Art
Bearing Witness Joe O’Donnell
In September 1945, a 23-year-old Marine Corps photographer named Joe O’Donnell was walking through the rubble of Nagasaki when he came across a heartbreaking sight. A Japanese boy—who looked to be no more than 6 or 7—was standing at attention in front of a crematorium. He had the body of his infant brother strapped to his back.
O’Donnell paused for a moment and then snapped a few pictures. The two then stood silently for the cremation, biting their lips to hold back the tears.
“Joe never got over what he saw in Japan,” says Furman York, O’Donnell’s longtime friend. “It haunted him for his entire life.”
O’Donnell died in Nashville last Thursday night following a series of strokes. He was 85, and his death came exactly 62 years to the day after the U.S. dropped its atomic bomb over Nagasaki.
O’Donnell was one of the first photographers to document the devastation of Japan. But he is probably best known for his long tenure as a White House photographer.
Big Three Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchilpose for O’Donnell
He was a denizen of the West Wing during the administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. (He also shot several memorable photos of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.) Many of his photos—from both his Marine and White House years—achieved iconic status.
He was there with FDR, Stalin and Churchill, photographing the Big Three as they decided the fate of postwar Europe. He was with Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island during the Korean War, and he attended the funeral of JFK, snapping one of those unforgettably sad images of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket.
Born on May 7, 1922, Joseph O’Donnell Jr. spent his childhood in Jonestown, Pa. As a boy, he grew up thinking he’d be a dentist, just like his father. In fact, he even mentioned this to his dad one evening when the family was gathered around the radio, getting ready to listen to one of FDR’s State of the Union addresses.
Sad Goodbye JFK Jr.
The old man growled back that a kid with such bad grades would never be a dentist. Then the president started to speak, and his father began thinking out loud about how wonderful it would be to see a president address Congress.
O’Donnell was later able to confirm, firsthand, that it was indeed a wonderful sight.
After graduating from high school, O’Donnell learned photography in the Marines. He went to Washington after the war to work as a freelance photographer. It was there that the U.S. Information Agency recruited him to work in the White House.
O’Donnell retired from the government with a medical disability at the end of the Johnson administration. He had long been suffering the effects of radiation from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
But the emotional turmoil of visiting those bomb sites was having an even more devastating effect. After the war, he locked his war photos away in a trunk, refusing to look at them for 45 years because they conjured memories that were too painful.
But in 1989, he went on a religious retreat at the Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse in Kentucky, where he saw an affecting monument to the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He decided at that moment to bear witness to what he had seen.
He went home and opened his trunk, and eventually put together a book. Vanderbilt University Press published the work, titled Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine’s Photographs from Ground Zero, in 2005.
O’Donnell spent his retirement years enjoying art and his photography. He occasionally exhibited his work at The Arts Company. “He and his wife would always show up at openings,” remembers Anne Brown, The Arts Company owner. “He could be crusty, but he was also fun and always extremely interesting.”
York remembers O’Donnell for his presence. “He had this head of thick white hair and all this charisma, so you noticed him when he walked in the room.”
O’Donnell is survived by his wife, Kimiko Sakai, who is also a photographer, and by three sons and a daughter. A memorial service is being planned, and information is available by calling Brookmeade Congregational Church—UCC at 352-4702.
The Arts Company is also planning a memorial exhibit in the fall. Information will be available at theartscompany.com or by calling 254-2040.
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