Jim Pollock Question and Answer Main Page
JIM POLLOCK INTERVIEW (copyright) Jim Pollock
10/2/96
Interview questions for newspaper article about Pollock's Vietnam Combat Art Web site.
Questions revolve around the subjects of Vietnam Combat Art WEB site, Information on the site, WAAY TV Huntsville, Alabama Site of the day and other related questions.
Q: WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO PUT UP A WEB SITE?
POLLOCK: Primarily for historical and educational purposes.
The Vietnam Combat Art program is not widely known. I had saved official documents and text information about the Army's soldier art program. I also had slides of my work as a soldier artist and felt this would be an economical way of making this information I had available to the general public.
Another reason was the availability of a place to put the information with minimal costs. My cousin, Jim MacKay subscribes to America On Line and part of America On Line's basic package allows members to create and post noncommercial home pages. He was not using the space allotted him and I suggested that we use it to post this U.S. Army Vietnam Combat Art material I had saved over the years. He agreed to this and so I developed the site in HTML format and he posted it. I call him the web master for our site.
Q: WHEN DID YOU PUT YOUR WEB SITE ONLINE?
POLLOCK: The first web page was put up in February, 1996. It was a one page test to see if my idea would work. I took an old article that had been written about me by Chuck Cecil from the South Dakota Alumnus Magazine in 1968 and developed the article as a WEB page. The page was up loaded to the server and everything worked fine, so than I started working on the expanded version of the Vietnam Combat Art site.
The expanded version was completed and put up in the early part of April, 1996. The final version of the site consisted of 45 different files that had to be up loaded and properly linked. All of the links worked on my desk computer, so I sent the files to my cousin Jim Mackay by E-mail and he up loaded them to the America On Line server. Everything worked the first time and people have been visiting our site ever since then.
Q: WHAT CAN PEOPLE FIND ON YOUR WEB SITE?
POLLOCK: The focus of the site is artwork I did as a soldier artist in Vietnam, in 1967. The web site, however, is not just a picture site. It has a variety of historical and primary source written documents. The site includes articles from newspapers as well as official U.S. Army documents. I am sort of a pack rat and while in Vietnam I collected quite a few documents which I had saved through the years.
Some of the more interesting U.S. Army documents that are posted are Combat Art Security Rules which detail health Hazards in Vietnam and Personal Security Rules. Duty Hints in Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) form detail helpful hints and general information for newcomers to Vietnam. Memorandum 860-1 details the Historical Activities of US Army Combat Artist Teams in Vietnam. My orders assigning me to Combat Art Team IV are also posted.
There is a non-war art section that has examples of my art since my days as a soldier artist and an article about the South Dakota Bison gold and silver pieces that I designed in 1987.
Q: HAS THERE BEEN ANYTHING UNUSUAL OR SURPRISING ABOUT THIS WEB SITE VENTURE?
POLLOCK: Yes, the most surprising thing has been the interest in my web site by students. This interest by young people was totally unexpected and not planned for. I have an E-mail responder on my site. This means anyone who visits the site can send a note by E-mail. Students from throughout the US and some from foreign countries write and request an interview for their history, art, social study and other school related papers. Some examples, a student from Mount Olive HS, Mount Olive, Illinois doing a paper for her History II class, a student from the University of Wales doing a paper on Political Art, a student from an Italian Student-Intermediate School in Italy preparing a study for different aspects of the Vietnam War, a student from California State, Northridge who said she left Vietnam when she was 3 and others. It has amazed me this interest by students who were just babies or might not have been born during the Vietnam War.
In addition to students, I also received many touching messages from veterans and their families, thanking me for putting up the site. Sometimes the messages are very personal, recounting an event or a relative lost as the result of the Vietnam War. I'm not sure I understand this aspect of my art and how the pictures reach out in this manner, but I am pleased that the art does reach out, and am moved by the E-mail messages that I do receive from veterans and their families. This response from veterans was totally unexpected also.
Q: WAS DEVELOPING THE WEB SITE DIFFICULT?
POLLOCK: Not really. I had all of the materials and equipment that I needed to develop the site. I work as a free lance artist and use my computer extensively in my work. I had a scanner, a computer, and most of the software needed to develop a site. If I had not already had all this equipment and had to purchase equipment and software just to do the site, it would have been expensive. I guess developing the site was just an extension of what I was already doing.
I have been working with and using the computer since 1986. Before that I was always interested in this type of technology.
People that do not have access to a computer and scanners can hire people to develop WEB sites. There are several commercial WEB site developers in South Dakota. This is probably the best way for people interested in developing a site that do not have the knowledge or equipment to do so.
Developing the site meant getting all of the material in digital form. January and February of this year (1996) is when I did most of the preparation work for the site.
The first thing I did was organize all of the pictures and have them transformed into digital form. The most common way to do this is with a scanner or having slides transferred to KODAK photo CDs. Next I input the text manually into digital form. Once I had all of the pieces in digital form, I developed web site outline and a plan and put it together. It was like putting a puzzle together. We have links that connect one part of the site to another. This ability to maneuver with links and move from one place on the site to another with the click of a mouse is one of the unique characteristics of the internet that makes it different from the print media.
The WEB uses a language called HTML which are simple codes that tell a WEB browser what to do when it access a page. Page mill is an example of an easy to use software program available commercially that helps facilitate making HTML pages. It is with these HTML codes that links are created.
Q: HOW MANY VISITORS HAVE YOU HAD?
POLLOCK: By September, 1999 the web site counter indicated over 110,000 visitors to the site.
Preparing the site is one thing, but once you have a site up loaded to the server, getting the word out that the site is available is a different type of problem. In many ways, attracting visitors is more difficult than developing a site. Having a home page is one thing, and getting people to come to it is quite another task.
The site with the major search engines. The next task was to try and determine who the audience for the site would be. Obvious audiences were art, veterans, and history buffs. When I listed the site in search engines, I focused on tying the site to these and other audiences I could identify. One of our major links is with the Vietnam Veterans home page. This is a noncommercial site donated by Federal Express and maintained by Vietnam Veterans. It is a major site that has links to hundreds or even thousands of other Vietnam Veteran resource related sites. Fred Smith, CEO and founder of FEDEX is a Vietnam Veteran.
I wrote to a lot of Veteran, history and art web sites in 1996 notifying people that the site was up. In 1996 the World Wide Web becoming a major player in the information field and many colleges and organizations were actually looking useful new links to post to their own web sites. A lot of links back to my site were picked up in this manner. I recently did a reverse link lookup, in non technical terms this shows how many other web sites our site is linked or indexed with. The reverse lookup showed 179 sites had linked themselves to my site.
Q: DID GETTING SITE OF THE DAY ON HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA TV STATION WAAY HELP YOUR VISITATION?
POLLOCK: Yes, everything along these lines helps. I had identified some TV stations that were asking people to send in internet addresses for consideration for "sites of the day". The Huntsville Alabama Television Station WAAY picked our site because of its content.
Immediately after being picked there was increases in visitation. It is hard to tell about these things, because there are fluctuations in visitations from day to day.
The site has been conferred several other awards and reviews. All these things add up to help increase visitations.
Q: SOME QUESTIONS ON THE VIETNAM COMBAT ART PROGRAM, HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT THE VIETNAM COMBAT ART PROGRAM?
POLLOCK: While stationed in Korea at a place called Camp Ames ( with 8th Army, 1st Base Post Office) a friend of mine reported seeing an article in the Pacific Edition of Stars and Stripes an announcement from the Army that detailed how soldiers could apply for duty as Combat Artists in Vietnam. He gave me the article and I started the application process.
Q: DID THE APPLICATION PROCESS TAKE VERY LONG?
POLLOCK: The circular that announced the program was called circular No. 28-30. The Vietnam Combat Art Program had been instituted in 1966. The soldiers participating in the program were divided into 5 person teams. Teams I, II, and III had already completed their jobs and team IV, which would be in Vietnam from 15 Aug.-15 October 1967 was the team I would be applying for. Team IV would do finished work from 16 Oct.-31 Dec. 1967 in Hawaii and then the 5 members would return to their original units.
When applying I had to be eligible and authorized by my Commander in Korea to be released for Temporary Duty (TIDY) to participate. My Commander moved rather slowly at first, but once they saw I was determined to submit my application, they finally filled out the necessary paperwork so that I could start the process of submitting my application to the Office of Chief of Military History.
The application included samples of my art, I believe they wanted some originals, some slides and a biography/resume. These materials were sent to the Office of Chief of Military History, Department of the Army in Washington, D. C. where the actual selection process took place. The Army Crafts Program and Army Command Special Services in Korea facilitated things between my local command and the Office of Chief of Military History.
After I was selected and reported to Vietnam, our art team was given open travel orders and we could, with few restrictions, travel inside Vietnam wherever we wanted. We visited many different types of units and usually stayed from 1 to 4 days. We were always welcome in units that we visited.
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