Name/Title
2017 The Gail Project "An Okinawan Dialogue" ExhibitionDescription
The Gail Project is a collaborative, international public history project that explores the founding years of the American military occupation of Okinawa. The project is inspired by a collection of photos taken in Okinawa in 1952 by an American Army Captain: Charles Eugene Gail. The photos were generously donated to Special Collections at McHenry Library by Charles' daughter, Geri Gail, and have since been made available for student research. Our team of faculty, staff and undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, developing a traveling exhibition of Gail's photographs with an accompanying digital archive that is comprised of the photos, key texts and documents, oral histories from both American and Okinawan We believe that using the photographs as a lens through which this view the crucial time is relevant to populations throughout Okinawa, Japan, the United States and the entire Pacific region, and we aim to establish A dialogue by shedding light on both historical and contemporary issues.
The project emphasizes hands-on research and creation of undergraduate students and as an innovative platform for new educational methods that encourage the use of multimedia, social media, archival research and travel. This past August, a group of UCSC students, faculty, and staff travelled to Okinawa to re-visit many of Charles Gail's original photographic sites and documented how the Okinawan landscape has changed over the past 64 years.
