On Friday, the now 86-year-old retired state Supreme Court judge reunited with three of the survivors of the Nazi death train his unit found near Magdeburg, about 50 miles southwest of Berlin. The train was on its way to another concentration camp.

[…]

The reunion has its roots in a class project launched by Matthew Rozell, a history teacher at Hudson Falls High School. In the early 1990s, he created an elective course for seniors to collect stories from local veterans and post them on a Web site.

One of Rozell’s students was Walsh’s grandson, who told the teacher about his grandfather’s wartime service. Several years ago, Rozell interviewed Walsh and George Gross, a fellow tank commander from Spring Valley, Calif.

Their account of the train liberation was posted on the project’s Web site, along with black-and-white photographs taken that day by the major leading their patrol.

That’s where some of the child survivors of the Nazi train, now in their 60s and 70s, found their story.

Learn about: A Train Near Magdeburg

Main Link: The World War Two Living History Project (WW2LHP)

(via yahoo news)

Thus ending a war that cost countless lives in battle and would have had an even bloodier invasion had the Allies traditionally attacked Japan.

Aug. 6, 1945: ‘I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds’

1945: The United States becomes the first (and remains the only) country ever to use an atomic weapon in warfare, obliterating the Japanese city of Hiroshima and instantly killing 70,000 people. (Many thousands more would die later from the effects of radiation poisoning.) Three days later, the port city of Nagasaki is destroyed by a second atom bomb with the ultimate loss of 140,000 lives. Japan surrenders shortly thereafter, ending World War II.

Several countries, including Nazi Germany, had pursued the development of an atomic weapon but none matched the U.S. Manhattan Project in terms of the resources, energy or scientific manpower devoted to making the bomb a reality.

Such dates should be remembered.

(via digg)