In September 1945, Joe O'Donnell, a 23-year-old U.S. Marine Corps photographer was ordered to document the results of the U.S. bombing raids not only on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also on places such as Sasebo, one of the 60 Japanese cities firebombed before the atomic blasts.
In addition to the official photographs, O'Donnell took some 300 pictures for himself. But upon his discharge and return to the United States he could not bear to look at them. The negatives were put into a trunk and there they remained for nearly half a century.
"The people I met," he later recalled, "the suffering I witnessed and the scenes of incredible devastation taken by my camera caused me to question every belief I had previously held about my so-called enemies."
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