Joe O'Donnell (photojournalist)

Joe O'Donnell
Born	(1922-05-07)May 7, 1922 Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Died	August 9, 2007(2007-08-09) (aged 85) Nashville, Tennessee
Occupation	Photojournalist
Nationality	American

Joseph Roger O'Donnell (May 7, 1922 – August 9, 2007) was an American documentarian, photojournalist and a photographer for the United States Information Agency.

Early life and education

Joseph Roger O’Donnell was born on May 7, 1922, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the Marines, who sent him to photography school.^[1]

Photojournalism

As a presidential photographer, Mr. O'Donnell captured iconic moments such as the handshake between Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Wake Island during the Korean War and President John F. Kennedy deliberating the Bay of Pigs invasion. Because he was on the government payroll, O'Donnell did not receive personal credit for those photographs, although he autographed and sold copies of them after his retirement from government service in 1968.^[1]

At 23, as a Marine sergeant, O'Donnell documented the aftermath of bombing in Japan for seven months, starting with Nagasaki, devastated by an atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. On August 28, 1948, his unit became among the first to enter Japan. The photos included the iconic the iconic "The boy standing by the crematory" as well as a photo of a classroom of burned children, and one of faces torn away.^[1]

O'Donnell, emotionally unable to face the images captured on a personal camera alongside the military one, locked them in a trunk for almost 50 years. When he finally did, he was so disturbed that he became an advocate against nuclear arms, publishing books and lecturing in Japan and the United States.^[1]

In 1995, controversy surrounded O'Donnell's work as the National Air and Space Museum prepared to exhibit the Enola Gay, the B-29 that bombed Hiroshima. His images intended to depict the devastating effects of the bombs faced objections from veterans who argued that the photos and accompanying text presented an unbalanced view, overlooking Japan's aggression and the bombs' role in ending the war and saving American lives. Consequently, the photographs were removed from curatorial plans, along with other features deemed offensive to veterans. In an interview with National Public Radio that year, O'Donnell asserted that, based on his post-war observations, Japan could have been defeated with conventional arms, avoiding the anticipated high casualties from an invasion of Japan.^[1]

Following the war, O’Donnell moved to Washington and briefly operated his own photography studio.^[1]

Controversy

A controversy followed the printing of his obituary in the press. Some of the photographs that had been attributed to O'Donnell were actually shot by other photographers.^[2] A photograph of a saluting John F. Kennedy Jr. during the funeral for his father in 1963 was taken by Stan Stearns for United Press International, not by O'Donnell. O'Donnell also claimed credit for a photograph showing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during a wartime meeting in Tehran, Iran, in 1943, but O'Donnell is not known to have been in Tehran at the time.^[3]

Tyge O'Donnell, the son of O'Donnell, attributes his father's instances of wrongly claiming credit for others' work, such as Stearn's photo, to his dementia, suggesting that he mistakenly asserted authorship of several photographs due to difficulties in remembering which ones were genuinely his own.^[4]

Personal life

O'Donnell was married to Kimiko Sakai. He had three three sons and a daughter.^[1]

Death

O'Donnell died in Nashville, Tennessee on August 9, 2007, due to complications arising from a stroke, according to his wife. She mentioned that he underwent over 50 operations, including procedures on his colon and heart, and attributed his declining health to radiation exposure from his visits to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.^[1]

References

External links

• AP article on the photo controversy^{[permanent dead link]} by Travis Loller
• The Times Obituary
• Japan 1945--A U.S. Marine’s Photographs from Ground Zero, photos by Joe O'Donnell Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
• "Historical and Cultural Context for Joe O’Donnell’s Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine’s Photographs from Ground Zero." Presentation by John Frank, Center Grove, Indiana
• Info from a pending documentary of Joe O'Donnell by David Tower
• Editor & Publisher article on the obituary controversy^{[permanent dead link]} by Greg Mitchell
• "Post-war photos from Japan in 1945 opens at AMSE" Announcement for 2013 Smithsonian Institution photo exhibition, published February 13.
• Clark Hoyt, "Pictures Worth a Thousand Questions", New York Times, September 16, 2007

This page was last edited on 2 February 2024, at 17:17