Circa 1951-2

The top photograph is annotated that it was of my sister and me at 1 and 2 years old in Victorville, CA, which would have been circa 1951.  Dad was stationed at George Air Force Base.  (I have no idea what I am carrying in my hand.)  Dad was to be shipped to Korea after the outbreak of hostilities there in 1950.  Since he had been a POW in WWII as a bombardier with the Army Air Corps and whose plane was going to crash after damages received over the Rumanian Ploesti oil fields, the crew bailed out and dad was soon captured by the Germans and sent to a camp in Southern Germany for the remainder of the war (primarily all of 1944 and half of 1945).   He did not want to repeat that experience in Korea and, somehow, was able to leave active duty with the Air Force and return to the states.  (He would remain in the Air Force Reserves for at least enough years to retire with a modest pension.)

The bottom photograph was approximately a year later when we were living on Broadway in Santa Ana, CA, after dad was out of the service.  We would have been about 2 and 3 years old in 1952.  This is likely a photograph taken on the front or back porch at Easter since we appear to be dressed up and it is a (rather faded) color photograph.  (Again, I have no idea what I have in my hands.)  

These were two more photos from the newly discovered shoebox of miscellaneous photographs taken over a number of decades from the 1950's through the 1980's that my mother likely had kept and escaped my organizing project of inserting them all into large photo albums in the 1990's.