The above photo, which was taken by a Japanese photographer, was found by US Navy photographer Martin J. Shemanski at Yokusuka Base near Tokyo Bay shortly after the Japanese surrendered.
The photo shows the Japanese fighter plane (the small black speck that almost looks like a bird) appearing to pull out of a dive after dropping the bomb on Battleship Row. Another Japanese fighter plane can be seen in the upper right corner.
Shemanski and four other US military photographers were ordered to go through Japanese photo processing labs after the surrender, and he found it torn up in a trash can.
“It had a torn photo in it,” Shemanski told the Press-Enterprise in 2015.
“I picked up a couple pieces and I got a shot of a torpedo hitting the Oklahoma. I thought, ‘This is Navy intelligence,’” he added.
The USS Oklahoma was a Nevada-class battleship that was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Shemanski told the Press-Enterprise that the picture was torn up in about 20 pieces.
Shemanski reassembled the photo and turned it over to US naval intelligence on the USS Shangri-La aircraft carrier.