I just found your wonderful website on the "Swayback Maru". What an outstanding job you have done!

My great uncle, Lt. Commander Charles A. Ware, served on the SLC throughout WWII. He joined her as an ensign six months before Pearl Harbor. I have quite a bit of his memorabilia, including the ship's newsletters, "Battle Scenes" cartoons, and photos. It's the photos that I have a question about.

There are 460 of them, many of them taken during action. They begin with 132 shots of the shellback ceremony in July, 1941. There are also 162 photographs of individual crew members as well as groups. There are 50 action photos including the main batteries firing, bofors crews in action, nearby ships being bombed, the ship weathering heavy seas, some wounded men, an SOC Seagull bouncing on landing, and many other subjects. There are also over 100 photos of the crew ashore at Nambour, the New Hebrides, and other islands.

Charles was an avid photographer, but I don't know if all of these pictures were taken by him. Two of them seem to be very similar to the set of five photos that appeared in the March 8, 1943 Time magazine article about the ship, and a number of them have been censored. Some of the shots have been stamped "Not For Publication," and Charles wrote "Not For Sale" on others.

I would love to be able to identify the people in the pictures and understand what was happening in them as well as where they were taken. It is an incredible set of pictures. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you!

Steve Wilke