"OLD MAN. This man's unusual western-style coat and hat caught my attention, so I snapped his picture. I was accustomed to having simple questions asked by people I photographed, but this man astonished me by not only sharing information about his past (he had lived in the United States but was caught in Japan while visiting family when the war broke out), but by commenting on the atomic bombs. 'I lost my entire family and most of my friends. They were like you and me, innocent ones, and they did not deserve to die. I can forgive America, but don't ask me to forget... You tell your people what it was like after the bomb.' His words haunted me in the months that followed.

From: O'Donnell, Joe. Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine's Photographs from Ground Zero. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005; 35.