The William Stinson Brown & Joanne Auringer Brown Family Collection preserves the wartime photographs and personal correspondence of Corporal William Stinson Brown, a United States Marine who served as a Military Policeman throughout his service. Brown was stationed at the Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, for roughly two years before the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, and it is this pre-attack material — photographs and letters documenting barracks life, liberty outings around Oahu, and the men of Company A’s Main Gate Guard, several of whom did not survive the war — that is of particular interest to researchers, offering a rare, dated window into the peacetime Pacific garrison in the months immediately before Pearl Harbor.

Brown was present at Pearl Harbor during the attack itself and remained stationed there afterward; his letters from this period were subject to wartime censorship and could not describe what he had witnessed. He went on to fight in the Battle of Guadalcanal before returning stateside, where he helped train Marines being readied for the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. His wife, Joanne Auringer Brown, served in the Marine Corps in her own right during World War II; the two married after the war. Materials from her service are expected to join this collection once they are scanned. The collection was generously donated to the COGG Honor Archive by Brown’s son, William Stinson “Bill” Brown Jr., and his granddaughter, Caitlin Brown Clancy, so that these firsthand materials could remain freely available to historians, writers, and students researching the Pearl Harbor era, the Pacific theater, and the Marine Corps’ role in both.