Guam

Death of the Fighting Lady: Frank Heineman’s Story

The 13,000 ton Independence-class aircraft carrier USS Princeton, which was commissioned on February 25, 1943, quickly became known as the “Fighting Lady.” Read more

Guam

Wake Island: Alamo in the Pacific

It was already December 8, 1941, on Wake Island’s side of the international date line. The Americans on the tiny specks of land in the western Pacific Ocean roused themselves at 6 am. Read more

Guam

WWII Vehicles: The Island-Hopping LVT

While making business calls in Tampa, Florida, during the summer of 1980, I spotted a strange looking tracked contraption atop an overgrown pedestal in front of the U.S. Read more

Guam

The Battle of the Coral Sea

World War II was less than six months old when the American public, already stunned by the debacles at Pearl Harbor and Guam, faced one of its darkest moments. Read more

Guam

Rescue at Ladd Reef

As the submarine USS Cod left Apra harbor, Guam, on the afternoon of June 26, 1945, for her seventh war patrol, her crew of 97 officers and enlisted men were all but certain that their new assignment was to be junk hunting—a thankless and dangerous job that in the words of one Cod crewman saw “Uncle Sam risk a seven million dollar submarine and crew to sink a leaky sailboat not worth more than $20,000!” Read more

Guam

The Shinano Carrier: How Allied Forces Sunk Such a Secret

The first torpedo struck the Shinano carrier farthest aft. Over the next 30 seconds three more warheads detonated against the massive aircraft carrier’s hull, working their way forward. Read more

Guam

Ernie Pyle: Fated at Ie Shima

Ernie Pyle did not want to go to Okinawa. He was too old, too tired, and—some said—too jaded for yet another American invasion of ferocious enemy territory. Read more

Guam

Operation Removal: Taking the Japanese Holdouts Near Saipan

On September 2, 1945, representatives from the Allied and Japanese governments signed the peace treaty that ended World War II. Read more

Guam

The Battle of Saipan

Peering through his binoculars, Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo was in awe of the nearly 800 ships from Vice Adm. Read more

Guam

Taking Guam from Japan in 1944

Above all, the island was defendable.

From Ritidian Point in the north to the extreme southern coastline, Guam is 34 miles long, made in an irregular shape covering 228 square miles, the largest of all Pacific islands between Japan and New Guinea. Read more

Guam

Low Level, No Guns

Major Sam P. Bakshas woke up that morning with the secrets in his head.

Bakshas was one of the men flying B-29 Superfortress bombers from three Pacific islands—Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Read more

Guam

Normandy’s Little Victims

War spared no one. As modern armies clashed in France’s Normandy countryside, French civilians found themselves in the crossfire or on the receiving end of bombs and heavy weapons. Read more