Agony ....! (The Brother's Keeper)

This is a very famous wartime photograph of a Japanese boy standing at rigid attention, biting his lip, with the dead body of his infant brother strapped to his back. He traveled from far away to bring his brother for cremation at a crematorium in Nagasaki on the eve of the U.S. atomic bombing of that city in 1945. Many makeshift cremation spots were established outside the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to burn hundreds of thousands of dead bodies of Japanese citizens. This epic picture was taken by Joe O’Donnell, who was attached to the U.S. Marine Corps and who traveled to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other Japanese cities to document the wartime devastation. Little is known about this boy but in one of O’Donnell's war journals and diaries, provided by his Japanese wife Kimiko Sakai, this entry was found written by O’Donnell himself:

"I saw a boy about ten years old walking by. He was carrying a baby on his back. In those days in Japan, we often saw children playing with their little brothers or sisters on their backs, but this boy was clearly different. I could see that he had come to this place for a serious reason. He was wearing no shoes. His face was hard. The little head was tipped back as if the baby were fast asleep. The boy stood there for five or ten minutes. The men in white masks walked over to him and quietly began to take off the rope that was holding the baby. That is when I saw that the baby was already dead. The men held the body by the hands and feet and placed it on the fire. The boy stood there straight without moving, watching the flames. He was biting his lower lip so hard that it shone with blood. The flame burned low like the sun going down. The boy turned around and walked silently away.”