Nakajima Archives

Move and countermove led the leaders of opposing armies to come face to face in Shingen’s newly set up camp. Swords flew among the tents in one of the largest battles in Japanese history.

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The Battle of Kawanakajima

By Vince Hawkins

In 1490 Japan entered a crucial period of its history known as the sengoku-jidai, or the “Age of the Country at War.” Read more

At the Pearl Harbor Attack and other locations, the Japanese would often employ kesshi, or 'dare to die tactics.'

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Japanese Suicide Attacks at Pearl Harbor and Beyond

by David Alan Johnson

The deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more

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For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more

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The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver: An Unpopular and Flawed Allied War Machine

By Robert F. Dorr

It sent Japanese warships to the bottom of the ocean. It pulverized fortifications on Japan’s home islands. Read more

Robert Taylor’s painting Valor in the Pacific shows Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers of the 499th Bomb Group, 20th Air Force, headed home to bases in the Marianas after dropping their cargoes of death and destruction on Tokyo. Low on fuel, their escort of P-51 Mustang fighters begins to turn away toward bases of their own.

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Prelude to Iwo Jima: The Japanese Assault On B-29 Base On Marianas

By Michael P. Slater

From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more

Major Richard Bong was America’s Ace of Aces.

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Richard Bong (1920-1945)

By Sam McGowan

Without dispute, the P-38 was the airplane of the aces. While other fighter types had their share of aces, the P-38 was flown by most of the top scorers, of whom Major Richard Ira Bong was at the top of the heap. Read more

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Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto: Japan’s Naval War Leader

By Michael D. Hull

Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare. Read more

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The Japanese Empire’s Mitsubishi G4M Betty Bomber

By Joseph M. Horodyski

The two types of aircraft responsible for sinking the Prince Of Wales and Repulse represented the best of Japanese aviation in 1941. Read more

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Walt Whitman: The One-Man Sanitary Commission

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No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy

Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘Roland’: Marshal Jean Lannes