イラク戦争

"He has been walking through war zones ever since he graduated from college," she told reporters as she flew to Kuwait to fulfil that duty. "I married a journalist, and I've always been aware of the risks. He knew, too."

Later, she was filmed sifting through her husband's belongings. Among the badly-charred remains of his camera equipment was a passport photograph attached to an official-looking form.

Hashida and Ogawa were killed on their way to meet the person in the photograph, a 10-year-old Iraqi boy named Mohamad Haytham Saleh, whose left eye had been injured by shrapnel during fighting between US troops and insurgents in Falluja in November.

They had been due to arrive in Japan on Tuesday so Mohamad could receive urgent treatment to his damaged eye.

He wept when he heard what had happened to his sponsors, but will get the treatment he needs later this week thanks to a Japanese charity Hashida had turned to for help.

Not everyone is happy with the idea of journalists behaving like humanitarians. Privately, some reporters complain that those who become waylaid by human misery are not real journalists, just bleeding-heart activists who know how to operate a camcorder.

But without them, on the ground reporting of Japan's most controversial deployment of troops for 60 years would grind to a near halt.

As major media organisations withdraw staff, those who freelance as Hashida did are quickly becoming Japan's only direct link to the realities of the Iraq war. They do the dirty work that the rest of us - me included - would balk at. They deserve recognition, not backbiting.

The fact that Hashida's work created disquiet on all sides is the greatest tribute to his independent spirit.

According to his driver, the sole survivor of the attack, his killers denounced him as a "puppet of the United States" as they pumped his body with bullets. They could not have been more wrong.