Daniel McGovern, 96, Photographed Aftermath of A-Bombs

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Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel McGovern, 96, who as a combat photographer filmed the aftermath of the atomic bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, died Wednesday of cancer at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif.


Within weeks after the bombs were dropped in early August 1945, McGovern was assigned to take photographs of the devastation. His pictures and color film footage taken over nine months have been used in history books, newspaper articles, television and movies.


Earlier during the war, McGovern took pictures of President Franklin Roosevelt in the White House.


In 1943, McGovern was stationed in Chelveston, England, from where he flew missions as a cameraman. He survived two plane crashes and shot footage that was used in William Wyler’s 1944 wartime documentary, “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.”


In 1998, when the Steven Spielberg World War II film, “Saving Private Ryan,” was released, McGovern, who was then 88, told the Los Angeles Times: “Combat men don’t like to talk about what they did. Airplanes crashing, headless bodies with helmets still on. Limbs here, limbs there. … You say, ‘There but for the grace of God,’ but you don’t talk about it. You relive it in your sleep. You go through recollections of pulling bodies out of airplanes – an experience you never forget.”


But he also said at that time that his children and grandchildren had urged him to speak about what he witnessed and that he began to believe that “reliving it helps – (it) gets it out of the system.”


McGovern and several of his colleagues founded the International Combat Cameramen Association to give credit to the cameramen who risk their lives to shoot combat footage.


After World War II, McGovern wrote, directed and produced classified films on nuclear weapons testing and development at Lookout Mountain, a secret government film lab and studio built underground in the Hollywood hills of Los Angeles.


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