n January 1992 I visited a small church near Nashville, Tennessee with
a ten-member tour group as an activity of the Zenrinkan Christian Center
(now Ou Christian Center) where I was working at that time. There I met
Joe O'Donnell, who had come to Japan soon after the war as a cameraman
with the army, and I saw the pictures he had taken of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

These were all pictures no one in Japan had yet seen. They were some of
the pictures he had taken with his personal camera, aside from his
official job of photographing the destruction of cities in Japan.
Members of our group could not hold back their tears when they saw the
picture entitled "Young Man at a Crematory (Preparing to lay his little
brother on a funeral pyre)." O'Donnell had decided to display these
pictures two years before we met him. He continued displaying them until
he was called to heaven on Aug. 9, 2007, believing that this was his
mission from God. He readily agreed to our request to display them in
Japan, and we have been able to hold more than 70 exhibitions to date. I
presently the custodian for O'Donnell's pictures and am hoping many
churches will exhibit them.

I sensed a deeper purpose at work in my opportunity to meet Joe
O'Donnell. Our tour to America was arranged by Richard and Martha
Lammers, former missionaries who had worked at our center until 1990.
Martha was part of a group that churches in America recruited to help
with the reconstruction of Japan, and her first assignment was to
Hiroshima Jogakuin (girls' school). She says that there she felt
firsthand the horror of the atomic bomb. Martha has spoken out ever
since on the horror of atomic weapons and has translated into English
the story of the primary school girl, Sadako, who died from leukemia
caused by the atomic bomb, and sent the story, along with folded paper
cranes, to America. Many people in our center cooperated in collecting
folded paper cranes to send. Some churches our tour group visited had
taken part in the folded paper crane campaign. It was in this context
that we met Joe O'Donnell. I cannot think that this meeting was mere
chance: that this was a response from God to Martha and those in our
group who had helped with the folded paper cranes.

I am constantly reminded that God is at work and that I have been able
to participate in that work. (Tr. WE)

--Yamazaki Makoto,member
Shimonohashi Church, Ou District
From Shinto no Tomo(Believers' Friend)