My Grandfather brought these photographs home from the war.  I am told that he was friends with Ernie Pyle.  The famous World War II journalist. Grandma had the photo album hidden away in her house. She was afraid that something might happen to them. I think they are a treasure and should be shared.  Fortunately, back in 2001 she let me borrow them long enough for me to scan them.   I have wondered at a means of sharing them. Now that I have a blog, this is the perfect vehicle for such an endeavor. I’ll bring them out in categories that seem logical. The Bomb. The treaty. The people of Asia. The Soldiers.

These are pictures of the bomb.  One of them.  Exploding over Nagasaki or Hiroshima.  A terrible decision that saved American lives.  Possibly millions. But ended hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives and affected the next generations terribly.

War is a terrifyingly, wretched endeavor.

“A bright light filled the plane. The first shock-wave hit us. We were eleven and a half miles slant range from the atomic explosion but the whole airplane cracked and crinkled from the blast… We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud… mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall.”
- Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay

“I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”
- J. Robert Oppenheimer, a scientist involve with the development of the atomic bomb (July 16, 1945 quoting the Hindu Scriptures after the first atomic bomb detonation) [summited by Jim Marchetti]