Battle for a photo credit

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — When the air alert sounded aboard the USS Missouri that day in 1945 off Okinawa, one of the battleship’s cooks raced to a bridge armed not with a gun, but a camera.

From his perch some 70 feet above the action on the main deck, Baker 2nd Class Harold “Buster” Campbell captured the fierce air battle, snapping away with a specialized 161 mm aerial photography camera as a single Japanese kamikaze pilot penetrated the ship’s formidable anti-aircraft fire.

“He kept coming through the greatest ack ack I’ve ever seen,” reads Mr. Campbell’s journal entry of that day, April 11, 1945. “He then came direct at the ship and hit us on the starboard quarter on the main deck, burst into flames. I was shaking but felt relieved after he hit.”

The entry continues: “I took a beautiful shot of him as he hit.”

But the photo for years has been credited to someone else.

The image of the A6M Zero kamikaze taken at the moment of impact has become one of the most recognized photographs from the Battle of Okinawa. It is featured prominently in books, souvenirs and aboard the decommissioned Missouri, now anchored off Ford Island as a museum and memorial.

The photograph has long been credited to the late Len Schmidt, one of the Missouri’s official photographers who also shot the April 11 battle and the kamikaze’s collision.

But Navy historians say photographs weren’t credited to individual photographers until 1973. Mr. Schmidt has been given credit since then based on his body of work and firsthand account of the attack, said Mike Weidenbach, curator for the USS Missouri Memorial Association.

It wasn’t until last year, when Mr. Campbell’s son saw the photograph in a souvenir book his daughter brought back from a Hawaii vacation, that Missouri historians were alerted to the discrepancy.

Dan Campbell, a 52-year-old government worker from Baltimore, contacted Mr. Weidenbach about his father’s story. If the curator wanted more proof, the son had his late father’s entire collection of Missouri memorabilia — a small suitcase full — that he wanted to donate.

The collection included his father’s handwritten journal, a letter opener made from the kamikaze debris and more than 200 pictures. Dan Campbell scanned some of the photographs and sent them to Mr. Weidenbach on a compact disc.

Now, with the complete collection in hand, Mr. Weidenbach has seen enough to believe the son’s claim is credible.