Brown, Holloway, May 25, 1981

Holloway Brown was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in Washington D.C. He studied at George Washington University at night, completing two years toward a degree when Pearl Harbor was attacked. In the spring of 1942, he volunteered for the Navy. He was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in Washington, where he worked in the mail room. Hoping to be more intimately involved in the war itself, in 1944 he elected to enroll in the Navy School of Photography in Pensacola, Florida, though he had no background in photography. After completion of his training, the war was over. He was given an option -- be discharged or go to Guam. He chose Guam, where he was stationed for six months with the Naval Photo Reconnaissance Squadron. He was then sent to Kanoya, Japan in early 1946. In April of that year, he was offered a job with the Department of the Army (DAC) as a photo editor in General Douglas MacArthur's public relations office. The Signal Corps was responsible for photographing; Brown went to their headquarters daily to select photographs to make available to correspondents. He spent two years in that position (1946-1948). He then joined the Press Analysis Section, Civil Information & Education (CI&E), Press & Publications Division, where he was involved in creating daily summary analyses of select articles in Japanese newspapers for information gathering purposes. In 1949, this unit was merged with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS). There, Brown wrote summary analyses of articles in periodicals. He left Japan in 1950 to finish his Bachelor's degree at Columbia University and earned a Master's degree in Journalism there, as well. He returned to Japan in 1953, worked initially as a journalist and then taught at the Internatlonal Christian University.