievably curious about these living history displays, but unfortunately they're only held on certain weekends of the year, so we didn't get to see any of that. Just another reason to go back, I suppose. 

If you couldn't tell by my effusive description of pretty much every single thing about this trip, I really genuinely loved this museum and I'd love to go back. I have a tendency to largely unintentionally fall in love with the unknown, underdog, or otherwise slightly unpopular sides to pretty much everything, so it's unusual to find something that so perfectly caters 100% to my personal interests. Usually I'm freaking out about one panel or one artifact, not the entire premise of a museum. 

But even if you're not an enthusiast about the Pacific Theater of World War II, I would definitely recommend it anyway. It tells a well balanced narrative of a story that a lot of Americans aren't familiar with, and doesn't do it in a way that's all guns, tanks, and airplanes. The stories of the people who fought this conflict really come to life in a way I wasn't expecting, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much you come away with if you make the trip yourself. 

Hope you enjoyed this look at a museum that's really worth the three hour drive from Austin!

Or wherever or however far away you might be!