Daniel McGovern, 96; Photographed the Aftermath of Bombings in Japan

Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, 96, who as a combat photographer filmed the aftermath of the atomic bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, died Wednesday of cancer at his home in Laguna Woods, his family said.

Within weeks after the bombs were dropped in early August 1945, McGovern was assigned to take photographs. His still pictures and color film taken over nine months have been used in history books, newspaper articles, television and movies.

Earlier during the war, McGovern took pictures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House.

In 1943, McGovern was stationed in Chelveston, England, flying missions from there as a cameraman. He survived two plane crashes and shot footage that was used in William Wyler’s 1944 wartime documentary “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.”

When Steven Spielberg’s World War II film “Saving Private Ryan” was released in 1998, McGovern, then 88, told The Times:

“Combat men don’t like to talk about what they did. Airplanes crashing, headless bodies with helmets still on. Limbs here, limbs there.... You say, ‘There but for the grace of God,’ but you don’t talk about it. You relive it in your sleep. You go through recollections of pulling bodies out of airplanes -- an experience you never forget.”

But he also said at that time that his children and grandchildren had urged him to speak about what he witnessed and that he began to believe that “reliving it helps. [It] gets it out of the system.”

McGovern and several of his colleagues founded the International Combat Cameramen Assn. to give credit to photographers who risk their lives to shoot combat footage.

After World War II, McGovern wrote, directed and produced classified films on nuclear weapons testing and development at Lookout Mountain, a secret Cold War-era government film lab and studio in the Hollywood Hills.

He is survived by four children, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a sister.

Services are to be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Laguna Woods.