Colorize photo a little Filipina child amidst the ruins of liberated Manila, 1945

Little girl holding a small Philippine flag and selling bananas, possible to GI soldiers who just liberated Manila from the Japanese during WWI.  Building in the foreground is the Aduana in Intramuros, a historic landmark involving the first Spanish settlement in the city, but was used extensively as a Japanese garrison during their occupation. Manila was among the most devastated cities during the war. This was caused mostly by artillery shells and bombing by American liberating forces as they eliminated all Japanese resistance, often reducing into rubble those that have been identified as Japanese holdouts.  There have been speculations that had the U.S. waited for the surrender of Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese occupation forces in the Philippines would have peacefully laid down their arms, sparing Manila from the utter destruction.  But it is said that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had to fulfill his "I shall return" promise at all cost, as he felt he owed that much to say "I have returned" to Filipinos and not say they were forgotten.  MacArthur returned to the Philippines in Oct 1944 and the Battle of Manila that reduced the city to ruins was from Feb - Mar 1945.  Japan surrendered in August of that year.

Mother and Son in the ruins of Hiroshima, colorized from a 1945 photo

Colorized from a December 1945 photo, 4 months after the dropping of the Atomic Bomb in the City of Hiroshima, Japan, No other information on the photo, but looks like the two returned to their destroyed community after the bombing.

Raising the Soviet flag over the German Reichstag, May 1945

The iconic raising of the Soviet flag over the devastated Reichstag was a re-enactment photo taken the day after the Soviet victory in the Battle of Berlin.  Colorized from two re-enactment original photos taken by Yevgeny Khaldei with a Leica III rangefinder camera with a 35mm f3.5 lens on 2 May 1945.

The photo was published 13 May 1945 in the Ogonyok magazine. While many photographers took pictures of flags on the Reischtag roof, it was Khaldei's image that stuck.

The Soviets wrongly considered the Reichstag as symbolic of  Nazi Germany. It was already abandoned after the 1933 fire that left it in ruins. On 2 May 1945, photographer Khaldei scaled the now pacified Reichstag to take his picture. He was carrying with him a large flag, sewn from three tablecloths for this very purpose, by his uncle. Arriving at the Reichstag, he asked the soldiers who happened to be passing by to help with the staging of the photoshoot. There were only four of them, including Khaldei, on the roof: the one who was attaching the flag was 18-year-old Private Kovalev from Kiev, the two others were Abdulkhakim Ismailov from Dagestan and Leonid Gorychev from Minsk.

After taking the photo, Khaldei returned to Moscow and edited the image at the request of the editor-in-chief of the Ogonyok, who noticed that Senior Sergeant Abdulkhakim Ismailov, who is supporting the flag-bearer, was wearing two watches, which could imply he had looted one of them, an action punishable by execution. Using a needle, Khaldei removed the watch from the right wrist. Later, it was claimed that the extra watch was actually an Adrianov compass and that Khaldei, in order to avoid controversy, doctored the photo to remove the watch from Ismailov's right wrist. He also added to the smoke in the background, copying it from another picture to make the scene more dramatic.[1]

Stumbled on another photo by Khaldei with the flag still to be unfurled, but used another image of the flag in another photo unfurled and slightly distorted.

Colorized a photo of the twisted remains of a double-decker London City bus after a German Blitz on the City, September 10, 1940

Colorized a photo of the twisted remains of a double-decker  London City bus after a day time German Blitz on the City that also left some department stores in ruins,  September 10, 1940, just 3 days after the start of the Blitz. 

The  Battle of Britain between August and September 1940 and saw the defeat of the German Luftwaffe despite a clear 4:1 numerical superiority in aircraft over Britain.  Hitler then turned his sights on conducting bombing Blitzes that almost sent the UK to its knees if not for the fact that Hitler canceled his plans to invade Britain for his invasion of Soviet Russia to the east  The Royal Family was already preparing to evacuate to Canada and had Hitler continued with his invasion of Britain and not embark on a disastrous Russian campaign, he would have won the war at that point.  America was still sitting on the fence until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941, but without the UK as its launch point in the European theatre, there would not be any country in Europe to host a US military build-up for a Normandy landing. 

On September 7, 1940  around 4:00 PM, 348 German bombers (mostly Heinkel 111) escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second wave commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.  The blitz lasted until May 1951 leaving more than 50,000 civilian casualties including 28,500 dead.  

Manila Post Office in ruins after the Battle of Manila in 1945

Restored and colorized a photo taken by John Tewell for Life/Time after WWII, depicting the Manila Post Office as it was entirely gutted and the Jones bridge in the foreground destroyed as desperate Japanese forces went on a killing spree and destroying everything in its path including landmark buildings like the Legislative Buldg, the Manila Cathedral, and the Post Office bldg colorize here.  They eventually surrendered to the liberating forces of Gen. MacArthur during the Battle of Manila 3Feb -6Mar 1945.

 

U.S. Allied forces in the German town of Linnich during the Battle of Berlin, Feb 1945

Here's my colorized take on a photo depicting an M4A3 Sherman of the 771st Tank Battalion of the 84th rail Splitter Division after fighting in the German town of Linnich from a photo taken on Feb 24th, 1945. Allied forces advanced its way from the west in the invasion of Germany, leaving a swath of ruins as Hitler's army, reduced to a disorganized defensive position, presented stiff resistance that caused over 100,000 casualties in the armies of Generals Omar Bradley and George Paton.  Berlin eventually fell to the Soviets advancing from the East leading to the surrender of Germany on May 7, 1945.

Colorized photo of an abandoned boy admist the ruins of his home during the German Blitz, ca 1940

An abandoned boy holding a stuffed toy animal amidst the ruins of his home following German aerial bombing of London. Colorized by Alex Lim from a photo by Toni Frissell taken sometime in 1945.  The dreary colors of war with near monochromatic colors of soldiers, tanks, greeneries, destroyed structures, muddied grounds, and smokes that obscure the sky can be broken with children and their colorful garb and toys.  Unfortunately, these children are often captured in camera in the saddest and most tragic of circumstances.  Good to hear, the boy survived the war and was last known to have worked as a truck driver. His mother, father and brother died under the rubble from a V-2 rocket attack in 1945. If he was 8/9 years old when the pic was taken by Toni Frissell in  January 1945, he would be in his 80s by now. This photo was used by IBM to publicize a show, the annual Photo London event in the early 60s and it was recognized by the boy now grown up, when he was walking past the IBM offices. Learned it here.

Canadian M4 Sherman tank from the Sherbrook Fusiliers advancing through an abandoned and devastated village in Caen in July 1944, colorized by Alex Y. Lim

Here is my colorized take on a famous photo of a Canadian M4 Sherman tank from the Sherbrook Fusiliers advancing through an abandoned and devastated village in Caen in July 1944, a month after the Normandy invasion. Caen was a critical main objective in the Allied invasion as its capture would effectively disable quick response by the Germans. The battle for Caen saw old enemies, Field Marshals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel smack each other. Erwin gave Bernard a difficult time taking Caen and delayed the allied forces timetable in liberating France, but after the fall of Caen, the liberation was a sure thing.