THE TENNESSEAN 
Monday/July 30, 1990

The atomic bomb- and a Marine's remarkable legacy
 
Frank Ritter,  Staff Writer

    When atomic bombs brought a horrendous end to World War II in August of 1945,  U.S. Marine Sgt. Joseph R. O'Donnell was there to record the bitter aftermath.
     But negatives of pictures the 23 year old combat photographer took of the devastation lay untouched for decades in musty old attic trunks- until last year.
    Now, a handful of those dramatic photos have been assembled in an exhibit to be displayed at Cheekwood Fine Arts Center starting Saturday and extending through August 26.
     "My pictures- seen here for the first time- and my comments about nuclear war are long over due," says O'Donnell, now 68 and retired to Nashville after having served under five different U.S. presidents as a White House photographer.
    "I regret that I kept quiet for the last 45 years.  I needed to make a statement on the nuclear issue.  I feel that dropping the bombs was morally wrong, just as much as the holocaust was."
     "I hope to remind people of how it was in Japan 45 years ago and how it could be again, but worse.  The threat of nuclear war is still with us today.  Peace is our only hope. 
    How it was in Japan in 1945 has long been the subject of debate.  The question: Was the U.S. justified in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ? 
    The first bomb, dropped Aug. 6 on Hiroshima, killed 92,000 outright; others died later from the radiation.  The second bomb on August 9, killed 40,000 in Nagasaki.  Japan surrendered Aug. 14, 1945.
    O'Donnell, a native of Johnstown, Pa., joined the marines at the age of 19, just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  
    During the next four years, he learned to be a combat photographer, and was dispatched to the Japanese Island of Kyushu in early September of 1945 to photograph the landing of American occupation forces after the war's end.
    For the next six months, O'Donnell spent most of his time in nearby Hiroshima and Nagasaki, traveling about the countryside and taking pictures of the devastation-both to people and to what formerly had been their homes and communities.
    What O'Donnell witnessed was not to be believed.  "It was hard to believe I was still standing on the planet Earth." he says.  "This was a man-made disaster of the cruelest kind- an act against humanity that killed women, children, the elderly, the innocent."
    O'Donnell usually used a jeep to get around.  "But once," he says, "I traded cigarettes for a horse; it took me to areas the jeep wouldn't go.
     "I slept on the ground, and often would wake up with 25 little Japanese boys standing around me.  I was armed with a .45 and a bowie knife, and they seemed to be afraid of me.  They wouldn't pose at first.  I had to do something to warm them up. 
    "So, I started taking Hershey bars and cigarettes with me to hand out.  Of course, times change: Today I wouldn't be giving away cigarettes, because of the health hazards."
    There were hazards then to his own health that O'Donnell didn't realize until years later.  Radiation from the atomic blasts had long-range effects-both on the bomb's survivors and those who visited the area.
    O'Donnell left the Marines in March of 1946 and then became a White House photographer.  He served under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and photographed many of the world's leaders.  He retired from that position in 1968, and moved from Clinton, Mich., to Nashville 10 years ago.
    "None of us back then in 1945 knew the dangers of radiation,"  O'Donnell says.  "Little did I know how that would change my life.
     O'Donnell characterizes himself as "lucky," despite having undergone more than 40 surgeries during the past two decades, the most recent a spinal implant.
    It was after one such operation last year, when he was in much pain and depressed, that he went on a religious retreat at the Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse in Kentucky.  He had been asking God, "Why have I been spared all these years?"  At Loretto one day, he saw a sculpture done by a resident nun, Sister Jeanne Deuber.  Suddenly he had an answer to his question.
    The life-sized figure of a flame-scarred man on a cross was titled "Once."  It was created in honor of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  
    "It triggered in me memories of my own experience,"  O'Donnell recalls.  "And it inspired me to think about my own possible contribution to the effort to prevent nuclear war.  I had been spared all those years so I could make my own statement."
    He went home and started going through the musty trunks, filled with negatives, all carefully packaged and labeled.  From them, O'Donnell chose about two dozen for display at the Cheekwood exhibit marking the 45th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    "If you expect to see lots of horrible pictures and piles of burned victims waiting to be cremated, you will not," he explains.  "I will not exploit the victims again.  I will never live long enough to forget how I intimidated them once by taking pictures of their suffering on their death beds-and I am not going to live with that again.  Let them rest."
    The public is invited to the exhibit.  O'Donnell will be present at the opening Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5p.m. to greet guests and answer questions.