[Issaquahking]

Thanks Kelly for calling our attention to Some very important history. Our freedoms that so many take for granted, were paid for in blood by American Patriots and deserve to be remembered and honored more so than they are.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

There have been a couple of stories in the MSM about the 100,000 Japanese deaths associated with the fireboming raids. Very few carried what should be the setup story of Iwo Jima and the role it played in the raid and ending the war.
We lived in Japan in the 1950s and there were still large sections of Yokohama that were little more than piles of concrete on vacant lots. Our maid, Masako, was a ten year old girl, forced to work 16 hours a day in a munitions factory when the raid took place. After the fires were put out, some of the salvaged machinery was moved into caves in the sandstone cliffs around Yokohama Bay. The kids in my neighborhood liked to play in the caves but gradually, the MPs and Japanese police ordered them sealed up. One cave about a mile from our house still housed a family of Japanese. They had erected a wood frame front on the cave and had a single stove pile exiting a small window. The father of the household still wore a Japanese Army cap on his way to work at the docks.