A half-dozen Pacific war murals painted circa 1944 have been transplanted from Midway Atoll, where few people got to see them and deterioration was taking a toll, to Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, where many thousands will be able to appreciate the restored artwork.
The 8-by-12-foot paintings, which depict wartime activity, including a busy Essex-class aircraft carrier deck and Army soldiers coming ashore from a landing craft in the Pacific, are on loan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.
Midway has a resident population of about 40 and no tourism, while the Ford Island aviation museum drew about 245,000 people last year.
Pacific Aviation Museum historian Burl Burlingame said the works by Navy Seabee Victor Nels Solander capture moments of wartime life in the Pacific.
“No matter what (Americans) built, they tended to put paintings in it,” Burlingame. “These (paintings by Solander) happen to be pretty nice ones. The guy was clearly an artist.”
In this case the murals were placed in the Midway theater. Not only is there a depiction of a South Dakota-
class battleship as well as a PT boat cutting through the waves (with “PT 109” added on the bow in the 1960s in a tip of the hat to the Navy service of President John F. Kennedy), there is also the mundane: Seabees using a crane to move pierced steel planking for an island runway.
A final mural portrays a torpedo being hoisted in or out of a pier-side submarine by a work detail with a few palms in the background.
For the past year museum staff and volunteers have worked to stabilize the murals, which were officially unveiled Friday in Hangar 79 in conjunction with the 74th anniversary of the Battle of Midway on June 4-7, 1942, which tipped the balance of sea power away from Japan and to the United States.
The commemoration is also tied to the annual “Biggest Little Airshow in Hawaii” at the museum, with Warbirds West flying large-scale remote-controlled aircraft.
In 2013 Fish and Wildlife Service announced the partnership with the Pacific Aviation Museum to save the murals.
At that time, former refuge manager Sue Schulmeister said, “As I watched the increasing deterioration of the theater walls and ceiling in the few years that I have lived here, I knew we would soon lose these beautiful paintings if we could not relocate them to a more stable environment.”
Fish and Wildlife contacted the aviation museum after termites on Midway “had completely eaten away the backing” on the paintings, Burlingame said.
Fish and Wildlife outreach specialist Ann Bell said last week, “Those murals are so iconic for the people that were there (on Midway) from World War II on.”
Midway had several hundred buildings and during the Cold War and Vietnam War supported 5,000 personnel and dependents. Naval Air Station Midway was operationally closed in 1993.
“What happened is they had built a gym, and then they decided to fill in the windows of the gym and make it into a theater,” Burlingame said. “So one of the Seabees, a guy named Solander, said, ‘I’ll paint some murals,’ so they filled in the windows.” He was given a $100 war bond for his work.
The murals were painted on Masonite affixed to plywood. Burlingame said little is known about Solander, who was with the 123rd Naval Construction Battalion.
“He was from Missoula, Montana, joined the Seabees when he was in his early 30s, so he wasn’t a kid, and when the war was over he went right back to Missoula,” Burlingame said.
The museum affixed the paintings to plywood backed by steel frames. Burlingame estimates each piece of hanging art now weighs 400 to 500 pounds. Volunteers at the museum spent many hours painstakingly cleaning the paintings with vinegar and big cotton swabs.
The murals now hang in a row on the south side of Hangar 79 away from the sun. Burlingame said they “put you into the time and place” of the Pacific war.
“I like the fact that they are a little crude, because you can see the hand of the artist in it,” Burlingame said. “You can sort of feel what he felt like while he was doing it. They are not photorealistic. They are artistic.”
The Biggest Little Airshow in Hawaii will be held 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and Sunday. The public can drive onto Ford Island for the event or take the shuttle from the USS Arizona memorial visitor center. More information is available online at pacificaviationmuseum.org.
