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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 primitive conditions in cold winter weather I felt the same pity for them that I had felt for the food scavengers of 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 Fukouka was mostly uneventful. It was interesting when we passed under the sea in a tunnel going from Hiroshima on the southernmost tip of the main island, Honshu to Mo^[[j]]i 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 of Kukura cannot be found on maps because it became a part of Yawata to the west. I have three WWII air navigation maps that do show Kokura. Later I traveled to Mo^j[[I]] by Jeep and saw that Yawata had suffered severe bomb damage.

We arrived at Fukouka and were assigned to the Headquarters Squadron, Fifth Air Force, Fifth Fighter Command where we took over operations from the set-up group and they were sent home to the states for discharge. I was immediately placed back on flying status and, as head photographer, I did most of the flying. 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.

My first A-bomb city to photograph was Nagasaki which had been destroyed by the second bomb, the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" on 9 August, 1945. Colonel Fulcher was personally going to fly me in a Stinson L-5 observation plane. Another high ranking officer who was a friend of Col. Fulcher and happened to be at the field, wanted to go along. Since the plane was a tandem with two seats, the Colonel authorized my regular pilot to prepare a second L-5 while he and his friend flew on ahead. I had never driven a truck, much less a semi-trailer tanker, but I managed to get it started, circled tight, and ended up right by the nose of the L-5. Within half and hour we were off the ground. We circled Nagasaki at 500 and 1000 feet altitude while I took ^[[3]]9 views.

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Nagasaki was a major port with one of the world's largest shipbuilding yards. Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works was at the southern end of the industrial valley and the torpedo plant was to the north. The hypocenter was in between, about 150 yards north of Mitsubishi Steel which was the aiming point. There were also four big Mitsubishi aircraft plants. The shipbuilding yards were far to the south on the west side of the harbor and the city business district was on the east side of the harbor with the residential are farther east in a pocket of small mountains. those mountains had protected the greater portion of the population and reduced the death toll. The pre-bomb population had been 195,000. Fat Man was dropped from about 32,000 feet and detonated at 1,750 feet with a force of 23 kilotons of TNT. Approximately 36,000 were killed and injuries later claimed 39,000 more lives.

As we circled I noticed that an area about a mile across was completely bare except for a few concrete reinforced buildings and the rusting twisted metal hulk of the Mitsubishi Steel plant. Even the steel superstructure of the shipyards far to the south was turned to red rust. The business district across the harbor had been leveled, but homes in the residential area to the east still stood, closely packed together.

Upon returning to the base airfield we noted that the Colonel wasn't back yet. It took almost an hour before he showed up. He told us that he was flying low, forgot to turn on the carburetor heat, the gas line froze up, and the engine quit. He found that he was heading almost straight into a runway which our troops had made within a city block of the hypocenter. We had not noticed them waving their arms at us, but my pictures show their plane parked beside another on the ground.

The next mission was to Hiroshima. This time we chose to use a Canadian built ^[[Noordayne] Norseman, a rather large single engine plane. We had two of them but one was down with an engine problem. The normal ^[[55]]0 H.P. engine in the plane we took had been replaced with a ^[[500]] H.P. Curtis-Wright American engine so we were 50 H.P. short for maximum performance. Flying the plane was a Senior Command pilot with thousands of hours flying time. We also has a co-pilot and two or three others who sat back with me on canvas bucket seats that ran fore and aft on both sides of the plane. As we approached Hiroshima, I unbuckled my seat belt, took off my parachute and placed it on the floor in front of the door to kneel on because the window in the door is too high to properly position the K-20 aerial camera.

Hiroshima had been the target for the first atomic bomb, a uranium gun type called Little Boy, on 6 August, 1945. My photographs clearly show