“The photograph is in fact a well-known shot taken by a Japanese from a nearby building after the bombing on August 6, 1945. The report said a reporter at the city news department at Osaka's headquarters obtained the picture from O'Donnell in late July.
However, a subscriber told the Asahi on August 1 that the photo appeared in domestically published material, prompting an investigation by the daily, the officials said.
“Asahi found the picture was taken in October 1945 by Shigeo Hayashi, now 76, from the roof of a chamber of commerce building near the A-Bomb Dome in central Hiroshima, they said. Hayashi said he was ordered to give the print to U.S. forces which occupied Japan after its surrender but has kept the negative, they said.
“The photograph has appeared in various publications, including a junior high school textbook, and a large print is displayed at the Hiroshima's A-Bomb memorial hall. O'Donnell initially told Asahi officials that he had taken the photo but later admitted he had not, they said.”
With O’Donnell’s death, we can never know for certain whether, during the last 13 years of his life, he intentionally took credit for images he knew not to be his.
We do know he claimed ownership of those images. He offered copies of them for sale through The Arts Company, a Nashville gallery, and through his own Web site. (Anne Brown, owner of The Arts Company, says she had known and respected O’Donnell for a long time and admits she accepted his prints without researching their provenance.)
He put copyrights on them, including images he took while working for the USIA, which would have precluded him from attaching copyright to public domain images.
He also talked about the pilfered images like a proud father.
In 1999, seeming frail but confident, he appeared on the CNN show Talkback Live after the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and discussed the John-John salute picture with host Bobbie Battista.
“I had the telephoto camera,” he told her, “And I just got him, full-sized, which is right here, if you can see it. This is the picture that I took of him, and it’s black and white. And he had a little blue coat on, and many people will remember this photo, because I have seen it 100 times in the last couple days.”
However, what appeared during the interview was not by O’Donnell and was not Stan Stearns’ photo either – it was a different image of the boy from a different angle. This picture is an enlargement of yet another salute photo taken by Danny Farrell of New York’s Daily News.
All of this actually supports the truth, say O’Donnell’s family and friends: these were the confused errors of an elderly man with dementia that began affecting him in the early 1990s.
The copyrights? Before the dementia, O’Donnell always knew his USIA work carried no credits and was considered public domain. Using a telephoto lens to shoot John-John and getting him “full-sized” from that distance? Not possible, and O’Donnell would have known that in his healthy years. Creating a Web site to profit from print sales? The Web site was created by a friend and hasn’t been active in more than 10 years; O’Donnell was never computer-savvy, those close to him say.
He claimed others’ work unintentionally, they say, without plans to deceive or profit. Both Sakai and Brown say O’Donnell’s images and those represented as his never earned much money.
As for his health, O’Donnell suspected that his time near the epicenters of the atomic explosions – sleeping on the ground, drinking the water – led to many of his medical problems later on.
He had suffered three strokes and other ailments in his later years, Sakai says, and “his memory was fading.” According to his family, he had endured nearly 50 surgeries and took numerous medications that exacerbated his dementia. His bones had badly deteriorated, and he suffered from ganglion cysts on the joints of his hands. A motorcade accident in New York did such damage to his back that he needed metal rods implanted to help hold him upright. The accident forced him into an early retirement in 1968.
