Facebook Picture of Damage at Nagasaki: 1945 and 2011

One of my grandsons, Brian Minkin of California, who has traveled the world, surfing and teaching English while also becoming fluent in Spanish, recently sent a post to Facebook which had been originated by a man from Alaska. It consisted of two pictures. One showed damage to Nagasaki by our second A-Bomb (atomic), featuring a structure that survived the blast.

I entered the U.S. Marine Corps the same day that Stanley Wallach of Eureka did, and I had the serial number 981062 and Stanley — or Boots — had 981063. However he came ashore at Sasebo to work Nagasaki, and when I talked to him recently, he mentioned that he remembered the structure of which I spoke.

In the Facebook picture, regarding 2011, the same structure was pictured amidst the wreckage caused by the tsunami 66 years later, and it survived again.

The caption was something like:  "What was it made of?'

There is a lot of trivia on Facebook, but I remember seeing the same 1945 picture while in headquarters of FMF-Pac after the war, and talking to Stanley today he remembered seeing the same structure in real time.

That brought back to me the bombs that made it unnecesary for me to land in the invasion of Japan, which was scheduled for November 1945, 66 years ago where we figured we would all be killed — and we were trained to kill everyone we met and did not have to do that either.

So when you see that item in Facebook remember me and Boots. Our good government had ordered 500,000 Purple Hearts for the landing, and we remember VJ Day with Happy Memories.

Boots recently told me his research showed that he, me, and a fellow Marine, Tom Wehrle, are the only Three WWII servicement from Eureka that still live in the city. So this is a bit more trivia to speak of.