PORT ANGELES — Lee Embree, whose photographs so vividly memorialized events of World War II that he became a living memorial himself, died Thursday at his home.
Death was attributed to a kidney infection.
Embree, 92, was best known for the photographs he took from an Army Air Corps bomber as Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Enshrined late last year in the Museum of Flight at Seattle’s Boeing Field, the photos — plus Embree’s heavy Speed Graphic camera, his dog tags and goggles — are icons of their own, the first air-to-air pictures of America’s Pacific war.
The stories of his exploits on the Day of Infamy fill the files of Peninsula Daily News.
The files also reveal Embree’s other love — the proposed Timber Town history park west of the Elwha River on U.S. Highway 101
Its main building will be named for Embree when the museum and theme park becomes a reality, said Bob Harbick, president of Timber Town and Heritage Center.
But it is his tale of Pearl Harbor that will endure — how he photographed the attack even as grinning Japanese pilots shot at his B-17E — that became legend.
