| Original caption: “The only living person among hundreds of corpses in one cave was this fly-covered baby who almost smothered before soldiers found him, rushed him to the hospital.” Original caption: “Infant Lone Survivor on Saipan: Only living thing found among hundreds of Jap[anese] dead when patrols. Cleaned out hilltop on Saipan, Mariana Islands, was this Japanese baby. Here, the infant is passed from hand to hand by Yank soldiers, on its way to an ambulance jeep. This is W. Eugene Smith’s (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978) most famous photograph from Saipan, taken during a 2-day mission when the Marines methodically searched out Japanese soldiers and civilians from caverns on Mount Nafutan. They slowly combed the area in squads, looking for caves amidst the undergrowth. It was a grisly task: 1 chamber after another was filled with bodies, and the dead decomposed rapidly in the heat and humidity of the jungle, attracting clouds of insects. As they inched along 1 ravine, the Marines heard a whimper. They discovered an infant boy had been hidden by his fleeing mother. The baby’s head was misshapen, his body was covered in scratches, and insects swarmed over his eyes, which were encrusted with tears and pus — but he was alive. The men carefully conveyed the helpless infant hand-to-hand up the ravine, until United States Marine Warrant Officer Paul F. White (June 14, 1909 – December 11, 1990) — in the distance with a cigarette — passed him to Captain John N. “Johnny” Popham (July 30, 1910 – December 12, 1999) at the top. Smith photographed Popham gently but securely holding the child. The baby was carried to a jeep and then rushed to a hospital. This print is carefully cropped so that the child’s head falls in the middle of the composition, visually sheltered by the 2 Marines. Smith wrote a story entitled “The Struggle to Save”: “Suicide was not for all…Slowly, the little column of jeeps pushed urgently toward Mount Nafutan. In the first jeep, a man and a woman – bony, dirty, ragged, and very scared – they, a Japanese man and wife, were leading this rather unusual-looking procession. A third Jap[anese] was in the vehicle, and this Jap[anese] was in the battle fatigues of the United States Army. Soldiers bulged from the jeeps that were following, their weapons loosely held free for instant use.” “The man and wife had fled, under cover of the preceding night’s darkness, from the cave in which they had been existing for several weeks without livable amounts of food and water…This couple placed themselves in the hands of our troops, who fed them on C-rations and gave them precious water from canteens…” “The Japanese-American interpreters reported the couple as saying that over a hundred civilians were in the cave from which they had fled, and a few soldiers who had segregated themselves in another part of the cave. The result was the little jeep convoy, loaded with two interpreters, an electrical loudspeaker for the salestalk, a demolition squad from the engineers, corpsmen, Major Warren R. Durham [(June 14, 1900 – July 19, 1951)] of Twenty-Seventh United States Army Infantry Division Intelligence, the armed soldiers to guard against snipers…the excellent Coast Guard Photographer’s Mate Edwin H. Latcham [(December 21, 1916 – September 10, 1964)], Marine Public Relations Officer Paul White, Marine Captain John Popham and myself rounded out the group. We were on a mission of mercy.” “We drove as close as we could — as close as we dared – then left the vehicles. The wife stayed in the jeep, while the husband set out to lead us to the cave…The closer we pushed to the cave position, the more nervous the Jap[anese] became, saying that there was an armed guard at the mouth of the cave, and that he was afraid. Finally, he refused to go on, giving us hazy directions as to where the cave was…So our patrols set out to search for that cave and other caves that might be hiding one person, or even more. Up ‘Death Valley’ they wormed, passing rotting, stinking enemy corpses, not yet buried, into the ‘Butcher Shop,’ which contained some of the worst terrain that Yanks have ever been called upon to dislodge an enemy from.” “The search continued for nearly 2 hours before we found our 1st live person — a living dead tiny infant. A tiny muffled cry had directed our attention. 2 of the soldiers and myself climbed up the almost sheer rock, using the occasional foothold, hanging on to shakily rooted bushes. Below, the others covered us with a Tommy gun and a carbine. In a saucer-shaped area, in front of a cave, amid the flies and the maggots, lay 2 not-so-fresh bodies. “Again the smothered whimper, and the sight of a nude, bony body writhing with the head as a pivot. A head that had somehow become lodged (probably by its parents to keep the child from giving away their hiding place), with its head straight down into the dirt, head almost concealed by being wedged under the edge of a rock. The only thing that kept the babe from smothering was the rottenness of the fibrous turf.” “Hands trained for killing, gently worked the sod away from the small, lopsided head and extricated the infant. The eyes were sockets of pus, covered with the clinging flies. The head was obviously mashed to one side in its softness, and the little body was covered with scratches-but it was alive, and though death was almost sure, we used precious time to carry it back to the jeeps for medical care. Several said it would be more merciful to shoot it in the head. A sergeant started to hand the baby to one of the Japanese women, but she shrank away so violently that it was taken to another jeep.” “I found this little child underneath a bush, down a very steep ravine,” Paul White remembers. “The baby’s eyes were filled with maggots. White maggots. Hundreds and hundreds of them, in each of the eyes. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.” Smith made several photographs, including a close-up of White’s hands lifting the baby out of the dirt, and 2 of the baby being carried up the hill. This image is 1 of these. The baby was passed to 3 others until it got to the top. White recalled, “Johnny Popham was at the top of the incline. I had yelled up to him and asked What the hell do we do with this baby? I didn’t see how they could save its eyesight, but it was alive. Johnny, who was a devout Catholic, said, ‘I think we have to leave it up to God.’ I don’t know if it survived.” The home front was confused by the Marines’ cavalier reaction to the half-dead infant and the suggestion to kill it. To Marines surrounded by death, mercy killing seemed a logical course to end their suffering, but to Americans far removed and uninformed of the true horrors of the fighting on the front lines of the Pacific War, rescuing an infant seemed the only logical course. Efforts to trace whether the boy survived or not were fruitful. This photo appeared in the August 28, 1944, issue of LIFE Magazine. The image has become the model for the recurrent trope in war photography of the warrior nurturing the child of an enemy, implying generosity to the vanquished. Such an image of compassion in war makes a powerful and righteous propaganda symbol. Marine Corps public relations Warrant Officer Paul F. White was a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism. White enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on November 9, 1942. He was the 1st to record an amphibious invasion with a wire recorder. White received an honorable discharge on October 30, 1945. He worked for the New York Times and founded Wide World Photos after World War II. He was the 1st national President of the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association. When he died, he was developing a stereo lens for still and motion cameras. His ashes were interned at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia. Colonel “Johnny” Popham served in Korea and Vietnam as a public relations officer while simultaneously serving as the New York Times’ southern regional correspondent. Later, he served as the Managing Editor of the Chattanooga Times from 1958 to 1977. He earned his law degree in 1982. He was the confidant of both segregationists and civil rights leaders. Photographer W. Eugene Smith became a war correspondent photographer in September 1943. Smith flew with the American naval aircraft assaulting Truk in February 1944. He then photographed the invasions of Saipan, Guam, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Seriously wounded by a Japanese mortar in 1945, he recovered for 2 years before retaking photos. He continued to publish pictures in LIFE Magazine until 1955. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1509.jpg |
| Image Size | 551.87 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2051 x 2639 |
| Photographer | W. Eugene Smith |
| Photographer Title | United States Marine Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | July 15, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Mount Nafutan |
| State or Province | Saipan |
| Country | Marianas |
| Archive | International Center for Photography |
| Record Number | 2008.55.20 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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