MSU Retirees - Military Interest: Photos and Videos of WWII

Eric D. Zemper, eldest son of Duane Zemper, a World War II photographer, will speak to members and guests of the Military Interest group about his father, Duane Zemper, on Tuesday, April 14, at 2 p.m. at the MSUFCU at Farm Lane and Mt. Hope in East Lansing. The Military Interest group is a special interest group of MSURA.
Duane Zemper was a First Lieutenant and commanding officer of the Photo Intelligence unit attached to the 457th Bomb Group of the U.S. Army Navy Force, a B-17 bomber group stationed in England during World War II. First Lt. Zemper was stationed at Glatton airbase, just south of Peterborough in England, from January 1944 until the end of June 1945.
At the end of the war in Europe, First Lt. Zemper fortunately chose to ignore the base commander’s orders to destroy everything in the photo lab and brought home over 1,800 photographs and photographic negatives, plus about 12,000 feet of 16mm movie film of events around the base and on combat missions.
This treasure trove of historical documentation was inherited by his eldest son, Eric D. Zemper, after Duane Zemper died in 2016. Since then Eric has been organizing, scanning

and digitizing to archival quality all these materials, and making them available to museums and other interested groups across the country.
The material presented on April 14 will include a few minutes of video from the movies brought back by First Lt. Zemper, showing activities on the ground at the base and in the air on missions. Also shown will be an 18-minute video produced by the University of Michigan Flint PBS station about Zemper’s experiences in WWII, which won a regional Emmy for best historical documentary in 2007.
In addition, there will be another 30-minutes of interviews with Zemper that were not included in the PBS video.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher MSU Retirees Association