Now in 3-D

Recently I have an old fascination with stereoscopic images has been rekindled. When I was a child a family friend gave me a couple of boxed filled with Viewmaster reels from the 1950s, I looked at them through an old bakelite viewer not really knowing the value of the collection until much older.

This stereoscope card is a strange one. I know little of the context from which it was made or of its origins. A friend gave it to me a few years ago because it had "Something Japanese and of the war on it." If anything, this one stereoscope card contrasts the collection of kitschy images of the 1950s Viewmaster reels' idealized America of tourist attractions, national monuments, and cartoon characters.