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Of all the memorable dates of World War II, this one somehow got lost in the jungle. Remember Aug. 7, 1942? Quiz your friends. Note the silence. To veterans who landed 60 years ago today on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, it is a silence almost as eerie and inexplicable as the quiet of the early hours of their raid -- the first U.S. offensive of the war. "So many people today don't even know what Guadalcanal is," said Rudy Bock, 82, of Overland Park, who stormed in with fellow Marines and caught the Japanese with their guns down. "You...

I probably blew the format for starting a thread...and didn't see posted elsewhere. A true hero has moved on. My 56 year old self just went outside, faced the sky, and offered the best salute I've snapped in 35 years. Rest In Peace, Mitch....proud and honored to have had your aquaintance.

On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. Although the invasion came as a complete surprise to the Japanese (bad weather had grounded their scouting aircraft), the landings on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tananbogo...

, Calif.(Nov. 23, 2003) -- A quiet chill settled over the Riverside National Cemetery. Six Marines gripped the polished metal rails of a casket. They moved in unison, carrying the flag-draped coffin for one final honor for a Marine hero. Col. Mitchell Paige, recipient of the Medal of Honor, was laid to rest near the Medal of Honor Memorial here Sunday. Hundreds of mourners turned out to watch as an honor guard and honor platoon from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment based at Marine Corps Air-Ground Center Twentynine Palms, the 1st Marine Division Band and Lt. Gen. James T. Conway,...

This Day In History | World War II August 7 1942 U.S. forces invade Guadalcanal On this day in 1942, the U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of the war, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. On July 6, 1942, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. Although the invasion came as a complete surprise to the Japanese...

Hope you have a nice Fourth of July. Maybe you'll watch the fireworks, grill a few hot dogs, give a little thanks to those keeping watch — now and then. Dave Cohea knows where he was on the Fourth of July in 1944: on board the USS Boston, which was shelling the island of Iwo Jima, softening it up for invasion the following spring. The Boston was Cohea's second ship, the first having been blasted out of the water 18 months earlier at Guadalcanal. "We were torpedoed. The ammo blew up, and fuel was all over me," says Cohea, 85,...

Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni - 10,409 miles, 6,500 gallons, 11 days, 10 islands and nine people. Add up the numbers and it equals a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Marines here embarked on the 11-day expedition Aug. 3 to various locations across the Pacific to commemorate the Marine Corps 67th anniversary of World War II’s Guadalcanal campaign. The nine Marines were able experience to witness and experience firsthand what was left of seven historic battle sites, including Saipan, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Guam and Iwo- Jima.

Memories of fallen consecrate name of Solomons' airportBy Tom HennessyStaff columnistHenderson Field is one of those place names that still resonates with most Americans who lived through World War II. And even with some of their descendants. U.S. Marines seized the airfield Aug. 7, 1942, when they invaded Guadalcanal in our first offensive of the Pacific War. They finished the construction the Japanese had started and named the airfield for Lofton Henderson, a Medal of Honor aviator killed in June at the battle of Midway. It was one of the war's most significant airfields. Whoever held Henderson pretty much...

Just returned from having my boots on the ground in the Solomon Islands. Bit of a working holiday of sorts – had the best time imaginable, despite a fair bit of hard yakka. While I was there I heard a little gem of some news from a primary source: According to the prime minister, the right honourable Sir Allan Kemakeza KBE, Henderson International Airport, formerly Henderson Airfield, and formerly planned to be known by some Japanese name that’s been mostly erased from history by an assault by the US Marines and months of heavy fighting… will be retaining its present...

Here is an e-mail I received from the webmaster, 1st Marine Division Associaion, involving the name of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, named after a KIA Marine just prior to that great battle of the Corps and WW II.

It's hard to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942, when a few thousand U.S. Marines stood essentially stranded on the God-forsaken jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, the most likely route for the Japanese Navy to take if they hoped to reach Australia. On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart...

Hitler's GI Death Camp I came across this video on NetFlix a few weeks back. Shortly after, I then found someone had uploaded it to You Tube. I watched it for a third time last night with my mom on my little phone. I think it's well done and very emotional. Amazing what these men went through and survived. I have so much respect for these men. On the You Tube thread, one of the posters said that her father, Norman Fellman, who was one of the GI's featured in the documentary, passed away just this past August. God bless...

Someone drove a car up on the lawn of the state Capitol building Thursday night and smashed into a controversial Ten Commandments monument, breaking the stone slab into several pieces, state officials said. The person who did it fled and has not been found, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokesman George Brown said Friday. This wasn’t a case of a car taking a wrong turn, but a purposeful act, said John Estus, spokesman for the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Whoever did it repositioned some ramp equipment that happened to be outside the building and used it to get access...

About how America became involved in certain wars, many conspiracy theories have been advanced -- and some have been proved correct. When James K. Polk got his declaration of war as Mexico had "shed American blood upon the American soil," Rep. Abraham Lincoln demanded to know the exact spot where it had happened. And did the Spanish really blow up the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, the casus belli for the Spanish-American War? The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, involving U.S. destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, remains in dispute. But charges that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships...

On the Anniversary of World War 2, September 1, 1939 Seventy Five Years Ago Today, We Must Bear in Mind That Our own Circumstances Do Not Augur Well For The Future. The political circumstances in which we find ourselves today, is as treacherous and dangerous time as any. On so many fronts, perspectives, danger lurks within to exponential capacity for the greatest destruction the world has ever seen. So many various, varied circumstances, of nations brimming with hate, enmity, having acquired or in the process of acquiring weapons of mass destruction, imperialistic design, and more, much more, does not bode...

In the dead of the night 70 years ago, more than 1,000 Japanese men stormed the barbed wire perimeter fences of Cowra prisoner of war camp in central NSW. Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened kitchen knives, hundreds of Japanese prisoners overcame machine gun posts in what would become the biggest POW escape of World War II. The mass breakout at the detention camp on August 5, 1944 resulted in a 10-day manhunt as Australian soldiers and police searched for hundreds of armed escapees roaming the Cowra countryside, 300km west of Sydney. A total of 359 Japanese...

A World War II veteran cried today as he said good-bye to his buddy - a 3-year-old boy who became his pal, but is moving away with this family. “It’s going to be tough,” Erling Kindem, 89, said between tears while speaking to ABC News today. Kindem's friendship with his next door neighbor Emmett Rychner, 3, in Farmington, Minnesota, became a heartwarming story that went viral. But the boy is moving today to Northfield, Minnesota, and the veteran is moving with his ailing wife to a retirement center next month.

Ed Holton was 21 years old when he found himself face-to-face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's second-in-command. It went nothing like what he'd expected. Holton was a U.S. Army intelligence officer interrogating the imprisoned Nazi in preparation for the postwar Nuremberg trials, but Goering wasn't cracking loose about his slave labor programs or how many Jews he'd ordered gassed.

The last of the 29 Navajos who developed a code that stumped the Japanese during World War II has died. Chester Nez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died Wednesday morning of kidney failure, said Judy Avila, who helped Nez write his memoirs. He was 93. Before hundreds of men from the Navajo Nation became Code Talkers, 29 Navajos were recruited to develop the code based on the then-unwritten Navajo language. Nez was in 10th grade when he enlisted, keeping his decision a secret from his family and lying about his age, as did many others. "It's one of the greatest parts...

Teen finds WWII-era bazooka rocket, brings it to local authorities on his moped A 16-year-old boy in Austria was at Wallersee, a large lake approximately 10 miles from the city of Salzburg, when he came across something peculiar – an old, rusted object. He picked it up, threw the item in his backpack, and then headed off on his moped to find some police officers. If he knew what he was carrying, however, he wouldn’t have been quite so cavalier. As the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports, it was a World War II-era anti-tank missile. The BBC, pointing to a...