Nice poem. Love it !!! ;D

Unusual cold winter here in Japan. No snow in Tokyo, but that's just a geographical matter. Our island has mountains in the middle, so just the north-west side is blessed with snow. The clouds can not pass the mountains to the other side.

But the winter in Europe has been mostly mild, as I heard from my mother. So, it seems, that the gulf stream is still working. I don't want to bring up "global warming" as a topic and frankly speaking, I don't know enough about it for discussing it properly, but just from my feeling, the climate became more extreme. Much snow during the last two winters in Germany ( as my friends and family told me ) and I never experienced much snow during the 40 years, I have lived there in the past ... and I lived close to Duesseldorf, where the weather is very similar to the UK.

But also here in Japan. My wife told me, the average temperatures in summer have been about 28 C, but in the last two summers, the temperature didn't drop under the 30 C mark for three months. Not even for one single day and not even at night. Also "classic seasons" disappeared. Not much rain during the classic rainy season in June and there hasn't been any real spring during the last two years. From winter to summer in one week. Big coat or t-shirt ... nothing in between.

However ... what I always appreciated about the weather in Japan, is it's continuity. The temperature is not changing rapidly within days or weeks as I remember it from Europe. When it becomes summer here ( usually after the "Golden Week" at the beginning of May ), you don't need a jacket until November and usually, the plum trees start blooming already at the end of January ... but not this year. No sign of a blossom yet.

That was the meteorological report from Japan

I am also not submerged into the world of smartphones yet, but it might be useful for others

I am not sure, if there has been a particular type of camera used during the Vietnam war. Basically all type of cameras, available at that time.

A friend of mine for example told me, that he used an old Minolta SLR when he was in Vietnam, but I think, the military personnel ( basically just GIs bringing their own private cameras to the battlefield ) might have used a wide range of different cameras.

Comparing to WWII, more "ordinary people" owned an own camera, indicated by the fact, you already mentioned ... more pictures have been taken. So if you just research, what cameras have been released by different makers during or let's say up to five years before the war, you should have your answer.

And there should also be Veteran meetings as well, especially in the US. You might just try to be very sensitive, because pictures from any war do usually not only show nice things. The most spectacular ones are most likely already published ... and the actually most interesting ones will never be

Wow ... where do such beautiful birds sit on trees

Thanks a lot. I might have found something:
www.paramountcords.com/custom.asp
A little bit pricy, but at least a possibility. Special photo accessories are not cheap anyway I need to think about it.