Japanese

How Capitalism Won WWII: This Is Capitalism and Expert Rob Citino Explain

By Nicholas Varangis

“We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.” Read more

Japanese

The Last Fighter Pilot: An Account of the Final Combat Mission of World War Two

Guest Post By History on the Net

The following is an account of Captain Jerry Yellin, who flew the last combat mission of WWII on the morning of August 15, 1945, out of Iwo Jima. Read more

Japanese

The Salween Offensive: Blundering to Success in Burma

By Marc D. Bernstein

After launching an invasion of Burma (today Myanmar) not long after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army went on to overrun much of China by May 1942 and closed the Burma Road—the vital, 717-mile-long mountain highway built in 1937-1938 that ran from Kunming in southern China to the Burmese border. Read more

Japanese

How Pearl Harbor Happened

By Richard G. Higgins

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, strike leader for Operation Hawaii and 20-year veteran of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Kaigun), strapped himself into the observer’s seat as his Nakajima B5N2 “Kate” torpedo bomber, piloted by Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, and lifted off from the carrier Akagi on the black morning of December 7, 1941. Read more

Japanese

The Nevada and I Survived the War

By Charles T. Sehe

I am of Polish, Irish, and American Indian descent and grew up in the small (population 3,800) northern Illinois town of Geneva. Read more

Japanese

Book Reviews: Heroism of the Nisei Soldiers

By Christopher Miskimon Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion

(Scott McGaugh, Da Capo Press, Boston, 2016, 257 pp., Read more

Japanese

LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War

By Susan Zimmerman

In an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more

Japanese

Shootout in Kula Gulf

By John Damagalski

The island of Guadalcanal loomed in the distance as the warships of Task Force 36.1 approached the waters of Iron Bottom Sound on July 5, 1943. Read more

Japanese

The Battle of Biak: “A Terrifying Glimpse Into the Soul of Mankind”

By David Alan Johnson

“All I knew about Biak was that it was an island a degree south of the equator, one of the Schouten group lying north of Geelvink Bay toward the western end of New Guinea.” Read more

Japanese

Death of the Super Battleship Yamato and Musashi

By Herb Kugel

Special Sea Attack Force (SSAF) was an ordinary-sounding name for the pitifully tiny remnant of what was once the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Read more

Japanese

The Children of WWII: Remembering the Conflict That Stole Their Childhoods

By Susan Zimmerman

World War II affected nearly every area of the world. It was the deadliest conflict in all of human history. Read more

Japanese

Final Battle for Burma, 1945

By William Stroock

By the beginning of February 1945, the British 14th Army was on the banks of the Irrawaddy River and poised to strike into central Burma. Read more

Japanese

Naval Assault On Munda

By John J. Domagalski

The first days of January 1943 found American forces winning the prolonged struggle for control of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Read more

Japanese

From Paratrooper to POW: Bob Nobles of the 82nd Airborne

By Kevin M. Hymel

“The lieutenant said for everyone to lay your arms down,” a fellow paratrooper told Pfc. Bob Nobles, who had been fighting for six grueling days in the hedgerows following his unit’s jump into Normandy. Read more

Japanese

Leonard J. Thom: JFK’s XO on PT-109

By Michael J. Bell

The name Leonard Jay Thom may not mean anything to a great many people today, and that is unfortunate. Read more

Japanese

Japanese Attack on the Philippines: The “Other” Pearl Harbor

By Sam McGowan

While the surprise Japanese attacks against U.S. military bases in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, are certainly the best-known aspect of the opening of hostilities between the two aLess well known today were the Japanese attacks on Clark Field and Iba Field on the opening day of hostilities in the Philippines. Read more

Japanese

A Navy Chaplain on Iwo Jima: Doing God’s Work in Hell

By Reverend E. Gage Hotaling

BACKSTORY: The Reverend E. Gage Hotaling, the son of a Baptist minister, was born in Wellsville, New York, on January 21, 1916. Read more

Japanese

Helldiver Lieutenant Klenk

By Robert F. Dorr

Lieutenant William A. “Bill” Klenk, piloting a Curtiss SB2C-3 Helldiver, bristled at the “clawing, miserable weather,” with inverted pyramids of cloud hanging from a low ceiling and gray murk everywhere. Read more

Japanese

Oahu’s Museums and Memorials

By Flint Whitlock

There are few places on earth that have as many World War II museums, memorials, and monuments located in such a small area as the island of Oahu. Read more

Japanese

4 Unsolved Mysteries of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo

By Susan Zimmerman

April 18, 1942, will forever live in American military glory as the date of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo––a gutsy, never-before-attempted combat mission to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and attack an enemy capital. Read more