Archives On The Air 182: Wartime Anthropologist—Moana Tregaskis—Richard Tregaskis Papers

Published May 28, 2020 at 4:58 PM MDT

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Moana Tregaskis with her camera. Photo taken by her husband Richard Tregaskis, ca. 1963. Box 73, Richard Tregaskis papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

American Heritage Center

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Moana Tregaskis with her camera. Photo taken by her husband Richard Tregaskis, ca. 1963. Box 73, Richard Tregaskis papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

American Heritage Center

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Moana and Richard Tregaskis at their wedding in Maui, Hawaii, September 12, 1963. Box 73 Richard Tregaskis papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

American Heritage Center

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Moana and Richard Tregaskis at their wedding in Maui, Hawaii, September 12, 1963. Box 73 Richard Tregaskis papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

American Heritage Center

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Moana and Richard Tregaskis in Vietnam, ca. 1963. Much of Richard's documentation of the Vietnam War was from the air. Box 82, Richard Tregaskis papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

American Heritage Center

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American Heritage Center

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In 1973, longtime war correspondent Richard Tregaskis drowned while swimming near Honolulu. In 1974, his widow, Moana Tregaskis, presented a helmet worn by her late husband during the 1944 Anzio campaign in Italy to Jerry W. Friedheim, Assistant Secretary

American Heritage Center

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American Heritage Center

Moana McLaughlin Tregaskis is at times eclipsed by her husband - noted journalist and author Richard Tregaskis. Like her husband, she was a reporter and war correspondent.

For many years she was with The New York Times. With Richard, she traveled throughout Vietnam during the war.

Her photographs are markedly different from her husband's. Her training as an anthropologist is reflected in her subject selection. It is more scientific than journalistic.

She went on to become an author specializing in Asia and the Pacific.

Learn more in the Tregaskis papers at UW's American Heritage Center.