ABSTRACT
Yoichi R. Okamoto was born of Japanese parents in Yonkers, New York, in 1915 and graduated from Colgate University. After that, he was a photographer for the Post-Standard from 1938 to 1942 and then served as a photographer with the US Army Signal Corps during World War II. Okamoto was a reserved man who rarely talked about himself. But he had a fascinating personal story, perhaps the most interesting of any White House photographer. Okamoto was also praised in a Washington Post review of a one-man show he held in 1958. Okamoto, at that time the chief photographer of the US Information Agency, was reassigned on a temporary basis to the White House. Okamoto had a sudden falling-out with the notoriously mercurial Johnson. Okamoto also captured Johnson's massive personality and effort to dominate everything around him. In another, lesser-known photo, Johnson crouches down and inspects something left behind by his dog Yuki on the fancy rug in the Oval Office.
