When the Japanese attacked, George Eisenberg's job as a radar man aboard the destroyer USS LaVallette was to keep track of approaching enemy planes, submarines and battleships and direct the gunners to the targets.
"We were under attack all the time," he said, thinking back to the suicide Kamikaze pilots, submarine torpedoes and enemy gunfire that took the lives of so many of his friends during the second world war.
Anytime Eisenberg's ship was not under attack, his unofficial job was artist.
Trained at Massachusetts College of Art the year before he enlisted in the Navy, Eisenberg made nearly 400 sketches, drawings and paintings from 1942 through 1945 while aboard the LaVallette. The warship took him first to Africa during the Tunisian Campaign, and continued through the end of the war to places like Fiji, the Philippines, Samoa, Manila, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and countless other locales. All the while, he captured everything with his brush and pencil, using the back of Naval nautical charts as his canvases.
It was a stroke of luck that an artist as talented as Eisenberg — who after the war went on to become a renowned illustrator, doing the first illustrations for the original GI Joe action figures, game covers for Milton Bradley, countless magazine covers and other work — was aboard a ship that saw so much action during the defining historic event of modern times.
The honest portraits show young men living their day-to-day lives aboard a battleship in the throngs of war.
"There was so much interesting information emanating from the war itself. If you can imagine, there was so much going on just in everyone's little corner," Eisenberg, 90, said this week from the Marblehead house he and his wife, Gabrielle, have lived in for more than 40 years. The drawings "represent the moments happening during those periods of time. There is no sequence or order. It tells the observer, 'This is what (war) looks like.'"
Some of the Eisenberg's work went on display yesterday at the Northeast Arc's Community Gallery in Peabody. The gallery is holding a special exhibit through July 8, featuring artwork from local servicemen and -women, including several who are currently active in the military. The exhibit includes paintings, mixed-media, sculpture, pottery, photography, print making and fine jewelry.
The most striking feature of Eisenberg's art is how utterly mundane and commonplace so many of his images appear to be. A man peering through a telescope; a sailor sitting on a barrel of ammunition; men unloading cargo; two embarrassed, red-faced sailors gawking at the naked breasts of a Filipino woman. Nothing was too small or insignificant for his attention or his pen — all it took was an image, an idea, an expression.
"The subtleties of realism is what really captures my attention," he said.
"That watercolor up top," he continued, pointing to a tired sailor seated on the ship's deck, washing clothes in a bucket. "Everyone went through that situation where you feel you've been out there so long and you deserve to be sent home for some rest and relaxation."
He kept his art supplies in his bunk — an outdoor hammock on the starboard wing of the ship's bridge, which rolled out over the water every time the great ship swayed with the swells. The ship's captain gave Eisenberg broad permission to draw his sketches, even during some combat situations. They all knew what he was doing was important, that it would last well beyond any of them. It's one of the reasons he was so diligent, and so prolific. It's why he requested a change from a third class petty officer, which would have kept him mostly below deck, to a second class radar man stationed on the bridge — the site of all the action.
"Yes, I did have that in mind," he said, referring to the history he was capturing with every pencil stroke. "I saw immediately that I needed to get on the bridge, and that's what happened."
Under attack
But it also put him in harm's way. As a key supply ship, the LaVallette was often attacked. In one attack, Eisenberg's friend was hit just feet away and died in his arms. He later visited the man's family and brought the drawings he had made of their son.
Someone with no combat experience might think all of this must have been terrifying.
"No it wasn't," Eisenberg says with surprising immediacy and conviction. "Terror is directed toward people who don't know what to expect. We were conditioned. Only after it's over do you suddenly realize how close you were to the end of life."
The war brought many happy moments as well.
Whenever the ship went to port at one of the thousands of islands in the South Pacific, the natives were astounded by Eisenberg's art.
"They were my friends," he remembers.
He drew their portraits, and in return they gave him little treasures from their daily lives; a handmade machete and sheath, bamboo hats, hand carvings and other crafts. Once, a man even rowed his canoe out to the destroyer holding a live chicken in his arms.
"He wanted us to take it in gratitude."
During a few months when the boat was held up off the Philippines awaiting repair, he became especially good friends with some of the locals. They would often row out to the ship under the cover of darkness to pick up Eisenberg and a few friends and transport them back to shore.
What exactly happened when he jumped ship?
"That's none of your business," he says, smiling.
For his birthday, Gabrielle created a blog to digitally display some of the hundreds of drawings and diary entries her husband made during the war.
In the two weeks after the site went live, the Eisenbergs received thousands of messages, phone calls and letters from all over the world. A professor at a University in Manila wanted to talk with Eisenberg about the liberation. People from the Philippines wanted to tell him how his drawings of the islands moved them. Relatives of the men Eisenberg drew aboard the USS LaVallette have come forward to ask him about their loved ones. He knows how they all feel. He's surrounded by the originals hanging on the walls of his Marblehead studio, and even at 90, each drawing brings him back to the moment when it was crafted.
"These are stories hanging on the wall," he said.
If you go
What: "Welcome Home: An Exhibit of Works by Active Duty Servicemen & Women and Veterans."
Where: Northeast Arc's Community Gallery, 22 Foster St., Peabody
When: Through July 8, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays
To see more of Eisenberg's work: visit www.georgeseisenberg.com or www.asailorsdiary.com
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