This is one of only two known photos of Ernie Pyle, the most famous correspondent of WWII, taken after he was killed by a Japanese sniper on the island of Ie Shima, off of Okinawa, on April 18, 1945.
Though the negative has been lost, a few prints remain, although even these were not widely known. This particular print, was provided by Joseph Bannan, who said he got it in 1945 from a photographer aboard the USS Panamint who'd disobeyed a direct order to destroy the negative.
In 2004, he donated copies to the Wright Museum, the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site at Dana, Ind., and the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla. Earlier, a copy was obtained at auction by the Indiana Historical Society.
A second post-mortem photo of Pyle, apparently taken by an amateur photographer, clearly shows the fatal wound above his left temple. The only known print is at the Indiana State Museum.
Pyle (1900-1945) was a columnist for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Before the war, he'd worked as a reporter and cope editor for a number of papers, including the New York Evening Post and Washington Daily News, where he became managing editor. His wartime columns were written from the perspective of the ordinary foot soldier, a counterpart to Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe" cartoons, which endeared him as much to the troops themslves as to his readers back home.
Stories like his classic column about Capt. Henry Waskow of Belton, Tex. in January, 1944 brought home the realities of the war -- in all their pain, struggle and nobility -- and won him the 1944 Pulitzer Prize.
Pyle initially was buried where he was killed, under a marker that read, "At this spot, the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy." He was reburied at the US Military Cemetery in Okinawa, then moved again to his final resting spot, between two unknown soldiers, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
No comments:
Post a Comment