Memories of a World at War.

PositionThe World Yesterday - Exhibition of World War II photographs from Associated Press

"You had the same fears as the GIs, but you had to think about the picture. My camera was my shield, and I didn't even think about the idea that a bullet might hit me."

On May 10, 1945, Pfc. Paul Ison from the Sixth Marine Division charges forward through Japanese machine-gun fire on a barren piece of land the Marines called "Death Valley." Leathernecks lost 125 men in eight hours of sustained fighting on Okinawa.

"INDEED, IF THERE WERE no correspondents or photographers who went to war, what would the folks at home know?" asks former CBS anchorman (and wire service reporter) Walter Cronkite. "What would the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and wives know of the heroism, the suffering, the brave deeds, the crippling challenges if [journalists] didn't tell them and take images of those moments? What would future generations know? The dramatic, sobering, and often inspiring pictures ... are evidence enough that times of war need to be recorded and remembered."

The Associated Press highlights some of its most famous photographs of World War II, as well as rarely viewed images from its archives, in a poignant exhibition currently traveling the country. It is a spectrum of 126 photos (chosen from over 100,000) from all theaters of war and the home front, from Joe Rosenthal's classic Pulitzer Prize-winning Iwo Jima flag raising in 1945 to scores of pictures not seen in decades.

Almost 200 reporters and photographers fanned out around the globe to cover the Second World War for the Associated Press. Some 68 journalists were killed during World War II, five from AR Seven other AP staffers won Pulitzers.

"You had the same fears as the GIs, but you had to think about the picture," recalls retired AP photojournalist Max Desfor, who covered the battle of Okinawa and Japan's surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri, and later won a Pulitzer Prize during the Korean War. "My camera was my shield, and I didn't even think about the idea that a bullet might hit me."

"Our objective," explains Chuck Zoeller, director of the AP Photo Library and curator of the exhibit, "was to bring back ... the immense scope as well as the individual tragedy and challenge of World War II. We wanted to create a photographic record that allows a younger generation to better understand the sacrifices made by men, women, and children in all the nations touched by the conflict. It's all here--from the GIs at the Battle of the Bulge to the Marines in Okinawa, from...

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