Japan

World’s First Smart Weapon: the ‘Bat’

By Alan Alpers

On May 27, 1945, U.S. Naval Reserve Lieutenant Leo Kennedy was patrolling from his station at Yonton Field in Okinawa. Read more

Japan

USS Rasher: The Legendary Undersea Warrior

By Kelly Bell

At 12:30 am, October 9, 1943, Commander Edward S. Hutchinson spotted his first targets as a submarine commander. Read more

Japan

Hollywood’s Dream Factory During World War II

By Herb Kugel

World War II came to the Hollywood motion picture studios, the “Dream Factories” as they were sometimes called, the day after Pearl Harbor. Read more

Japan

Rescue at Ladd Reef

By Paul Farace

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

Japan

USS Astoria Sunk: The Disaster Off Savo Island

By John Domagalski

Admiral Ernest King could not believe what he was reading. The graying 63-year-old chief of U.S. naval operations had been awoken from his sleep. Read more

Japan

The Battle of Cape Esperance: A Sorely Needed Naval Victory

By David Alan Johnson

“One large, two small vessels, one six miles from Savo off northern beach, Guadalcanal. Will investigate closer.” Read more

Japan

Japan’s “Diving Shells” in the Battle of Cape Esperance

By David Alan Johnson

The eight-inch shell that penetrated the cruiser’s hull and threatened to blow up her forward magazines was a Type 91 armor-piercing shell, which had been designed to continue through the water when it fell short of its target and penetrate the ship’s hull below the waterline. Read more

Japan

Japanese Transports Major Losses

By John W. Whitman

Japan had serious difficulties deploying her manpower, and a few examples illustrate some of the worst events. Read more

Japan

Boyd Wagner: Early American Ace

By Sam McGowan

Common wisdom has long held that Japanese pilots and aircraft, particularly their fighters, were superior to the American, Australian, and British counterparts they faced in combat in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in the opening months of U.S. Read more

Japan

Flying with the Jolly Rogers

By Glenn Barnett

The 90th Heavy Bombardment Group, known as the Jolly Rogers, was an element of the Fifth Air Force headquartered in Brisbane, Australia. Read more

Japan

Beasts of War

By Chuck Lyons

Not all World War II heroes were men or women. Some were four-legged, hoofed, or winged. They included horses and mules, elephants, and dogs as well as more exotic animals such as bats, camels, reindeer, and pigeons. Read more

Japan

Island-Hopping at Tarawa

By John Walker

Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, commander of the elite Japanese garrison entrenched on tiny Betio Island in the central Pacific Ocean, boasted in mid-1943 that his heavily fortified island redoubt could hold out “against a million Americans for a thousand years.” Read more

Japan

The Boxer Rebellion’s Unlikely Alliance of Eight Flags

by David A. Norris

Captain John T. Myers’ detachment of U.S. Marines was far from home on July 3, 1900, in the thick of the Boxer Rebellion. Read more

Japan

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Moral Dilemma

By Sam McGowan

During the more than 60 years since the detonation of the first atomic bombs—and the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used operationally—a major debate has erupted over the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Read more

Japan

Fateful Decision: The Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

By Flint Whitlock

On August 7, 1945, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Harry S. Truman announced, “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. Read more

Japan

Army Mules: The Beast of Burden in War

By Christopher Miskimon

In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more

Japan

Valkyria Chronicles Remastered

By Joseph Luster

Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles, which originally debuted on PlayStation 3 back in 2008, is one of the better examples of the “alternate universe” World War II game. Read more

Japan

Colonel Hiromishi Yahara’s Story at Okinawa

by John Walker

It was Colonel Hiromishi Yahara who designed and implemented the jiykusen, or the yard-by-yard battle of attrition that cost the American forces so many casualties in the three-month battle, and he was the highest ranking officer to survive the battle and make it back to Tokyo. Read more

Japan

Horror on Marpi Point: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

by John Wukovits

Normally, the end of combat brings satisfaction and a sense of relief, but the Army infantrymen and Marines who slugged it out with the Japanese at Saipan experienced little of either. Read more

Japan

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials

By Roy Morris Jr.

When the Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened in the former hilltop headquarters of the Japanese military at Ichigaya on May 3, 1946, American-born chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan faced a difficult task. Read more