The overcast dawn of April 11, 1945, brought no visible sunrise, just another order to general quarters. Across the light cruiser USS Astoria (CL-90)—“Mighty Ninety” to the crew—men raced to their battle stations. Such mornings had grown commonplace over the past four months. After protecting the flattops of the Fast Carrier Task Force during airstrikes in the Philippines, the South China Sea, Iwo Jima, the Japanese Home Islands, and now Okinawa, a once-neophyte crew had grown salty. Photographer’s Mate Third Class Herman Schnipper held his navy-issue Graflex Anniversary Speed Graphic medium-format camera at the ready with plenty of film handy.
Based on the past few days, action shots would come. When the U.S. Tenth Army had landed at Okinawa on April 1, Astoria and the fast carriers conducted offensive missions to suppress the Japanese response, as they had been doing for weeks prior. U.S. Navy and Marine aircraft bombed airfields, strafed enemy planes on the ground, and intercepted them in the air—everything to soften resistance the landing forces might face. The invasion codenamed Operation Iceberg had been inevitable—no secret to Japan—as Okinawa was the final steppingstone in an island-hopping campaign taking Allied forces to Japan’s doorstep. So from the first day, enemy planes targeted the Fast Carrier Task Force in return. Increasingly those attacks included the most desperate of all: suicidal kamikaze strikes aiming to sink or damage the aircraft carriers bringing so much floating airpower over a critical island stronghold. Across the 30-odd vessels surrounding Astoria in formation, men stood at their guns, lookouts scanning the skies. For Herman Schnipper, his assigned role would also be to pull the trigger and shoot—photographs.
Hailing from Bayonne, New Jersey, the wiry 21-year-old lucked into a photographer’s role upon induction into the navy. He did not attend the photography schools of the larger units stationed across the fleet; he simply owned a 35mm camera and knew how to use it. Before long he was issued his Speed Graphic and assigned routine work as needed. As trained and joined the fleet, Schnipper learned to love his magazine. Yet Okinawa was proving to be different—more taxing—given the daily onslaught of counterattacks.
