Yank Magazine

Articles from Yank Magazine

The First Black Marines
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The editors at Yank (an Army possession) seldom wrote about the Marines – and they loved dissing their weekly magazine, The Leatherneck. However, they did recognize an historic moment when they saw one. As remarked in another article on this site, the Navy was the most prejudiced of all the branches of service, and the Marines had previously rejected all Black recruits, but that changed in 1942, and this article served to introduce their readers to this consequential lot. The first African American Marines trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, NC from August 26, 1942 until the camp was decommissioned in 1949. The greatest number of black Marines to serve in combat during the Second World War was during the Battle of Okinawa (2,000 strong).

”Buzz-Bombs Blitz”
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Launched by air or from catapults posted on the Northern coast of France, the German V-1 “Buzz-Bomb” was first deployed against the people of London on June 12, 1944. Before the V-1 campaign was over 1,280 Britons would fall on greater London. 1,241 of these rockets were successfully destroyed in flight.

Accompanied by a diagram of the contraption, this is a brief article about London life during the “Buzz-Bomb Blitz”. Quoted at length are the Americans stationed in that city as well as the hardy Britons who had endured similar carnage during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns earlier in the war.

An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo

An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier:

The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement…They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it.


Click here to read about the humbled Japan.

Bill Mauldin Of The Stars & Stripes
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

No other cartoonist during the Second World War ever portrayed the American GI so knowingly and with more sympathy than the Stars & Stripes cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin (1921 – 2003), who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 1945.


Mauldin wrote the attached essay at the end of the war and gave the Yank Magazine readers an earful regarding his understanding of the front, the rear and all the the blessed officers in between


Click here to read a wartime interview with another popular 1940s American cartoonist: Milton Caniff.

An Army of Juan
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Some have said that America’s first introduction to Latin culture came with Ricky Ricardo; others say Carmen Miranda, Xavier Cugat, Charo or Chico and the Man. The dilettantes at OldMagazineArticles.com are not qualified to answer such deep questions, but we do know that for a bunch of unfortunate Nazis and their far-flung Japanese allies, their first brush with la vida loco Latino came in the form of Private Anibal Irizarry, Colonel Pedro del Valle and Lieutenant Manuel Vicente: three stout-hearted Puerto Ricans who distinguished themselves in combat and lived to tell about it.


In 1917 the U.S. Congress granted American citizenship rights to the citizens of Puerto Rico – but they didn’t move to New York until the Fifties. Click here to read about that…


Click here to read an article about Latinas in the WAACs.

‘Occupied England”
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

This Yank Magazine article, written just after the Channel Islands liberation, tells some of the stories of the Nazi occupation of Jersey and Guernsey Islands.

Before the war the English Channel Islands – long known as a vacation spot for the wealthy – were wonderful places to ‘get away from it all.’

Then the Germans came to the islands after Dunkirk, and for five years 100,000 subjects of his majesty the King were governed by 30,000 Nazi officers and their men.

An American Corpse at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

From time to time, it was the practice of the German military to separate American Jewish soldiers from their fellows and transfer them to concentration camps. The corpse of one of these men was found at the Nazi concentration camp in Ohrdruf, Germany.


Click here to read about the malnourishment and starvation of Allied prisoners of war…

Home Front Teen Slang
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A 1945 Yank Magazine article concerning American teen culture on the W.W. II home front in which the journalist/anthropologist paid particular attention to the teen-age slang of the day.

Some of today’s teenagers —pleasantly not many — talk the strange new language of sling swing. In this bright lexicon of the good citizens of tomorrow, a girl with sex appeal is an able Grable or a ready Hedy. A pretty girl is whistle bait. A boy whose mug and muscles appeal to the girls is a mellow man, a hunk of heart break or a glad lad.


To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…


Click here to learn how the Beatniks spoke.
Click here if you would like to read a glossary of WAC slang terms.

•Suggested Reading• Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slangstyle=border:none

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