Seven sixth grade classes from the Tachikawa Air Base, Japan, Dependent Elementary School got together at the Tachikawa West Track Saturday, Oct. 22, 1960, for the Junior Olympics, their own version of the athletic classic.

Boys and girls on the teams ran the gamut of competitive skills in the big global event, including shot-putting, broad jumping and relay races.

The 1960 Junior Olympics began when student Tom Mulky, acting as the Olympic flame runner, touched his torch to the fire pot that burned throughout the competition. The teams were named after the seven cities of ancient Greece — Corinth, Olympia, Argos, Thebes, Sparta, Marathon and Athens.

Pictured here are scans of the original 1960 prints created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department to run in the print newspaper. The red marks indicate the crop lines. Only the middle part of the image would appear in the newspaper. As the vast majority of pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963, the prints developed from the late 1940s through 1963 are often the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those decades. Stars and Stripes’ archives team is scanning these prints to ensure their preservation.