Photograph of Maine First Sergeant Neil I. Shober of Fort Wayne, Indiana, sharing his bananas with a native goat, one of the few survivors of the terrific naval and air bombardment in support of the Marines hitting the beach on the Japanese-mandated island of Saipan, in July 1944.
The photo captures one of those quietly human moments that war photographers often sought out amid the chaos, a battle-hardened Marine, sitting in his foxhole with his rifle beside him and the scarred, bombed-out landscape behind him, offering a banana to a stray white goat that had somehow survived the same bombardment he had. The island’s palm trees, reduced to bare stumps in the background, speak to the ferocity of the pre-invasion shelling.
The photograph is part of the collection donated by combat photographer Norm Hatch, who joined the Marine Corps in 1939 and served in battles across the Pacific, including Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. He is particularly well known for shooting the Academy Award-winning documentary With the Marines at Tarawa (1944). The collection is now held by the National Museum of the Pacific War.
The Battle of Saipan was one of the most pivotal engagements of the Pacific War, with the island declared secure on July 9, 1944, after brutal fighting involving the 2nd Marine Division, the 4th Marine Division, and the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Division. The National WWII Museum Against that backdrop, this small, gentle image of a Marine sharing fruit with a goat became an enduring symbol of humanity found in the middle of war.
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