Hirohito
On the evening of September 26, 1940, American radio announcer and journalist William L. Shirer noted in his later famous Berlin Diary that the next day Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano would arrive there from Rome, adding that most people thought it was for the announcement that Francisco Franco’s Spain was entering the war on the side of the Axis. Read more
Hirohito
Marine Captain Frank Farrell stood in the open door of the Army Air Corps C-47 waiting for the “green light,” the signal to leap into space, on a mission that could mean life or death for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Read more
Hirohito
In the Spring of 1944, Japanese Admiral Soemu Toyoda assembled a large fleet of warships at Tawi-Tawi in the southern Philippine Islands. Read more
Hirohito
At 11:30 pm on December 22, 1948, four handcuffed men were led by guards into the chapel of Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison. Read more
Hirohito
In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more
Hirohito
On June 10, 1944, as his troop transport churned through the Pacific toward the Japanese-held island of Saipan, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Stan Bowen wrote a letter to his sweetheart, Marge McCann. Read more
Hirohito
As he read the decrypt of the radiogram from Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, several things bothered Admiral Thomas C. Read more
Hirohito
The most controversial decision of the 20th century—probably in all of history—was the one reportedly made by President Harry S. Read more
Hirohito
How did we get to dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima? Who was responsible? Where and when did it begin? Read more
Hirohito
For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more
Hirohito
The following is an account of Captain Jerry Yellin, who flew the last combat mission of WWII on the morning of August 15, 1945, out of Iwo Jima. Read more
Hirohito
I am of Polish, Irish, and American Indian descent and grew up in the small (population 3,800) northern Illinois town of Geneva. Read more
Hirohito
In April 1942, a group of young Marines, having recently graduated from Officers Candidate School, arrived at New River, North Carolina, a sprawling tent city that stretched over a vast area and would eventually become known as Camp Lejeune. Read more
Hirohito
World War II affected nearly every area of the world. It was the deadliest conflict in all of human history. Read more
Hirohito
Major Sam P. Bakshas woke up that morning with the secrets in his head. He was one of the men flying B-29 Superfortress bombers from three Pacific islands—Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Read more
Hirohito
Prologue: At the start of World War II, Midway Atoll was a key U.S. base in the central Pacific. Read more
Hirohito
Japan’s road to World War II was a long one. Throughout the late 19th century, the island nation broke out of its feudal past on a path to modernity with a ruthlessness and singlemindedness that would have scared Western nations had they been paying attention. Read more
Hirohito
It seemed like just another ordinary day at sea. Early on December 7, 1941, a U.S. Army-chartered cargo vessel, the 250-foot SS Cynthia Olson, under the command of a civilian skipper, Berthel Carlsen, was plying the Pacific waters about 1,200 miles northeast of Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, and over 1,000 miles west of the Tacoma, Washington, port from which she had sailed on December 1. Read more
Hirohito
He was the longest-reigning monarch and head of state in the 20th century, and the third-longest in history behind King Louis XIV of France (72 years) and England’s Queen Victoria (64 years). Read more
Hirohito
As the months of 1945 passed at an agonizingly slow pace, Allied forces in the Pacific struggled unwaveringly toward Japan. Read more
