Moe Berg (right) during his 1932 visit to Japan, pictured with fellow baseball instructor Lefty O’Doul and host Sataro Suzuki.

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WWII Spies: Morris “Moe” Berg

By Eric Niderost

Morris “Moe” Berg was a man of many talents: linguist, lawyer, baseball player, spy. Although this Renaissance man gained a modicum of celebrity on the baseball diamond, Berg is best remembered as an operative for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a World War II forerunner of the U.S. Read more

U.S. Marines put up a tenacious defense against a large Japanese force invading Wake Island in December 1941.

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WWII’s Battle of Wake Island: An Unsteady Victory

By John Wukovits

In mid-December 1941, during the thick of the Battle of Wake Island, the 400 U.S. Marines who called the island outpost home stood a lonely sentinel in the watery Central Pacific wilderness, like a cavalry fort in an oceanic version of the Western frontier. Read more

U.S. Navy Helldiver aircraft attack the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Painting by Sam L. Massette.

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Battle of Sibuyan Sea

By John Wukovits

In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. 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.

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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

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

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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

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The U.S. 3rd, 5th, and 4th Marine Divisions: Uncommon Valor at Iwo Jima

By Nathan N. Prefer

“You know,” said Marine Maj. Gen. Clifton B. Cates to a war correspondent on the eve of Operation Detachment, the invasion of Iwo Jima, “if I knew the name of the man on the extreme right of the right-hand squad of the right-hand company of the right-hand battalion, I’d recommend him for a medal before we go in.” Read more

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Steel Typhoon at Okinawa

By Blaine Taylor

As one island or island group in the Pacific was fought over by American and Japanese forces, it became clear that Japan’s days as a combatant in World War II were numbered. Read more

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Hiroshima’s Ground Zero Museum

By Flint Whitlock

Although located 420 miles west of Tokyo, the city of Hiroshima is today a tourist mecca, drawing tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for one single reason: to stand at the epicenter of history’s first nuclear explosion used against an enemy population. Read more

The fire-bombing raids on Japan constituted all-out war on a civilian population.

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War on Civilians

The fire-bombing raids on Japan constituted all-out war on a civilian population. By Sam McGowan

It was a method of warfare that would have been anathema to Americans only a few short years before. Read more