BETHESDA, Md. -- Yoichi Okamoto, the official White House photographer during President Johnson's administration, hanged himself at his home, police said Thursday. He was 69.
Montgomery County police ruled the Wednesday death a suicide.
Okamoto, the former chief of the visual materials branch of the U.S. Information Agency, met Johnson in 1961 when he was assigned to photograph the then-vice president on his trip to the Berlin Wall.
Johnson invited Okamoto to go along on several other overseas trips when he was vice president and made Okamoto White House photographer following the assassination of President Kennedy.
Given access to photograph Johnson in situations that were off limits to other photographers, Okamoto became known in White House circles as the president's 'shadow.'
When Johnson left office, Okamoto formed Image Inc., a Washington custom photo lab that he ran until retiring in the early 1980s.
A native of Yonkers, N.Y., Okamoto graduated from Colgate University, served in the Army during World War II and later worked on a newspaper in Syracuse, N.Y. He moved to the Washington area in the mid-1950s.
