The photographer of the Atomic Bomb

Photographer Joe O'Donnell -. atomic bomb-

Josep Roger O'Donnell was born in the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1922, he photographed some pictures after the release of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.Tras the Wasington Gerra moved to where for a short time had his own workshop Since 1949 photographer and through family connections was the official photographer of the White House, where historical scenes immortalized under the presidencies of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.

The photograph of Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur shaking hands at their meeting on Wake Island during the Korean War, and President John Kennedy deciding whether to go ahead with the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. He was also the author of the photo of John John Kennedy, giving a military salute at the bier of his father, a portrait of the discussion in the kitchen between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and so on. Married to a Japanese photographer, Kimiko Sakai.

O'Donnell was a sergeant with 23 years of Marine Corps of the United States, where in 1945 was given to the reportages of the horror of Gerra. He spent seven months photographing devastation in Japan.

His first target was Nagasaki, much of which had been destroyed by an atomic bomb on August 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima suffered the attack. Its most striking picture is of a child in Nagasaki, carries on his back the corpse of his younger brother way to the crematorium. Another showed a classroom of children sitting at their desks, all burned.

The photographer had the bright idea to always carry two cameras, one for capturing images and the other officers to document the devastating reality of Gerra. From your photos estemodo became a true story of violence and destruction caused by man, in the Second World War.

The photographs locked

After the war, returning home to put the negatives of his photos in a trunk and locked it, because she was emotionally unable to see them. Many years later, when she was brave enough to dare to reveal them and to see the images of horror, he felt such remorse that was launched to protest against nuclear weapons. In 1995 he published a book with many of these pictures, lectured and mounted exhibitions in Japan and the United States.

O'Donnell's work was the subject of controversy in 1995, before the National Air and Space Museum exhibited the Enola Gay, the B-29 aircraft that had bombed Hiroshima.

Several decades after the radiation.