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9-18-2022: I’d like someone who lives in/within an hour of North ‘Atlanta’, Georgia, who has website and book writing skills, to contact me. I have already written a 220+ page booklet on the subject written here in this website and I’d like to have a third party review/converstion of my work. In addition, I’d like to rebuild this website to 5-6 pages, that talk about the book, the t-shirts and (maybe) selling a few pictures. Please contace me at: info4dan@gmail.com. Thank you…. Dan
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UPDATED, on 5/13/2022… I will be COMPLETELY rewriting this site in the next few months, with more information, a LARGE Book for sale, pages up to 215 pages in number… and with T-Shirts, etc… see you soon… Dan
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Ok, back to my story….
The initial thought I had when planning on putting this, what on this website, together was to share my story, my sense of humor and perhaps give you something to smile about… and through my store, give you something to have fun with… This site has been greatly reduced… Watch for the updates.
(NOTE: ALL of these additional 67+ web-site/blog page links will be in the book I am writing)
Anyway, I would not have believed it either until this past December, after an accidental injury to my forearm, when all the pieces of a lifetime of wondering about my hand finally came together and made sense… that’s after living with my very functional birth-hand for over 75 years.
My original, light-hearted comic ’material’ is directly related to my marketing mindset, a positive attitude and a very dry sense of humor of having lived with a lifetime of unique experiences relating to most everyone’s initial and misunderstanding about what they thought they saw when they first look at my right hand. Understandably, there is a lot of sensitivity when it comes to a person’s perception of seeing the ‘middle-finger’ expression.
So, I think you could imagine some of the possible situations I’ve experiences, over my lifetime, of interacting with people on every social level.
When, how and where did my story begin, you ask…?
I was conceived just a few weeks after my Dad finished his tour the Marine Corps, but my story begins a little over seven months or so before the time my Dad received his honorable discharge from the Marines in mid-March of 1946.
Based on information from recalling overheard conversations when I was a kid, and then reviewing his military service records and then reading literally scores of articles and books written on the subject of these ‘Atomic-Veterans’, I had an overwhelming suspicion to believe that my hand birth defect is a direct result of my dad’s service related experiences while he was on active duty in the Pacific Theatre during WW II… but, he never talked much about his time in the Marines other than the fact that at one time he was in the same unit as the 1950’s Hollywood actor, Tyrone Power.
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Dad’s hidden files were just found, December 2013…
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His personal military files, complete with photographs that he took in 1945, were discovered this past mid-December 2013…
What baffles me is that Dad kept all his military experience information in a file for over 75+ years, so it must have been important to him… BUT, he never talked about it.
For my entire life I have no memory of him ever talking about anything to do with what he did or where he was during his military service… nothing…(!) even after I thought to ask him what he did during ‘the war’, to only hear some standard (marine tough) short sentence or two.. otherwise, nothing was ever said that I can remember.
Now, his/my actual Nagasaki connection was unquestionably established that he was both ‘in’ and ‘near’ Nagasaki, TAKING PICTURES, TEN DAYS after the atomic bomb’s detonation and just FOUR DAYS AFTER Japan surrendered… and one of the pictures he took was when he was actually flying within a few hundred feet or so of the actual air space the atomic bomb detonated in, over Nagasaki..!!!
Story Links above: ‘Nagasaki Connection: Link pages 1 through link page 9’
(Official signed photograph, of the Nagasaki detonation, by Capitan Sweeney)
Below is an original Chicago Tribune Newspaper that my grandfather must have saved from August 15, 1945. This newspaper was just found in one of my dad’s file storage boxes in December 2015… look, only THREE CENTS for this newspaper… How times have changed…!!!
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I also noticed the secondary article on the front page, about the transport ship the Indianapolis, that was used to transport the two Atomic Bombs to Tinian Island… The Indianapolis was a topic of conversation by Captain Quint in the movie Jaws.
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The photograph below was taken by my Dad just FOUR DAYS after Japan surrendered. The file folder my Dad maintained, about his military experiences, was unknown until the passing of my step-mother this past December, 2013, some 26 years AFTER my Dad passed away. My brother found the file when looking through the condo that our Dad lived in.
Dad took this and other photographs while he was flying around, over and in the area near and surrounding Nagasaki and on the Nagasaki airfield; that was located at Omura, just 9 nautical miles North of Nagasaki.
Dad WAS THERE taking these pictures only TEN DAYS after the atomic Bomb was dropped.
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…JUST TEN DAYS AFTER THE ATOMIC BOMB WAS DROPPED..!!!!
… and FOUR DAYS AFTER Japan Surrendered…!!!
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Like, does this answer some questions of what happened to my birth-hand, or what…!!!!
In looking at the above picture and in my mind, I superimposed the above image over below photographs and I can hardly imagine what this turning point in history actually looked like as it occurred. I’ve read narrative news reports that the mushroom cloud could be seen over a 100 miles away…!
Ok, back to the photographs… In this just discovered, NEVER BEFORE SEEN photographic collection, you are looking at a photograph that was taken while my dad was in a plane, flying over the Southern area of the city of Nagasaki. The picture below was taken over the Southern part of the city, looking North towards the area of the city that was (circled), which was ‘Ground Zero’ for the Atomic Bomb’s aerial detonation…
The area in the photograph that Dad circled, on his photograph, is the actual detonation fireball area, that exploded at an altitude of 1650 feet above this Northern area of the city of Nagasaki.
(Look through the links above, ‘Nagasaki Connection 1-9′, for further pictures and details).
NOTE: When I scanned in the below picture at a resolution just above 1200 DPI and then printed an enlargement just under 2′ by 3′, the resulting image detail WAS AMAZING…!!!
Dad took another photograph, (not the picture above, but pictured in the series of ‘Nagasaki Connection’ links), while flying just above the circled area of detonation, looking towards the EXACT area of devastation.
Here is an overview GOOGLE map of where the detonation took place:
NOTE: There is additional detail about these photographs, posted on the pages within this site.
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According to the note he wrote on the other photograph, (referring to the “1500 foot altitude” he was at while taking that picture), he had to be within 300 feet, (over and up) of the actual area in the air-space that the Atomic Bomb detonated, (which exploded at an altitude of 1650 feet)…
I have scanned this original photograph using an Epson high resolution scanner and then proceeded to ENLARGE the above image a 30″x 36″ print… The detail that was captured in this high resolution scanned photo/enlargement is nothing short of AMAZING….!!!! Even both of the photo-Lab facilities I was using to help make these photo enlargements were calling co-workers over to come and look at these incredible pictures.
The area just to the picture left, of the bottom of the arrow along the canal that flowed into Nagasaki Bay, is where the Mitsubishi Torpedo manufacturing plant was located.
NOTE: Ever since the Nagasaki Connection was made, I’ve acquired about a dozen very detailed ‘Nagasaki pictorial publications’; what further amazed me is that the pictures, and the angle of perspective of my dad’s pictures, do not exist in any of these publications…
(Check out all the links, to the NEW 9+ pages of this part of the story board that were just added on 01/12/2014, at the upper left of these pages).
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Then I asked an APPRAISER to evaluate these photographs:
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… just recently, (October 2014), I had an APPRAISER evaluate the value that this one-of-a-kind collection of photographs of Nagasaki, might have as both originals AND in offering a few LIMITED issued authentic, enlarged copies… (The enlargements I’ve already made are AMAZING…!)
Incorporated into this appraisal evaluation was the fact that I used a basic, but high-grade, Epson 1200 dpi photographic scanner to capture all in hidden detail contained within these photographs. Then, I had these images enlarged and printed up to a standard enlargement size of 24″ by about 32″… The overall detail contained in these pictures was SPECTACULAR…!!!
The following copied posts are excerpt responses to my continued conversation with this appraiser, beginning with the appraisers commentary:
Appraiser:
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Then, she went on to say in a later part of our Week-Long conversation:
…and in summary, she wrote this after evaluating EVERYTHING I shared with her:
…Ok, back to the rest of the story:
When I was a kid and up until this past December 2013, the fragments of information I recall about his war-time experiences is what he rarely mentioned. Dad never spoke much about his military experiences, but on the rare occasion he had stories of being in Japan, sometime after the August 6th- 9th, 1945 dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and just BEFORE his discharge from the Marine Corps. When this file he put away was found my brothers and I were all dumbfounded that this information had been filed away since 1946…
Unfortunately, as a kid back 50 to about 60+ some years ago, I wasn’t much of a listener or a conversationalist to even think about asking the relative questions that I’d like to know all about today. I just did not know enough to even ask…
Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, as families, we generally just accepted ‘things’ as they were and just moved on. As for schoolmates and friends growing up, the guys usually thought my hand was kind of ‘cool‘ and the girls, well let’s say, they were more interested in ‘the perfect‘ guy…
Then everything came together, when I had that accidental injury to my forearm and had an opportunity, with a radiologist that was particularly curious and also had an accommodating sense of dry humor, to shoot an second x-ray image of just my right hand.
When leaving the hospital, I stood in the parking lot while holding the x-ray for another look at the image of my hand. This is when both a light turned on and a bell went off in my head as I initially realized the possible applications and the overall possibility.
That’s when I began putting all the various pieces together and digging into family and historical research, like never before. I concentrated, for the next several months, on trying to remember EVERYTHING, (of what mostly I wanted to forget), and then writing down EVERY different EXPERIENCE I could recall, relating to my hand, that happened over my lifetime.
Question to think about: HOW would you think to take something that has for centuries been used to send a negative message and turn it into something lighthearted and positive with wit and good clean humor…
How could or how would you know how to do this…?
I know I have, simply because… I have lived it…
You wouldn’t know what this was like UNLESS you lived it and with a sense of humor like I
have, for OVER SEVENTY FIVE YEARS…!
Please enjoy my site and enter in to the conversation below. Be sure to check out the Slogan SURVEY section and pick out the slogans that you’d like to see with the x-ray image. You can even suggest additional slogans in the comments section in the lower area of the SURVEY Section…
I look forward to hearing from you…
…again, I thank you for stopping by.
…and I look forward to sharing my experiences with you.
This work-in-progress site is dedicated to both my kids, Michael and Stephanie; who for their entire life had to endure the distinctive style of their Dad’s unceasing sense of playful humor.
…But, I must give them both a lot of credit because it was years of their asking, prodding and then I had the the ‘accidental injury’, to my arm, where it all came together, that finally got me to write out the stories about this one part of my goofy growing-up experiences.
I suspect they finally got their wish, and a bit more than they bargained for, in this web site. In addition, I also think they’ll probably now push me to write out the rest of my 70+ other goofy ‘growing-up’ crazy stories… but, when I do, it’ll be with some dictation software program, for sure.
Love both you guys…
Your nutty Dad
Now, let the Conversation begin
on this site… Enjoy… Dan
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Also, please ‘Like‘ this site on Facebook and any help with the cost of maintaining this website would be appreciated… Thanks, Dan
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