In 1942, Task Force 6184, better known as Poppy Force, left New York for the distant shores of New Caledonia. Among the 15,000 soldiers of the American expeditionary force was a young quartermaster corporal and amateur photographer named Elmer Williams.

"Tour of Paradise: An American Soldier in the South Pacific," featuring 44 photographs taken by Williams during his tour of New Caledonia, opens a window into his view of the Pacific island in the wartime era. It's featured at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Hamilton Library Bridge Gallery. After a private reception tonight, it's on display through Feb. 27.

The showing is part of a larger exhibit called, "Paradise Lost and Saved: Wartime Photographs of the South Pacific," which includes works by contemporary Australian photographers Ben Bohane and Jon Lewis, documenting recent upheavals in East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Bougainville, as well as a separate photographic exhibit focusing on the Australian army's North West Mobile Force.

The Poppy Force, hastily cobbled from National Guard units in 13 states, was sent to help protect New Caledonia, then a French colony and a vital link to Australia, from the Japanese advance through the Southwest Pacific. With little preparation, Williams and his fellow soldiers entered a complex, multicultural society with European, Asian and indigenous Kanak populations, notes exhibit curator Prue Ahrens.

"Taking photographs was means by which Willliams could explore his new base, and the foreign people and places he encountered during his time in the South Pacific," Ahrens writes.

Working with a small box Brownie camera and a small tent that served as his dark room, Williams captured scenes of everyday life in New Caledonia.

In her introduction to the book "Tour of Paradise," Ahrens suggests that Williams "borrowed the visual language" of American artists such as Dorothea Lange and Norman Rockwell in photos that reinforce American ideals of youth, freedom and success.

In the same book, essayist Kim Munholland notes the irony inherent in what Williams does and does not include in his photographs. Kanak citizens are depicted as friendly and essentially harmless "others," while African-American soldiers, who were segregated from white soldiers, are not photographed at all.

With no surviving commentary from Williams, the collected works are open to interpretation and analysis. Some see the effort of a young man far from home to make sense of an "exotic" environment by grasping for familiar and available images. Others, like Ahrens, note that the benign subject matter of many of the photos may have been Williams' effort to assure loved one's at home of his safety (he often included photographs with his letters).

Williams died in 1993 after a long career in the U.S. military.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.