Japan Archives

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

Japan

The Fall of Malaya: Japanese Blitzkrieg on Singapore

By David H. Lippman

“The moon like a tray was sinking in the western sea and the deep red sun showed its face to the east. Read more

Japan

New Mexico: Atomic Spy Capital

By Richard Higgins

New Mexico and its capital of Santa Fe bring to mind some beautiful images. Stunning sunsets, unlimited vistas, a plethora of art galleries, the spectacular food enlivened with the local green chile, an ancient Native American culture that still thrives, and a Spanish heritage tradition going back to within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival all make for a unique cultural and physical environment. Read more

Japan

“I Survived the USS Franklin Inferno”

By George F. Black, as told to Howard Dunbar

On March 19, 1945, the Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13), dubbed “Big Ben,” lay 50 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s Home Islands. Read more

Japan

Bridge House Hotel: Crimes of the Kempeitai in Shanghai

By Eric Niderost

By 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 Niderost

In 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

Written by: Joe Kirby

By Joe Kirby

When 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

Against the odds, Detroit defied reality to help win World War II.

Japan

Ford’s Willow Run Factory

By Samantha L. Quigley

They 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 Hammel

Three generations of Americans wrongly believe that General Hideki Tojo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto were equally culpable in starting the Pacific War. Read more

Japan

Battle of Tarawa: Don Crain and the First Marine LVT Assault

By Durk Steed

He wore the clothes of one of Tarawa’s most well-known and decorated heroes, but his name will not be found in any history book. 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 Brotherton

On 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