Shortly after May 22, 1960, when the largest earthquake ever recorded ripped through towns in coastal Chile, an unknown photographer came to the scene of destruction and documented the wreckage in stark black-and-white images.
More than 50 years later, a library volunteer in Providence, Rhode Island, came across the photographs in a simple three-ring binder an anonymous donor had placed in a box of books given to the library.
Now the photos have made their way back across the continent and beyond. They’re the latest addition to the Pacific Tsunami Museum’s archive, a puzzle piece that fits into a larger story of Hilo itself.
The 9.5 magnitude Chilean earthquake created a tsunami that swept through downtown Hilo some 15 hours later. The 1960 earthquake primarily affected the Waiakea Town area. Sixty-one people died in the disaster.
The aftermath is well-known: After the tsunami, the downtown area was rebuilt as a green space, with Liliuokalani Gardens as its centerpiece.
“Now we have the whole story, from the beginning,” museum archivist Barbara Muffler said. “It starts with the earthquake…this is a real treasure trove for the museum.” The clarity of the images was particularly striking, she said.
Doug Victor, the Friends of the Knight Memorial Library volunteer who discovered the photos, came to Hilo to deliver the collection in person. It is thanks to Victor that the images are in Hawaii — the history of downtown Hilo is not one many New Englanders are familiar with, but Victor had visited the Big Island years ago to teach a dance workshop.
“If I hadn’t been to Hilo, I wouldn’t have know about the tsunami museum,” he said.
On seeing the photos, Victor knew he wanted the collection to be accessible to the public.
“Some place where it can be enjoyed by everybody, not in a collector’s home,” he said. He considered donating to a library, but worried they might “end up in back archives.”
Ultimately, he decided, the tsunami museum should have the photos.
Almost all of the museum’s photo archive has come from donations.
“It’s people’s collections, their personal photographs,” Muffler said.
Because the donation was anonymous, there is no way to know who originally took the photos. Victor said that based on the other books in the donation box, the person was likely well-traveled and well-read (and a University of Arizona alumnus).
“We suspected it was military,” Victor said. The collection contains photographs of United States Air Force planes, which came to Chile as part of an international aid coalition, that are similar to images in the National Archive of relief efforts.
“These are professional photographs,” Muffler said. “Most people don’t take photos like this.”
E-mail Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.