Oklahoma WWII

“I think it’s very important for the public, our commanders, our leaders, to have pictures, both motion and stills, showing what is going on in a war,” said Ned Hockman, when I visited with him at his home last August.  “It’s making a record, to record the happenings so that the people that are paying the bills or people that are supposed to be winning the war are doing that.  That’s the contribution of combat cameramen in war.”

Hockman was one of a select group of photographers who were responsible for making a record of World War II for the U.S. War Department.  Hockman grew up in Carnegie, Oklahoma and attended Cameron College in Lawton on a football and speech scholarship.  His father had taught him photography, so he got a job as a photographer for the Lawton Morning Press.  After a year at Cameron he received a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, and that’s where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Hockman was drafted the next summer.  He didn’t have the eyesight to become a pilot, but was chosen to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps.  He trained at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, and Lowry Field in Denver, Colorado before being assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, California.  The Adjutant was a young captain named Ronald Reagan.  Hockman trained in California for a year and a half before getting orders to go to his new home for the rest of the war, the China-Burma-India theater.

(above, left)  Ned Hockman, combat cameraman.

“Our assignment was to make combat coverage of all types of action of the Air Corps,” Hockman remembered.  “That included flying equipment over the hump to China and later on to Burma when we pushed the Japanese out of Burma.  Then, we would support the bombing missions.  We would cover the Air Transport Command, the B-25’s and B-24’s.  We did stories on the building of the air field, and stories on the fighters.”

It was a laborious and sometimes dangerous process.  “When I’d go out on a shoot I’d have a parachute on this shoulder, in a box my 35 mm camera, a black case with a speed graphic camera, and I carried a Thompson sub-machine gun.  So, I would waddle with that,” Hockman recalled.  “We’d go out on assignment, with 10 100-foot rolls of film in each case.  You’d take the pictures and when it was all done we’d either give it to someone who was going on the redeye or special plane that was taking film and stuff to Calcutta, or we’d call headquarters and they would pick it up.  It would take another three days or so to get it over to the Pentagon to process the film.”

Hockman says much of the film was bought from the U.S. Government by newsreels, which showed the realities of war to the people back home.  However, Hockman admits many of the shots were staged.  “In combat, you can only shoot the backs of people, you can never see the shots being fired from the front of the gun.  So, you show preparation, and you shoot to your right and shoot to your left as the troops move forward.  And then, you show the aftermath – the dead, the captors, the aftermath.  A lot of the film we shot wasn’t very good, because it’s very difficult.”

Danger was a constant companion for photographers, but Hockman told me there is little time to think about it.  “You just do your job,” he said, “and you don’t really have time to think.  You’re not paying any attention to what’s going on around you, because you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing (to get coverage).  I looked at it as a great adventure.”

After World War II, Hockman returned to Oklahoma and stayed in the Air Force Reserves.  He returned to combat status as a photographer during the Korean War.  Hockman rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Reserves, and retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1981. 

In his long career at the University of Oklahoma, Hockman established the Film Department, shot film of OU football games, produced the ground-breaking Bud Wilkinson Coaches Show, hosted the National Press Photographers Association annual training for almost three decades, and photographed or produced countless other productions, including a feature film, “Stark Fear.”  He was inducted into the National Television Academy of Arts and Sciences Gold Circle in October, 2006.

Until next time, Dick Pryor

(Ned Hockman was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 31, 2007.  To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)

- Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 4:29 pm in Army Air Corps, China-Burma-India, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, The Oklahoman, The War, World War II. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.