Japan
Bridge House Hotel: Crimes of the Kempeitai in Shanghai
By Eric NiderostBy the 1930s, Shanghai was already a legend in its own time––the most modern, populous, and decadent city in China. Read more
Japan
The Kempeitai: Japan’s Dreaded “Gestapo”
By Eric NiderostIn Western countries, “military police” are associated in the public mind with keeping order among off-duty personnel, such as arresting drunken servicemen. Read more
Japan
B-29 Production
By Joe KirbyWhen Maj. Gen. Curtis Lemay, the hard-driving commander of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force based in Guam, decided to change tactics in early 1945 to boost the effectiveness of the B-29 Superfortress, it was the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia, that ultimately provided him with the stripped-down bombers that played such a key role in ending the war in the Pacific. Read more
Japan
Sinking the USS Reuben James
By Joseph Connor, Jr.When the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245) was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, its crew had a sense of foreboding and feared the worst. Read more
Japan
Ford’s Willow Run Factory
By Samantha L. QuigleyThey said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. Read more
Japan
Hideki Tojo vs Isoroku Yamamoto: Conflict in the Military Ranks
By Eric HammelThree generations of Americans wrongly believe that General Hideki Tojo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto were equally culpable in starting the Pacific War. Read more
Japan
Japanese Internment: Behind the Barbed Wire in America
By Richard Higgins“We were stunned when we entered the camp,” Yoshio “Yosh” Nakamura said, remembering the day when he and his family, from El Monte, California, were herded through the main gate at the Gila River Relocation Center—a Japanese American internment camp 30 miles southeast of Phoenix, Arizona—carrying only suitcases into which their worldly possessions had been crammed. Read more
Japan
Four Marines on the “Green Hell” of Guadalcanal
By Adam Makos & Marcus BrothertonOn August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Read more
Japan
Women of the Air Force
By Amy Goodpaster StrebeIn 1941 two events took place on opposite sides of the world that forever impacted the history of women in aviation. Read more
Japan
Japanese Suicide Attacks at Pearl Harbor and Beyond
by David Alan JohnsonThe deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
Japan
A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack
By John Sanford BairdAt about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more
Japan
Against the Odds: Jeanette Rankin
By Martin K.A. MorganAn Associated Press report described “a chorus of hisses and boos” that echoed through the chamber when the Congresswoman from Montana cast her vote. Read more
Japan
Japan’s underwater Aircraft Carriers
By Steven D. LutzAs soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular. Read more
Japan
Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon
By Glenn Barnette and André BernoleEarly in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
Japan
Tragic Surrender
By Mark SimmonsOn Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more
