It's unlikely you'll set foot inside Camp Joseph. T. Robinson these days, unless you're involved with the Arkansas National Guard.
But during World II, this facility on the northern edge of North Little Rock was one of the most populous places in the state. As a major U.S. Army training center, it had an average daily head count of 50,000. An estimated 750,000 soldiers saw service on its 32,000 acres, which also housed some 4,000 German prisoners of war.
The story of the site, starting with its World War I incarnation as Camp Pike, is told vividly by way of 230 photographs in Camp Robinson and the Military on the North Shore. The $21.99 paperback, published this spring as part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, was created by Ray Hanley on behalf of the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.
Hanley, who has done other photo books for Arcadia, understands that a picture can be worth a good many words. The panoply of images in this slim volume, amplified by informative captions, gives a clear sense of the prodigious efforts involved in training the vast U.S. citizen armies of 1917-18 and 1941-45.
Style on 06/15/2014