Japanese

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

In a photo taken from another B-29 in formation, this heavy bomber disgorges incendiary bombs from the skies above Formosa. The largest B-29 raid of the war to date took place on October 14, 1944. The target was the repair and supply facilities at Okayama on the island.

Japanese

B-29 Superfortress: The Plane That Bombed Japan Into Submission

By Sam McGowan

As the Japanese delegation stood on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, preparing to sign the documents that ended World War II, a large formation of Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers swooped low over Tokyo Bay as a reminder of the terrible destruction that had befallen their nation and turned Japan’s cities into ruins. Read more

Manning a twin Bofors antiaircraft gun on the deck of the Queen Mary, a crew is put through its paces by an officer during gunnery training at sea.

Japanese

RMS Queen Mary’s War Service: Voyages to Victory

By Eric Niderost

The late summer of 1939 saw Great Britain teetering on the brink of war with Hitler’s Germany. The years of appeasement and vacillation, of meekly acquiescing to Hitler’s insatiable territorial demands, were over at last. Read more

Dressed in traditional garb, a lone Chinese man seeks the protection of a sandbag barricade in the International Settlement of Shanghai on August 12, 1937. Adjacent to the civilian are a British soldier and two American Marines who have donned their helmets. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

Japanese

A Memorable Marine Mascot

By Eric Niderost

Soochow was a mongrel dog with a remarkable gift for self-preservation. A homeless stray, he attached himself to some U.S. Read more

A Korean pressed into working as a slave laborer for the Japanese on the island of New Guinea receives medical treatment after his liberation. Thousands of Koreans were forced to construct installations and fortifications across the Pacific for their Japanese captors.

Japanese

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

A contingent of U.S. Marine Corps intelligence personnel and native scouts shove their canoes off from the coast watchers’ station at Segi, New Guinea, on a routine patrol.

Japanese

Coast Watchers in the Solomons

by John Brown

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more

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