Andrew J. Blair Collection

Collection — Box: AR000063

Identifier: 000090

Scope and Contents

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This collection contains newsletters, religious service programs, photographs, artwork, and personal ephemera documenting the Navy service of Andrew J. Blair with Construction Battalion Detachment 1045 in the Mediterranean Area and the 147th Naval Construction Battalion on Okinawa. Materials reflect Blair’s roles as organist, assistant chaplain, cartoonist, and illustrator, and document battalion religious life and campus activities.

The bulk of the collection consists of daily and periodic newsletters produced by Blair’s units, including the Oily Rag (Construction Battalion Detachment 1045, 1944-1945), The Junior Rag (1944), and Mate Slate (147th Naval Construction Battalion, Okinawa, 1945), many featuring Blair’s original cartoons. These newsletters report on war news, sports, entertainment, religious services, and camp announcements.

Religious activity is extensively documented through mimeographed worship programs, including Protestant, Catholic, communion, Thanksgiving, and memorial services, produced at Camp Peary and at Mediterranean and Okinawa duty stations, many bearing Blair’s illustrations. Several chaplains recur throughout, including J.T. Burns, S.O. Price, Charles C. Butler, L.H. Peterson, James H. Underwood, Robert J. White, T. Russell Nunan, and Paul C. Edgar. Materials include a memorial service program for four sailors killed aboard LST-3, correspondence and forms related to Blair’s application for promotion to Specialist (W) First Class, and Blair’s original artwork, including a chapel design sketch and cut-out cartoons with accompanying descriptive typescript.

Photograph materials depict servicemen, military installations and chapels, chaplains and religious services, entertainment and musical performances, and daily camp life at Camp Peary, in the Mediterranean, and Okinawa. Also present is a photograph documenting the public humiliation of two women accused of collaborating with German forces, and photographs of military funeral services.

Additional materials include personal correspondence, postcards, greeting cards, a telegram, souvenir and travel ephemera from Williamsburg, Camp Peary, Richmond, and Marseille, printed booklets (prayer and hymn collections, French-English dictionaries, and a Japanese children’s reader), a Bible with a heart plate and accompanying letter, and two copies of a 147th Naval Construction Battalion yearbook.

Dates

Creation: 1941 - 1946

Creator

Blair, Andrew J. (Jackson), 1908-1993 (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish material from this collection in any form must be obtained from the National Museum of the Pacific War, Center for Pacific War Studies.

Biographical / Historical

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Andrew Jackson Blair (1908–1993) was a U.S. Navy chaplain's assistant and church musician who served with Construction Battalion Detachment 1045 and the 147th Naval Construction Battalion during World War II.

Blair was born on March 21, 1908, in Windom, Texas, the son of Andrew Jackson "Jack" Blair and Belle Aurelia Cain Blair. He had several siblings, including: Bernice Myrtle Blair, Willard Cain Blair, Edward Francis Blair, and Margaret Loubelle Blair (later Biard). He graduated from high school in Hugo, Oklahoma, in May 1926 and studied piano privately for approximately ten years. In 1932, he married Louise Walker in Marietta, Oklahoma. In the fifteen years preceding his naval service, Blair worked extensively as a church organist and choir director. He attended Meadow-Draughan Business School for three months in 1943.

Blair entered the Navy in 1943 and served at Camp Peary, Williamsburg, Virginia. He also served with Construction Battalion Detachment 1045, Petroleum Division 1, at the Advance Base Depot hut area in Davisville, Rhode Island, and later in the Mediterranean Area, including southern France in 1944. During this period, he contributed to the battalion newsletters The Oily Rag and The Junior Rag, frequently as a cartoonist. He subsequently served with the 147th Naval Construction Battalion on Okinawa, where he held the rating of Yeoman First Class (Y1c) and served as Chaplain's Assistant. There, he served as Managing Editor of the battalion newsletter Mate Slate and contributed cartoons to the battalion yearbook staff. By October 1945, he worked with Chaplain S. O. Price and Lieutenant Moore to plan the construction of the battalion chapel.

Following the war, Blair worked as an interior decorator. He died in 1993 in Hugo, Oklahoma.

Full Extent

.6 Linear Feet (24 folders)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Arrangement

This collection consists of one Bankers box divided into four series:

Series I: Photographs

Series II: Newsletters

Series III: Religious Service Programs

Series IV: Ephemera and Printed Materials