Record date:
Stephen Blake, Mopic (Motion Picture Camera Operators) - Specialist 4
Stephen Blake, born in Springfield, Vermont, in 1939, was an accountant, before he enlisted in the US Army in 1959. There he switched from crunching numbers to shooting photos and attended the motion picture school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
Blake was first assigned to an arms testing unit in California where he filmed footage of the tests. After that, he was transferred to NATO in Paris. In Paris, Blake endured a leg injury. Once he recovered, he followed the NATO football team around Europe. His NATO unit was moved to Belgium in 1967 for a year and then he was transferred to Virginia before being assigned to Hawaii DASPO (Department of the Army Special Photographic Office) Pacific. After Blake served at Hawaii DASPO Pacific for three years, he was transferred to DC where he worked for the agency’s headquarters doing jobs for the Pentagon and White House, such as staging President Carter’s fireside chats.
From 1970 to 1973, Blake was deployed to DASPO rotating between Vietnam, Korea, and Thailand. Blake rose to the rank of Sergeant First Class (SFC) in his position of Motion Picture Specialist 84C, at the 4th level, which entailed a high level of managerial responsibilities in addition to photographic skills. Afterwards, he also went around the United States interviewing POWs. Then, Blake worked in the newspaper business for twenty-two years before retiring.
Blake was interviewed in conjunction with the web exhibit: Faces of War: Documenting the Vietnam War from the Front Lines and with the Citizen Soldier program: Capturing the Faces of War: DASPO Photographers in Vietna
