Japan Archives

In this classic photograph, Brigadier General Orde Wingate is next to Brigadier Derek Tulloch at the far right. Majors Philip Cochran (back facing camera) and John Allison are on the left. Major Alison is holding a map with Brigadier Scott, who wrote an account of this informal gathering. Air Marshal Baldwin and Brigadier Michael Calvert stand between Scott and Wingate. (Imperial War Museum)

Japan

British General Orde Wingate’s Blurred Legacy

By Jon Diamond

British General Orde Wingate is one of the more enigmatic World War II commanders encountered in a number of biographical and military historical accounts. Read more

Japan

WWII Ordnance: The Boys Anti-tank Rifle

By Bob Cashner

When the first tanks appeared in World War I, they were relatively lightly armored and protected the crews only against small-arms fire. Read more

Japan

The Short-range Shotgun

By Christopher Miskimon

Coming upon the enemy’s rear guard outside the western Kentucky village of Sacramento, four days after Christmas 1861, Confederate Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered his cavalry to advance. Read more

Japan

The Battle of Iwo Jima: Red Sun, Black Sand

By John Walker

No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more

Japan

Baiting the Russian Bear: The Siege of Port Arthur

By Eric Niderost

On the chilly night of February 8, 1904, the Imperial Russian Navy’s Pacific Squadron lay peacefully at anchor just outside Port Arthur’s main harbor. Read more

Three crews were lost during tests of the Horace L. Hunley, shown in a painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.

Japan

Evolution of the Submarine

By John Protasio

The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more

Japan

World Airlines Flight 253: Hostage of the Soviet Union

By Adam Griffith

Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Specialist E5 James Griffith wasn’t particularly nervous when he boarded Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 at McChord Air Base in Tacoma, Washington, on June 30, 1968. Read more

Japan

Korea Under the Rising Sun

By Allyn Vannoy

The first recorded encounter between American forces and Koreans in the Central Pacific during World War II came at Tarawa Atoll in November 1943. Read more

Japan

The USS England and the Invasion of the South Pacific

By William Lunderberg

From his naval base at Tawi Tawi in the southern Philippines, Japanese Admiral Soemu Toyoda anxiously perused intelligence reports that might provide a clue to the objective of the next seaborne South Pacific invasion by American military in the spring of 1944. Read more

The escape of U.S. gunboats from China in 1941 proved to be a heroic chapter in the history of the navy.

Japan

Eleventh-Hour Peril: The U.S. Naval Escape from China

by Eric Niderost

On November 11, 1941, the U.S. Navy gunboats USS Luzon and Oahu were ordered to “make quietly all preparations within the ship for a cruise at sea.” Read more

Japan

Guadalcanal: Victory in the Pacific Theater

by Mike Haskew

On August 7, 1942, American Marines landed unopposed on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons chain. The island was the key to future offensive operations in the South Pacific for either side, and the Marines were determined to defeat the Japanese in their first significant ground assault of the Pacific War. Read more

Japan

Japanese Castles of the 16th and 17th Century

by Eric Niderost

The castle (shiro) played an important role in 16th- and early 17th-century Japan. Like its medieval counterparts in Europe, the Japanese castle was a fortified building or series of buildings that had both defensive and offensive capabilities. Read more

Japan

The Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II

by Eric Hammel

The Japanese Imperial Navy was an elite and elitist organization. As prone at the administrative levels as any large bureaucracy to becoming bogged down in paperwork, careerism, politics, and minutia, the Imperial Navy nevertheless enjoyed a unique dynamic. Read more

Not exactly “the best damned documentary films ever made," the Why We Fight Series did effectively hammer home the importance of winning the war against the Axis.

Japan

Why We Fight — Hollywood Teams Up with U.S. Military

by Kevin M. Hymel

General George C. Marshall had a problem. With the U.S. entry into World War II, he had to explain to an isolationist nation why the country was going to war. Read more

A German panzer crew works on its Tiger I during the long Russian winter as German infantry marches past with a horse-drawn vehicle. By the war's end more than one million horses were still hauling German personnel, artillery, and ammunition.

Japan

Horses & The Mechanized Myth of the Eastern Front

By John Perry

Advances in military technology, including tanks, jets, and rockets, are among the popular images of Nazi Germany during World War II. Read more

Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the Iranian capital of Tehran in late 1943. Among the topics of discussion was the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

Japan

Big Three in Tehran

By Michael D. Hull

World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Josef Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more

Japan

The Pearl Harbor Attack: Anchorage of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

by Mike Haskew

On December 7, 1941, Japanese naval aircraft attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, as well as other U.S. Read more

For three days, Captain Ginsaku Saito men shot, bayoneted, and set fire to over 1,500 people in the Los Baños area.

Japan

Japanese Atrocities at Los Baños

By Donald J. Roberts II

Within a week of the Los Baños raid, paratroopers from Burgess’s 1st Battalion moved back into the Los Baños area to occupy the region. Read more

In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai foreshadowed the grim urban combat in the Great War that was to come.

Japan

The Battle of Shanghai: A Prelude of Things to Come

by Christopher Miskimon

The 1930s was a decade full of World War II’s antecedents. Fighting broke out at various points around the globe during this decade, and manu consider the period to be a training ground for 1939-1945. Read more

Japan

Before MAS*H: Portable Army Surgical Hospitals in World War II

by Glen Barnett

Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, or M*A*S*H units, were popularized by Richard Hooker’s novel series, the 1970 film starring Donald Southerland and of course the long-running television show starring Alan Alda. Read more

From Around the Network

From Bouvines to the Magna Carta, and the Founding Fathers

Russian and Soviet armies fought bloody campaigns over the past 100 years first to protect the Motherland and then to project regional power.

The ashes of former Japanese Prime Minister Tojo and six other war criminals were scattered at sea.

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