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waiting on both the east and west ends, we remained parked for three or four hours until it was our turn to go. That is when I began to see the extent of the destruction. Although the debris had been pushed out of the streets almost immediately, the land itself in the center of the city remained piled with debris. Tar paper shacks had sprung up all over the outlying areas near the rail line. Some had cleared small areas for gardens but most were surrounded with deep rubble. The stench of burning charcoal cooking fish and decomposing garbage was nauseating. As I watched those rag dressed people trying to exist under primative conditions in cold winter weather I felt the same pity for them that I had felt for the food scavengers at Irumagawa Air Base. I get the same feeling and recall the smell to this day when I examine with a magnifying glass two pictures in particular that were taken from the train by one of my buddies.

The rest of the trip to Fukuoka was mostly uneventful. It was interesting when we passed under the sea in a tunnel going from Hikoshima on the southernmost tip of the main island, Honshu to Moji on the southwestern island of Kyushu. The next city was Kokura which had been the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Due to smoke obscuring the arsenal target area and a shortage of fuel, the B-29 Bock's Car piloted by Major Chuck Sweeney went for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Today, the name Kokura cannot be found on maps because it became a part of Yawata to the west. I have three WWII air navagation maps that do show Kokura. Later I traveled to Moji by jeep and saw that Yawata had suffered severe bomb damage.

We arrived at Fukuoka and were assigned to the Headquarters Squadron, Fifth Air Force, Fifth Fighter Command where we took over base operations from the set-up group and they were sent home to the states for discharge. Some of the noncoms who were regular army stayed as did many commissioned officers to staff and oversee the operations. I was immediately placed back on flying status and as head photographer I did most of the flying. My job was to take all kinds of pictures - people, places, etc.. I even photographed Major General K. B. Wolfe when he visited out base on 21 March, 1946 and some of those pictures are in my album. I flew to the scene of all airplane crashes and took lots of aerial pictures of bombed-out cities. I was soon assigned to photograph both atom bomb damaged cities. Little did I dream that I would be one of the few photographers to take low altitude aerials of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Museums which have some of my pictures are The Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos, New Mexico where the atomic bombs were made, Mott's Military Museum at Columbus, Ohio, home of General Paul Tibbets, pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay which dropped the very first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, The Greater Fort Wayne Aviation Museum at Fort Wayne International Airport, and the Whitley County Historical Museum. Six of my photographs will be published in the fall of 1995 in a book titled "Picturing the Bomb: A Photographic History of the Manhattan Engineering District", authored by Esther Samra, a New York City photo historian, and Rachel Fermi, granddaughter of

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