4 photojournalists find resting place at last

By RICHARD PYLE

updated 9:51 p.m. ET April 1, 2008

Editor's note: Richard Pyle, former AP Saigon bureau chief, is co-author, with Horst Faas, of "Lost Over Laos: A True Story of Tragedy, Mystery and Friendship."

NEW YORK - A U.S. military search team digging into a steep mountainside in southern Laos found camera parts, film, broken watches and bits of wreckage — proof that a South Vietnamese helicopter had been shot down there in 1971, a chopper that was carrying four top-rated war photographers and seven Vietnamese soldiers.

While only scant traces of human remains were found at the site where the dig took place 10 years ago, a sealed capsule containing those remains is finally about to be interred in a place of honor.

On Thursday, family members, diplomats from five countries and aging veterans of the wartime Saigon press corps will dedicate the capsule at the Newseum, a new, $439 million Washington, D.C., museum devoted to the history and practice of journalism.

The unusual burial comes a day before the formal dedication of the Newseum's Journalists Memorial gallery, a special showcase of sacrifice in the glass-walled edifice near the U.S. Capitol.

A shattering phone call
At the Associated Press bureau in Saigon on Feb. 10, 1971, I received the first report over a shaky military phone line that four photojournalists had been shot down in a helicopter in Laos, with no apparent chance of survival.

The news was shattering. They were AP's own Henri Huet, 43; Larry Burrows, 44, of Life magazine; Kent Potter, 23, of United Press International, and Keisaburo Shimamoto, 34, a freelancer working for Newsweek.

The toll of dead and missing Vietnam war correspondents already stood at 50 and would reach 74 at the war's end in 1975 — the most news media casualties of any conflict in the 20th century.

It wasn't the first multiple loss for the Saigon press corps, but the deaths of four of its most respected members at once was an almost incomprehensible blow, even for journalists who understood the hazards of war.

Burrows, a tall, gaunt Londoner, was widely considered the war's premier photojournalist, producing dramatic camera essays for Life, although he liked to say he preferred taking pictures in quiet art museums.

Huet, born in Vietnam of a French father and Vietnamese mother and raised in France, had made the war his metier, spending more time in combat than many soldiers. Like Burrows, he had won the prestigious Robert Capa award, for "superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise." He also was the most popular member of AP's Saigon staff.

Potter, who had distressed his Philadelphia Quaker family by opting to become a war photographer, was the youngest-ever member of the Saigon press corps when he arrived in 1968 — brash, ambitious and already recognized as a promising talent.

Shimamoto, born into a Japanese journalist's family in pre-World War II Seoul, was a seasoned freelancer, in and out of Vietnam since 1965. "He had that in his blood," says his older brother, Kenro, a former foreign correspondent.

MORE FROM LIFE

Life Section Front

Census: Small cities lose luster in downturn U.S. charities may not have a happy holiday Lost war bonds not easy to find Idaho boy kills bear that wouldn’t leave porch Mass. immigrant tuition bill to get new push Used shoes gain traction in poor countries Life Section Front   Add Life headlines to your news reader: