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It sounds like a familiar story: on a bright Sunday in December, nearly 70 years ago, Japanese planes blazed out of the sky to strafe and bomb an American warship while it lay at anchor. The surprise attack caught the crew off-guard, and despite valiant action, the ship was critically damaged, had to be abandoned, and soon sank. If you said December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, you’d be wrong. The date was December 12, 1937, and the place was the Yangtze River in war-torn China. The vessel? The gunboat USS Panay. It was a sudden and deliberate attack that might...

Leftists will do anything to stop Christian conscience, even harm Veterans. Judge Vance Day, a friend of many Veterans, is under attack because of his religious beliefs. Vance Day, former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, is a sitting Circuit Court Judge in his home state. Vance and I first met in 2009, where he was a guest speaker at Regent University. His calm, caring demeanor as well as his intellectual and spiritual depth were plainly evident. Vance shared, at the end of his talk, how he was a Christian and that one of the more well-known members of the...

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan). The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held...

In my youth, Dec. 7 was always a big deal, as we remembered Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Today, most of those alive on that fateful day in 1941 are no longer with us, and the collective memory of the event has faded. Subsequent generations have other powerful dates to remember. Nov. 22, the day President Kennedy was assassinated, loomed large in the lives of Baby Boomers. More recently, Sept. 11 has become the day we must never forget. This is the natural course of history moving on. In a generation or two, even Sept. 11 will become just...

The presidency has changed Barack Obama. His hair has gone gray, which is to be expected, and he looks older, which is also to be expected, but his eloquence has been replaced by petulance and he has lost the power to persuade, which is something of a surprise. You can speculate that if the Obama of today and not Winston Churchill had led Britain in World War II, the Old Vic theater would now be doing “Hamlet” in German. The president has lost his voice, that is certain. The numbers say so. Obama has the approval of only 44 percent of...

The folks who run the Yorktown say a lot of kids love the ship, but no kid has ever fallen for a sailor who served on the vessel like these two boys have fallen for Mr. Harding. Which is why, for this trip, the Yorktown made special arrangements for a surprise visitor: Mr. Harding. The boys ran to embrace him; hugging an old salt never felt so sweet. It was hard to tell who enjoyed it more, or who needed it more. Over the years Mr. Harding says he'd kept most of his war stories to himself. "I guess I...

This video contains images of military aircraft shot down, missing during the World War II and found nowadays. Some aircraft have been restored and can fly again!

SEVENTY-four years ago today, Australia's greatest naval tragedy unfolded off the coast of WA. HSK Kormoran was a disguised German warship. Her job was to scour the seas for vulnerable cargo ships carrying the lifeblood of trade to the UK. HMAS Sydney II was a light cruiser. Her job was to escort vulnerable ships, as well as to search the seas for hostile ships - like Kormoran. The initial account of the battle that unfolded on the evening of November 19, 1941, was incomplete and confused. It was built up from interviews of German survivors - individuals who had only...

The True Story of The Patton Prayer by Msgr. James H. O'Neill (From the Review of the News 6 October 1971) Many conflicting and some untrue stories have been printed about General George S. Patton and the Third Army Prayer. Some have had the tinge of blasphemy and disrespect for the Deity. Even in "War As I Knew It" by General Patton, the footnote on the Prayer by Colonel Paul D. Harkins, Patton's Deputy Chief of Staff, while containing the elements of a funny story about the General and his Chaplain, is not the true account of the prayer Incident...

In March 1945, 15 battleships, 29 carriers, 23 cruisers, 106 destroyers, and a train of oilers and supply ships sailed from "a Pacific base." What was this base? The mightiest force of naval Power ever assembled must have required a tremendous supporting establishment. Ulithi, the biggest and most active naval base in the world was indeed tremendous but it was unknown. Few civilians had heard of it at all. By the time security released the name, the remarkable base of Ulithi was a ghost. The war had moved on to the Japanese homeland, and the press was not printing ancient...

About 125,000 World War II soldiers and airmen are buried in 11 cemeteries in France. For many of their families it’s difficult, if not impossible, to pay a foreign visit to decorate their loved-one’s grave. But 70 years after World War II ended, French volunteers continue their pledge to do what American loved ones can’t. “He was in a bomber group and they were flying a mission over France,” said the nephew named after his uncle Chuck. Gunner Charles Speier was just 20 years old, a gifted artist, when he and his bomber crew were shot down April 1, 1944....

James P. Reilly and Michael J. Reilly, fraternal twins born on Nov. 9, 1923, remained close throughout their abbreviated life together. As allies and co-conspirators, they were always within each other’s orbit, attending the same public schools in Queens, playing sports together and jointly enlisting in the Marines. During World War II, when they were 20, the brothers were part of a unit that stormed the beach of a small Japanese-held island in the Pacific. It would be their last hour together. James was killed by gunfire, his body falling only feet from Michael; he was interred in a battlefield...

LAKE CHARLES, LA - Possibly the oldest living World War II veteran lives in Lake Charles and he's celebrating an impressive milestone this week. Frank Levingston turns 110 Friday, November 13.

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...