Photographer Max Desfor

Few people were eyewitnesses to more 20th century history than Max Desfor.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Associated Press staff photographer was covering a Washington football game when he heard the stadium’s public address system calling for military personnel to immediately report for duty.

Desfor assumed that something important was happening and dutifully called the office. With that he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and at the age of 28, Desfor was launched on a career in international photojournalism that spanned decades.

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He covered the Pacific theater during World War II, including the scorched earth of Hiroshima in the weeks following the atomic bomb blast, and was aboard the USS Missouri to document the Japanese surrender ceremony.

Desfor went on to cover the Korean War, winning a 1951 Pulitzer Prize for photography for a portfolio of images. One particular photo, showing civilians struggling across the mangled girders of a bridge in bitter cold weather, became an iconic image of that war. Desfor returned to Seoul in 2010 for an exhibition of Pulitzer Prize photos, and a display of his work, “The Forgotten War,” now tours Korea.

But Desfor was far more than a war photographer – he covered much of Asia, including China and Japan, and especially India as it gained independence from Britain. His 1946 photo of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru became the basis for an Indian postage stamp and is still revered in India today.

Desfor continued as a photographer and editor for most of his 47-year AP career, eventually becoming a photo manager at New York headquarters. In the 1970s, he moved to U.S. News and World Report as the magazine’s director of photography.

In 2012, Desfor, 98, married his friend and companion Shirley Belasco, who was 90 at the time. The couple celebrated Max’s 100th birthday with family and friends at the National Press Club in Washington last November.

On November 8, 2014, Desfor will celebrate his 101st birthday. Below is a gallery featuring a selection of his work.

The Aga Khan III celebrates his 60th anniversary as head of the Ismaili Muslim sect by balancing himself against a matching weight of diamonds at Bradbourne Stadium, Bombay, India, March 10, 1946. He is shown as the containers of diamonds equal his weight and the scale nears zero. The monetary equivalent of the diamonds was to be donated to charity. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

The body of assassinated Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, covered with rose petals, is carried to the site of his cremation in New Delhi, Jan. 31, 1948. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Weary from long duty, this U.S. soldier slumped down to rest alongside his machine gun dugout during the Korean War while Allied forces were guarding the small Pusan, Korea, perimeter, Aug. 9, 1950. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

An American medium tank blasts at enemy positions in South Korean hills, August 12, 1950 as a soldier, crouched in weeds in right foreground, observes the hits. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Paratrooper embraced by native after he hit ground in Sunchon, North Korea on Oct. 20, 1950. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Demonstrators stone Japanese policemen at the height of the pro-Red May Day riots in downtown Tokyo on May 1, 1952. Casualties were numerous on both sides as police used tear gas, guns and clubs to beat back the waves of rioters. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Paratroopers drop from U.S. Air Force C-119 transport planes during an operation over an undisclosed location in Korea, in October 1950. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

A bespectacled Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, who eventually led India to its independence, laughs with the man who was to be the nation's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, at the All-India Congress committee meeting in Bombay, India, on July 6, 1946. Pictured to Nehru's left is Madam Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Nehru took office as president of the Congress during the session. Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance, including civil disobedience and fasts, drove India to independence in 1947 after nearly 200 years of British rule. The father of modern India, the Mahatma, which means great soul, was assassinated in 1948 for his tolerance of other religions. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Muslim women, wearing burkahs to keep strict purdah, await their turn to proceed to the polling rooms at the Griffis High School grounds, July 9, 1947 in Peshawar, where they will take part in the referendum voting. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Cold winter sun creates a deceptively peaceful scene as it silhouettes an early morning patrol setting out over the Icy shore of a Korean stream in the Wonju area on Jan. 25, 1951. Allied patrols probing north of Wonju were finding little evidence of enemy concentrations. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

A pair of bound hands and a breathing hole in the snow at Yangji, Korea, Jan. 27, 1951 reveal the presence of the body of a Korean civilian shot and left to die by retreating Communists during the Korean War. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Spectators and photographers use 16" gun turret in Japan, as vantage point on the USS Missouri. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

About 15 miles from Delhi at the village of Molarbund is a snake charmers' colony, shown March 25, 1949. The men travel all over India to give performances of their art but they always return to this, their home village. They make their musical instrument, called a ìbeenî, out of a locally grown type of gourd. Besides the familiar cobra they also exhibit pythons, Russell's vipers, kraits and slow worms. After giving snake charming exhibitions, for additional income they also sell an antidote for snakebite. (AP Photo)

Residents from Pyongyang, North Korea, and refugees from other areas crawl perilously over shattered girders of the city's bridge on Dec. 4, 1950, as they flee south across the Taedong River to escape the advance of Chinese Communist troops. The Chinese entered the Korean War as allies of North Korea. U.S. troops battled on the side of South Korea. Begun in June 25, 1950, the war ended on July 27, 1953, with a military demarcation line set near the 38th parallel where it started. Korea remains divided. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

In August 1950 photo, U.S. Marines help a wounded buddy on the Naktong River front in South Korea. The war that began in Korea 60 years ago, on June 25, 1950, a ghastly conflict that killed millions and left the peninsula in ruins, became "The Forgotten War" in many American minds. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)

Fatigue, not an enemy bullet, stopped this American marine who catches 40 winks on a Seoul Street unperturbed by his audience of young and old residents in Seoul, Sept. 28, 1950. (AP Photo/Max Desfor)