1. Yoichi Robert Okamoto was the first official US presidential photographer, serving Lyndon B Johnson.
11 Facts About Yoichi Okamoto
1. 2.
Yoichi Okamoto's father, Chobun Yonezo Okamoto, was a wealthy exporter, book publisher and real estate businessman who came from Japan to the United States in 1904.
3.
Yoichi Okamoto attended Roosevelt High School and Colgate University and served in the US Army Signal Corps.
4.
Yoichi Okamoto's tightly cropped, three-quarter-face portrait, previously published in Popular Photography shows Kreutzberg at the 1950 Salzburg Festival in rehearsals for the performance of the play Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in which Kreutzberg played the devil.
5.
In 1961, Okamoto was invited to accompany then-Vice President Lyndon B Johnson on a trip of Berlin as his official photographer.
6.
When Johnson became president, he asked Yoichi Okamoto to become the official photographer for the White House, which Yoichi Okamoto accepted on condition that he would have unlimited access to the President.
7.
Yoichi Okamoto was fondly known as "Oke", and was given unprecedented access to the Oval Office.
8.
Yoichi Okamoto captured images of the President of the United States, more candid than had been previously acceptable.
9.
Yoichi Okamoto took an estimated 675,000 photographs during the Johnson presidency.
10.
Yoichi Okamoto was married to wife, Paula, and had a step-daughter, Karin, and a son, Philip.
11.
Yoichi Okamoto committed suicide on April 24,1985, at the age of 69.