The Saddened Story Behind a Heart Wrenching Photo of a Japanese Boy
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”— Norman Cousins
One day, I saw a ten-year-old boy coming. Something was odd about him, which made me notice him.
He was not wearing his shoes and was awkwardly dressed, and was a bit dirty. His face didn’t carry any smile, and he looked pale and sad.
At that time, children in Japan used to feed their younger siblings.
He was different from other children.
He was carrying his sister, and he had him tied with her. The head of the child was rolling backward as if she was in a deep sleep. The boy stood in attention position for five to ten minutes.
After some time, some men came near the boy wearing white masks and quietly untied the rope with his help and released his sister, who was resting on her brother’s back.
Only then I realized that she was dead.
Those men later set the lifeless body to fire. The boy stood there straight and motionless. He watched the flames, and he was biting his lower lip so badly that traces of blood were visible on his lips.
After watching his sister’s demise, he turned back and walked away slowly.
This is the story of the picture that you saw above. The person who told the story was Joe O’Donnell.
Donnell was sent by the US Army to Japan during World War II so that he could capture the horror that Americans had spread in Japan on his camera.
He took this picture in Nagasaki.
The year must have been 1945, as Donnell traveled all over western Japan for approximately seven months and captured the destruction in photographs.
He had captured the most frightening and painful period of human history. Corpses, wounded people, orphaned children, homeless families, burned homes, no food… that was all in Japan.
Many years later, Joe O’Donnell was interviewed by a Japanese journalist. Then, this story about the boy and his sister was told. A similar story was also filmed in the 1988 Japanese film Grave of the Fireflies.
