Departures of note

Bun'yō Ishikawa was a Japanese photojournalist best known for his coverage of the Vietnam War. Born in Naha, Okinawa, he traveled to Saigon in 1965 and spent three years embedded with American and South Vietnamese forces, photographing the front lines, including the devastation caused by B-52 bombing raids launched from Okinawa bases. His images of civilian casualties and destroyed homes brought the war's human toll to Japanese audiences.

After returning to Japan, Ishikawa worked as a staff photographer for the Asahi Shimbun from 1969 to 1984, then continued as a freelance photographer. He covered conflicts in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Somalia, as well as disasters at home including the Unzen-Fugen eruption, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the Noto Peninsula earthquake. In 1998, he donated about 250 Vietnam War photographs to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, where they became a permanent exhibition.

Ishikawa received the Japan Congress of Journalists (JCJ) Special Award and a merit award from the Vietnamese government for cultural and communications work. He authored numerous books, including "War and Man: Photo Document Vietnam." In 2018, at age 80, he walked roughly 3,500 kilometers from Cape Soya in Hokkaido to Naha, Okinawa, completing the journey across the Japanese archipelago the following year. He died of malignant lymphoma on August 23, 2026, at age 88.