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Online Museum of Creativity

Item: Photograph of Pearl Harbor Wreckage
Creator: Harold S. Fawcett

 

Harold S. Fawcett (1917-1999), a Navy photographer stationed at Pearl Harbor in late 1941, reached immortality in about 1/500 of a second, the approximate length of time it took him to snap this historic image. The photo shows the wreckage of the U.S.S. Pennsylvania and destroyers Downes and Cassin, in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The New York Times reported that he "captured memorable scenes of the Japanese attack  ... Some of [his] photographs of mighty American warships exploding, burning and rolling belly up were considered too disturbing to be made public soon after the outbreak of World War II. These images began to be published on the first anniversary of the attack in Life magazine and in many American newspapers." 

Later in the war, based on the Bikini atoll, he "photographed the detonation of two hydrogen bombs." This photograph has been reproduced in many books, including Collier's Photographic History of World War II, which reunion president Mark A. Miner displayed at our reunion in 2006. Harold was the grandson of Robert Patterson Fawcett of Webster, near Grafton, and the great-great grandson of Phoebe (Miner) Fawcett, an early pioneer of Preston County, WV.

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Copyright © 2006 Mark A. Miner