I have been looking through my grandfather's collection of old photographs in recent weeks, and I never cease to be amazed at the amount of history he has witnessed in his 93 years on the planet.My grandfather served in World War II as a SeaBee on the Pacific island of Peleliu a few arriving a few months after the Battle of Peleliu. Pictured on your left is an image he took with a Brownie camera in early 1945 of a building that once housed Japanese radio operations for the island of Peleliu.
The pockmarked scene looks positively desolate, even for being a casualty of war. My grandfather told me that every week or so another Japanese soldier would be discovered on the island, continuing to hide and hold out hope until the end that the Japanese would eventually prevail against the Americans. Of course, with radio communications being severed to the Japanese imperial military command, these lone soldiers had no way of knowing that the war was mere months away from being over.
