Joe O'Donnell | WWII photographer, 85

Joe O'Donnell, 85, who shot some of the first photographs after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and who was a White House photographer spanning five presidencies, died Aug. 9 in Nashville.

He began his photography career recording the Pacific campaign as a young Marine upon the United States' entry into World War II. In September 1945, he was one of the first outsiders to visit Hiroshima after its destruction by the atomic bomb. He put many of those photographs away in a trunk because he felt they were too painful to look at.

In the 1990s they were displayed for the first time in Europe and Japan, and in 2005 they were put into a book, Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine's Photographs From Ground Zero.

After the war, Mr. O'Donnell worked as a freelance photographer in Washington, where the U.S. Information Agency recruited him to photograph presidents. He worked under Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. His photo of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin in 1963 became the most reproduced version of that memorable scene.

Mr. O'Donnell moved to Nashville after he retired in 1968 with a medical disability caused by radiation that he was exposed to while photographing Japan after its surrender. - AP