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I was around 5 or so. A rainy day. To keep me out of her hair, Mom told me to explore the unorganized drawer of family photos. There, I discovered a cache of horror: pictures my Dad had taken in the blast zone of Hiroshima.. (Bivouaced in Kure City, his CO tapped Dad as his driver.) As I ducked and covered, these images haunted me. They haunt me now. Bless my parents. They sat me down and explained those photos, with both empathy for the victims and Dad's fate. As a lead scout, routing out remaining Japanese in New Guinea and the Philippines, he came home; his bones forever gnarled, his colon eventually cancerous.

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