Japan

Franklin Sousley & The Battle of Iwo Jima

By Randall B. Ingram

Everyone has seen the now famous photograph of the three firefighters hoisting Old Glory over the ruins of the World Trade Center. Read more

Japan

Still a Splendid Sight: Merrill’s Mauraders

By Al Hemingway

Private First Class Frank Rinaldi cautiously made his way through the dense foliage. He and other soldiers were on patrol when they heard the unmistakable sound of Japanese voices, and they inched their way forward to investigate. Read more

Japan

Over the Hump: Supplying Allied Forces over the Himalayas

By Sam McGowan

In truth, it really was not a combat operation. For every airplane lost to enemy action, a hundred were destroyed in accidents. Read more

Japan

Saipan: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

By John Wukovits

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

Japan

The Heroism of Vision: Photographs from the Battlefield

By Al Hemingway

On the morning of February 23, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima, a 40-man patrol gathered at the 5th Marine Division headquarters for their final briefing with battalion commander Lt. Read more

Japan

Famous Military Spies: Ralph Van Deman

By Peter Kross

In the long history of American military intelligence, the names that come to mind most often are those of Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold, Herbert Yardley, and William Donovan. Read more

Japan

Inside the OSS: An Interview With Elizabeth P. McIntosh

By Bob Bergin

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was America’s first strategic intelligence organization. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized its establishment on June 13, 1942, six months after World War II began, to collect and analyze strategic intelligence and to conduct special services, including subversion, sabotage, and psychological warfare. Read more

Japan

Saving Face After the Surrender of Japan

By Ulrich A. Straus

It will not come as a surprise to American readers that when the Japanese emperor delivered his surrender message on August 15, 1945, Allied forces led by the United States had thoroughly defeated Japan’s naval and air power in the Pacific. Read more

Japan

The 17th Indian Division in Burma: Disaster on the Sittang

By Marc D. Bernstein

The Japanese looked unstoppable. Two divisions of the 15th Army had crossed from Thailand into Burma in mid-January 1942, bent on capturing Rangoon before the British could land reinforcements and block the seizing of the Burma Road. Read more

Japan

The USS Utah: The Memorial & The Pearl Harbor Paradox

By Richard Klobuchar

Very few among the throngs of visitors to Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu are aware of an anomaly, but it definitely exists in the case of the USS Utah. Read more

Japan

Guadalcanal: Bloody Encounter at Hell’s Point

By Al Hemingway

On the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more

Japan

Lifting the Japanese Military

By John W. Whitman

Japanese military successes in 1941 and 1942 shocked the West. Behind those successes lay a logistics effort not often appreciated, that of shipping. Read more

Japan

Working on the Railway of Death: A POW’s Story

By Eric Niderost

When Howard Brooks joined the United States Navy in 1939, the 20-year-old farm boy from Tennessee had no idea that he was going to experience one of the most harrowing adventures of World War II. Read more

Japan

Project Fugo: The Japanese Balloon Bombs

By Allan T. Duffin

On Saturday, May 5, 1945, three days before the end of World War II in Europe and just three months before the Japanese surrendered, spinning shards of metal ripped into the tall pine trees, burrowing holes into bark and tearing needles from branches outside the tiny logging community of Bly, Oregon. Read more

Japan

Chinese Alamo: Last Stand at Sihang Warehouse

By Eric Niderost

On October 27, 1937, the Zhabei district of Shanghai began to burn, an enormous conflagration that stretched for five miles and filled the northern horizon from end to end, almost as far as the eye could see. Read more

Japan

Tragedy at Hong Kong: The Ordeal of C Force

By Jerome M. Baldwin

By the 1930s the security Hong Kong had enjoyed since its acquisition by the British Empire in 1842 was a memory. Read more

Japan

Hell’s Own Cesspool: Okinawa in WWII

By John Walker

On Easter morning, April 1, 1945, the Pacific island of Okinawa trembled beneath an earthshaking bombardment from American combat aircraft overhead and ships steaming offshore in preparation for an amphibious landing of unprecedented magnitude. Read more

Japan

‘Bat Bombs’: WWII’s Project X-Ray

By Allan T. Duffin

Imagine thousands of bats—silent, gray-furred, vigilant—huddled in the rafters of your home or office, each carrying a tiny device no larger than a thimble. Read more

Japan

Fog of War in the Aleutians

By Colonel James W. Hammond, Jr.

For decades Americans have been spoiled by the instant coverage of war in the media. 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