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The art of Ben Steele, war veteran
Post #1354 • May 25, 2009, 9:01 AM
I wasn't planning on a Memorial Day post, but this very much deserves your attention:
When he returned home to Montana after the war, Mr. Steele began to recreate and refine his early work, filling scores of sketchbooks. His aim, he says, has always been “to remember” to remember the more than 10,000 American prisoners from the Philippines who died in Japanese captivity from April 1942 to August 1945.
For more than six decades, Mr. Steele, who went on to become a professor of art at Montana State University, has done just that. Now 91, and one of the last surviving death march veterans, he still draws pictures from the war. “I try to say something through those images, though I don’t know what it is,” he told me. “It’s hard to describe. My head is full of that stuff. It comes pouring out.”
Read the whole thing. Here's a direct link to the images. More on Ben Steele. Happy Memorial Day.