Yank Magazine

Articles from Yank Magazine

VE-Day in the U.S. of A.
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report from Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St Louis and Springfield (Mass.) as to how VE-Day was celebrated (or not) in these cities:

To get an over-all view of VE-day in America, YANK asked civilian newspapermen and staff writers in various parts of the country to send an eye-witness reports. From these OPs the reports were much the same. Dallas was quiet, Des Moines was sober, Seattle was calm, Boston was staid.

Sports in Japanese Prison Camps
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Assorted yarns told by liberated Allied soldiers as to the types of games played in Japanese prison camps between bouts of malaria, dysentery and gangrene:

We had a big fellow with us in camp, a guy named Chris Bell, who was 6 feet 2 and the rocky sort. The Jap guards were having a wrestling tournament at the guardhouse and they wanted Bell to come down and wrestle one of those huge sumo men. These sumo wrestlers weigh about 300 pounds and are very agile…


This was NOT the first time that a Japanese baseball team had faced Americans.

Click here to read about that game.


Suggested Reading:
POW Baseball in World War II: The National Pastime Behind Barbed Wirestyle=border:none

The AWOL GIs in the Black Market of Paris
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Attached is a four page article that reported on the deserters of the U.S. Army who organized themselves into Chicago-style gangs in post-occupied Paris, replete with gun-molls, hideouts, fencing contacts and all the trimmings of a third-rate-blood-and-thunder detective story.

Kyoto: The Japanese City That Was Never Bombed
(Yank, 1945)

An article touching on the war-weary appearance of Kyoto, Japan. Although the writer had been informed by the locals that Kyoto was very special to the Japanese, the dullard was really unable to see beyond the filth, rampant prostitution and general disrepair of the city in order to understand this.

Facts About WACS
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Attached are a few interesting factoids about the American lassies who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps throughout the Second World War.

Humor in Uniform
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

In the years to come, he would be known as the Oscar Award winning screenwriter for A Place in the Sunstyle=border:none, SANDS OF IWO JIMA and OCEAN’S ELEVEN – but in 1943 Harry Brownstyle=border:none
(1917 – 1986) was writing tongue and cheek essays like this one on the history of warfare under the nome de guerre Artie Greengroin:

War is a very popular pass-time of humane beings. It is fought by men, on sides, with the popular intentions of killing people of the other side. The more people get killed the more you win. That is war. Historically, war has been fought for a long time and several people have won them. Some people have been Alexander, Julius Caesar and some other people…


1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…

Humor in Uniform
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

In the years to come, he would be known as the Oscar Award winning screenwriter for A Place in the Sunstyle=border:none, SANDS OF IWO JIMA and OCEAN’S ELEVEN – but in 1943 Harry Brownstyle=border:none
(1917 – 1986) was writing tongue and cheek essays like this one on the history of warfare under the nome de guerre Artie Greengroin:

War is a very popular pass-time of humane beings. It is fought by men, on sides, with the popular intentions of killing people of the other side. The more people get killed the more you win. That is war. Historically, war has been fought for a long time and several people have won them. Some people have been Alexander, Julius Caesar and some other people…


1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it…

Scroll to Top