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Today is Veterans Day and ironically one of the greatest tributes paid to American veterans was made by a former deadly foe. A PBS documentary, Iwo Jima: From Combat to Comrades, broadcast yesterday and available online, featured the 70th reunion on Iwo Jima of veterans of that bloody battle. Among the veterans was Tsuruji Akikusa, a former radioman in the Imperial Japanese Navy who was badly wounded. As one of the very few Japanese survivors of Iwo Jima and one of the last who is still alive, he is quite a rarity. However, what makes him really special is the incredible tribute...

“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.” Ecclesiasticus 44:14 They are around us every day. We may not know who they are, or what they did, or when they did it, but, they are with us in body and in spirit. They are the old man with a cane who struggles to cross a street, but who once stormed the ash-laden hills of Iwo Jima. They are the janitor with a distant stare who won a Bronze Star at a place called Hue. They are the mailman who fought the Republican Guard and the salesman...

For two decades after the Second World War, over half of all employees of the West German interior ministry were ex-Nazis, a new study shows. The research, carried out by the Center for Contemporary Historical Studies with the blessing of the Interior Ministry, shows that the number of ex-Nazi party members in both the West and East German postwar administrations was much higher than previously thought. In exact figures, an average of 54 percent of civil servants in the West German interior ministry were former Nazis, although at its high point between 1966 and 1961, two-thirds of all employees at...

The true story of Garlin Murl Conner’s heroism in the face of a Nazi onslaught might have gone to the grave with the soft-spoken Kentucky farmer if not for a chance phone call from another military man trying to piece together the last days of his uncle’s life. ***snip*** The bravery of Conner, who died in 1998 at the age of 79, is well-documented. The first lieutenant, who was wounded seven times, earned an incredible four Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars, seven Purple Hearts and the Distinguished Service Cross for his World War II heroism. But it was what he...

Thomas Blatt, one of the few survivors of a rare revolt and mass escape from a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland during World War II, died on Saturday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 88. The cause was complications of dementia, his daughter Rena Smith said. Mr. Blatt was 16 on Oct. 14, 1943, when he and several hundred other prisoners staged an uprising against Nazi SS officers and the Ukrainian guards at the Sobibor extermination camp. His parents and younger brother had been gassed there six months earlier. Searchers captured and killed about 150 of...

Winter 2003, Vol. 35, No. 4 American POWs on Japanese Ships Take a Voyage into Hell By Lee A. Gladwin Oryoku Maru The Oryoku Maru under attack at Olongapo, Luzon, December 14–15, 1944. (Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, RG 38) John M. Jacobs had been in Manila when the Japanese captured the Philippines in the early stages of World War II, and now, in 1944, he was a prisoner of war, or POW, in the Bilibid Prison in Manila. There, he and other American and Allied POWs were often forced to do heavy labor. With...

Winter 2003, Vol. 35, No. 4 American POWs on Japanese Ships Take a Voyage into Hell, Part 2 By Lee A. Gladwin Brazil Maru The Brazil Maru passes through the Panama Canal on March 26, 1940. Nearly five years later, it carried Allied POWs. (185-CZ-Vol. 51-Brazil Maru) The Brazil Maru and the Enoura Maru: Finishing the Journey into Hell On December 27, the prisoners at San Fernando boarded the Brazil Maru and Enoura Maru and sailed for Takao, Formosa, part of the TAMA #36 convoy, bound for the POW camps near Moji, Japan. Landing craft ferried them from the pier...

Another member of the Greatest Generation leaving and his last wish is to celebrate Halloween by giving out candy one last time. Local news report that traffic was backed up to the interstate Saturday to visit veteran Andy Furlong ( don't you just love his name. Some 4,000 people showed up with candy and gifts for him and to celebrate him and his last wish. Just a wonderful story. http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Ill-Army-Veteran-90-Dreams-of-Handing-Out-Halloween-Candy-339015452.html

Hero Ships: Season 1, Episode 3 USS Samuel B. Roberts TV Episode, Documentary, History, WWII

(Photo: US Army/Public Domain) What does a travel guide look like when you're part of an occupying army? Thanks to Oxford's Bodleian Library, we can get an idea. In the early 2000s, the library began reissuing a series of pamphlets that had been given to Allied servicemen before their trips to foreign nations.These guides can tell us a lot about cultural attitudes and a little about military strategy during World War II, but more than anything, they highlight shifting priorities in how troops interact with civilians.According to correspondence between the War department and to the headquarters of General Eisenhower in London, the...

History hasn't looked kindly on the Catholic Church during WW II. The conventional narrative is not the whole storyAt six in the morning on Sunday, 12 March, a procession snaked toward the bronze doors of St. Peter’s. Swiss Guards led the line, followed by barefoot friars with belts of rope. Pius took his place at the end, borne on a portable throne. Ostrich plumes stirred silently to either side, like quotation marks. Pius entered the basilica to a blare of silver trumpets and a burst of applause. Through pillars of incense he blessed the faces. At the High Altar, attendants...

[VIDEO DOCUMENTARY] From The Solon Historical Society Achieves - March 24th, 1998 Nelson Bard discusses his personal involvement in the real life "Caine Munity"

Seventy-five years ago today, Red Army troops smashed into Poland. Masters of deception and propaganda, they encouraged locals to believe that they were coming to join the battle against Hitler, who had invaded two weeks’ earlier. But, within a day, the true nature of the Nazi-Soviet collaboration was exposed. The two armies met at the town of Brest, where the 1918 peace treaty between the Kaiser’s government and Lenin’s revolutionary state had been signed. Soldiers fraternised, exchanging food and tobacco – pre-rolled German cigarettes contrasting favourably against rough Russian papirosi. A joint military parade was staged, the Wehrmacht’s field grey...

The world has been hearing about the Nazi gold train for weeks, and we may finally be getting closer to a confirmation or denial. The Polish army has converged upon the southwestern Poland site where the train could be located, with explosives, chemical, and radiation experts making sure there's no danger, especially since the train was rumored to have been booby-trapped, the AP reports. "Our goal is to check whether there's any hazardous material," a Polish colonel leading the search tells AFP. The military personnel are using ground-penetrating radar and mine detectors in their probe near Walbrzych, and the governor...

Mine was built in 1944 by Buick in Flint, Mich., with a 975-cubic inch airplane engine in it. According to my records, it was sold as surplus after World War II to the Yugoslavian military, where it was used in the civil war there in the 1990s. “Would whoever owns the 1984 Camaro, please move it, or we’re going to have it towed away.” Of course, nobody moved it. With everyone watching, I fired up the tank destroyer and crushed that Camaro. The crowds loved it.

Rod Serling served as a U.S. Armyparatrooper and demolition specialist with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division in the Pacific Theater in World War II from January 1943 to January 1945 (Discharged stateside in 1946). He was seriously wounded in the wrist and knee during combat and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Serling's military service deeply affected the rest of his life and influenced much of his writing. Due to his wartime experiences, Serling suffered from nightmares and flashbacks. During his service in World War II, he watched as his best friend was crushed to...

Great WW2 footage of the great warbirds of WW2, the people that built them, crewed them, and the men that fought and died in them. We can never repay the debt we owe to them.

A great one tonight. Based on a true story, The Fighting Sullivans is a look at the lives - and sacrifices - of five brothers who served together on the USS Juneau during WW2. Starring Anne Baxter and Thomas Mitchell.

Ben Kuroki, who overcame the American military's discriminatory policies to become the only Japanese American to fly over Japan during World War II, has died. He was 98. Kuroki died Tuesday at his Camarillo, California, home, where he was under hospice care, his daughter Julie Kuroki told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday. The son of Japanese immigrants who was raised on a Hershey, Nebraska, farm, Kuroki and his brother, Fred, volunteered for service after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. They were initially rejected by recruiters who questioned the loyalty of the children of Japanese immigrants. Undeterred,...

Richard E. Cole On Monday, one of the last two surviving members of the WWII “Doolitte Raiders” will celebrate his 100th birthday. As one of the original Doolittle Raiders, retired Lt. Col. Richard Coledefied all the odds in what was considered a suicide mission to bomb Japan in 1942. Mr. Cole was co-pilot for Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, who led 16 B-25 bombers on the mission that is considered an event that changed the nation’s morale following the devastating attack on Pearl harbor. He was one of 80 fighters who volunteered for the dangerous, top-secret mission. The Raiders planned...