As an army photographer during World War II, Daniel Novak Jr. documented harrowing images of war: soldiers in combat, crashed planes, wounded men undergoing surgeries on makeshift operating tables.
After the fighting was over, Novak stayed behind the camera, making a living photographing the fruits of peace: children at their first communions, brides on their wedding days, prosperous business executives.
Novak, a longtime Twin Cities portrait photographer from Golden Valley, died Aug. 6 at the age of 96.
Born in northeast Minneapolis, Novak became interested in photography early in life, taking wedding pictures with a Speed Graphic camera while attending Edison High School in Minneapolis.
After World War II broke out, he volunteered for the army in 1942 and became a cameraman for the 164th Signal Photographic Company assigned to the China-Burma-India theater in the fight against Japanese forces.
He became a motion picture cameraman, operating a Bell & Howell Eyemo 35mm camera, filming action that would be used in newsreel footage, training films and military intelligence.
In Burma, Novak documented the special operations jungle warfare unit known as Merrill's Marauders. He took pictures of airborne troops parachuting or in gliders, of soldiers on elephants, of the wartime construction of the torturous Ledo Road crossing the mountains between India and China, known as the "man a mile" road because more than 1,100 Americans died building the 1,079-mile road.
"My dad always told the story that you had to hang onto the tail of the mules as they were pulling you up the mountains," said Novak's son, Scott Novak.
