Japanese

Vinegar Joe and the Burma Road

By William Stroock

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, Joseph Stilwell was already a highly regarded officer. Read more

Japanese

Island-Hopping at Tarawa

By John Walker

Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, commander of the elite Japanese garrison entrenched on tiny Betio Island in the central Pacific Ocean, boasted in mid-1943 that his heavily fortified island redoubt could hold out “against a million Americans for a thousand years.” Read more

Japanese

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Moral Dilemma

By Sam McGowan

During the more than 60 years since the detonation of the first atomic bombs—and the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used operationally—a major debate has erupted over the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Read more

Japanese

Fateful Decision: The Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

By Flint Whitlock

On August 7, 1945, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Harry S. Truman announced, “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. Read more

Japanese

Army Mules: The Beast of Burden in War

By Christopher Miskimon

In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more

Japanese

Colonel Hiromishi Yahara’s Story at Okinawa

by John Walker

It was Colonel Hiromishi Yahara who designed and implemented the jiykusen, or the yard-by-yard battle of attrition that cost the American forces so many casualties in the three-month battle, and he was the highest ranking officer to survive the battle and make it back to Tokyo. Read more

Japanese

Horror on Marpi Point: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

by John Wukovits

Normally, the end of combat brings satisfaction and a sense of relief, but the Army infantrymen and Marines who slugged it out with the Japanese at Saipan experienced little of either. Read more

Japanese

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials

By Roy Morris Jr.

When the Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened in the former hilltop headquarters of the Japanese military at Ichigaya on May 3, 1946, American-born chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan faced a difficult task. Read more

Japanese

Fire Control at the Battle of Surigao Strait

by David Alan Johnson

One of the main reasons for the success of the battleships West Virginia, Tennessee, and California at Surigao Strait was their Mk 8 fire control radar, which was used in conjunction with the Mk 8 rangekeeper computer. Read more

Japanese

Dr. Corydon Wassell: Caring for the Wounded in Java

By Michael D. Hull

Allied fortunes were at a low ebb as strategic British and American bases fell like ninepins to the Japanese across the Far East in the early months of 1942. Read more

Japanese

The Ill-Fated Goettge Patrol: General Alexander Vandergrift

by John Wukovits

Born in 1887 in Virginia, Alexander Archer Vandegrift was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1909. Read more

Japanese

“Red” Mantini: Hero Of The 24th Infantry Division In Philippines

By Richard A. Beranty

Angelo J. “Red” Mantini was hardly an angel growing up in the small coal-mining towns of western Pennsylvania in the 1930s. Read more