Jack Wilkes with his camera in China. (Photo by Jack Wilkes/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Jack Wilkes with his camera in China. (Photo by Jack Wilkes/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

A disabled Twentieth Century Fox cameraman named Clarence Albert Bach ran a photography high school near Los Angeles called Fremont, which produced several LIFE photographers, including George Strock, John Florea and Bob Landry. Jack Wilkes (born 1907), who had arrived in the United States from his native Wales when he was just a child, was among that select group. Like so many of his era, Wilkes covered WWII for LIFE, and saw much fighting in China as he roamed with his frequent collaborator, writer Theodore H. White.

Adapted from The Great LIFE Photographers

A Chinese infantryman. (Photo by Jack Wilkes/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

A Chinese infantryman. (Photo by Jack Wilkes/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

More Like This

Street scene during business hours. (Photo by Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Peter Stackpole

Motorcyclists racing 75 miles cross country through Mojave Desert. (Photo by Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Bill Eppridge

People walking along the shore of Hydra, Greece. (Photo by James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

James Burke

Students Steve Poster and Jessalyn Gray (fore C) talking at side of taxi while crowd of White Supremacists taunt them. (Photo by Joe Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Joe Scherschel

A tiger setting out at dusk for night of hunting in Kanha National Park, Central India(Photo by Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Stan Wayman

A camel caravan in front of the pyramids of Khefren and Cheops, also called the Great Pyramid. (Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Eliot Elisofon