An Amazing Human

A few days ago we celebrated the, not at all controversial in its time, dropping of Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yesterday, Albert Brown, witness to the need for those bombings, died.

(Family photo via The Southern Illinoisan, Associated Press)

Albert Brown was 105 years old when he died, but his story started as a 40 year old dentist captured during the Battle of Bataan. He was the oldest survivor of the Bataan Death March, a 70 mile trek during which 5,000 - 11,000 prisoners died or were killed.

By the time the war ended in 1945, the 40-year-old Brown
was nearly blind, had weathered a broken back and neck
and suffered through more than a dozen diseases including
malaria, dysentery and dengue fever.

An amazing man indeed.