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- Date/Time Original: 1/9/2007 4:57:44 AM
- Exposure Time: 1/80 sec
- Flash: Flash did not fire, auto
- Focal Length: 6.3 mm
- Model: PENTAX Optio Z10
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My father-in-law -- yup, the young sailor of 1945, all grown up. We were talking yesterday after dinner... He has been lost in thought often throughout the last weeks, thinking about where he was this time of the year in 1945. This day, he would have been hunkered down in a cave, waiting for April 1, when he and his comrades would emerge and fight their way across an open barren terrain against an entrenched enemy. My father-in-law's job: to save the wounded he could save, and relieve the suffering of those he could not. To gather the dogtags of those who would not return to loved ones and American freedoms. I cannot comprehend the fear, the rage, the sadness... do not want to understand it. But I can sense it. And when I walk outside today... drive my car where I choose to drive it... put my paycheck in my bank... speak English comfortably and freely... and return to my property where I can lift my eyes and breathe American air -- I can feel a little bit of that young corpsman, scared, outraged, tearful, and thank him, thank those who fell and those who survived, however scarred, for the life I've led and the opportunities I've been granted.
