Prune Picker. A jackhammer/demolition man on Okinawa.

That is the old Prune Picker on the left. I am waiting my turn on the jackhammer. I was in the combat engineers and had been trained in demolitions. We are drilling holes in coral. When the holes were deep enough we packed them with dynamite. When the dynamite was detonated the coral was broken up enough that it could be loaded into trucks and hauled away to build roads and airports. I would insert a blasting cap into one of the dynamite sticks and run wire from the cap to a detonation box. I can remember using an Okinawan tomb for protection from the blast. We would yell "fire in the hole!", to warn bystanders, and push a plunger into the detonation box to set off the charge.

I would get   nitroglycerin  on my hands and when I wiped sweat from my  forehead I would get terrific headaches from the nitroglycerin. When I inserted the blasting cap into the dynamite nitroglycerin would ooze out.

This picture was taken in 1945 on Okinawa,

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