Yank Magazine

Articles from Yank Magazine

A W.W. II Draft Board
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

When Michael Campiseno turned 18, he was pulled out of his senior class in Norwood High School and drafted. Mike was sore. He swore that if he ever returned, he’d throw his discharge papers on the desk of the board chairman and say, ‘Now, ya sonuvabitch, I hope you’re satisfied!’


Here is the skinny on Draft Board 119 of Norwood, Massachusetts – an average draft board that sent 2,103 men off to war (75 of them never returned).

Home Front Chicago
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Chicago, Illinois saw enormous changes take place during the war years, most notably the overnight construction of over 260 defense plants and the opening of its subway system (six miles in length, at that time). Half a million war workers arrived to toil in her new factories while it is said that each city block in Chicago dispatched, on average, at least seven of her sons and daughters for the armed services.

Nerves are taught with war tension. Hard work adds to the strain and increases the tempo. People walk faster in the streets. Stampedes for surface cars, and the new subway are more chaotic than ever… Five thousand block flagpoles have been erected by block committees of the Office of Civilian Defense. Listed in some manner near each are the names of all the GIs from the block. Some of the installations are elaborate and have bulletin boards that are kept up to date with personal news from camps and war theaters.

Who Was Tougher: The Japanese or The Germans?
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

By the end of 1943 Major General Joseph Lawton Collins (1917 – 1987) was one of two U.S. generals to give battle to both the Japanese in the East and the Germans in the West (Curtis Lemay was the other general). In this two page interview with Yank Magazine correspondent Mack Morriss, General Collins answered the question as to which of the two countries produced the most dangerous fighting man:

The Jap is tougher than the German. Even the fanatic SS troops can’t compare with the Jap…Cut off an outfit of Germans and nine times out of 10 they’ll surrender. Not the Jap.


Click here to read another article in which the Japanese and Germans were compared to one another.


Click here to read an interview with a Kamikaze pilot.

Manhattan During Wartime
(Yank, 1945)

This is a three page article concerning the city of New York from Yank‘s on-going series, Home Towns in Wartime.

The Yank correspondent, Sanderson Vanderbilt, characterized Gotham as being overcrowded (in 1945 the population was believed to be 1,902,000; as opposed to the number today: 8,143,197) and I’m sure we can all assume that today’s New Yorkers tend to feel that their fore-bearers did not know the meaning of the word.

New York was the home base of Yank Magazine and this article presents a young man’s view of that town and the differences that he can recall when he remembers it’s pre-war glory (Sanderson tended to feel that the city looked a bit down-at-the-heel).

Click here if you would like to read an article about the celebrations in New York the day World War Two ended.
Read a Vanity Fair article about New York during W.W. I


Click here to read about the first NYC air-raid wardens of 1942.

The American A-20 Havoc
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

An enthusiastic Yank Magazine article about the Douglas DB-7/A-20 Havoc (the British called it the A-20 Boston): throughout the course of the war, there was no other attack bomber that was manufactured in greater quantity than this one (7,477).

An eyewitness report of a pre-invasion mission over the continent in one of the newest and most effective U.S. air weapons, an attack bomber that looks like an insect but moves and hits with the speed of a meteor…

The Pearl Harbor Story
(Yank Magazine, 1942)

When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).


Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

German Boy Soldiers in Captivity
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A fascinating article reporting on the Baby Cage, the Allied prisoner of war camp that held some 7,000 boy soldiers of the German army, ages 12 through 17.

In light of the fact that so manyGerman youths had been indoctrinated from their earliest days in Nazi dogma and then dumbfounded to a far greater degree within the Hitler Jugend system, the Allied leadership post-war government believed that this group needed to be instructed in the ways of tolerance before being let loose into the general population.


Click here to read about the Nazi indoctrination of German youth.

General Stilwell In Burma
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

In May 1942 Lieutenant General Joseph Warren Stilwell (1883 – 1946) made that frank statement after leading a tired, battered band of 103 officers, men and nurses on a 20-day march into India, refugees from the Allied rout in Burma… Stilwell’s return to Burma is the result of two years of careful preparation in which two major projects were developed. One was a Chinese-American training center in India…The other was the Ledo Road, a supply route from India by which Allied troops moving into Northern Burma could be equipped and provisioned.

How The Atomic Bomb Was Developed
(Yank, 1945)

The story behind the atomic bomb is a detective story with no Sherlock Holmes for a hero. The number of scientists who took part in the search was without parallel…The dramatic story begins with Dr. Lise Meitner (1878 – 1968), a woman scientist and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In 1938 Dr. Meitner is bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons and then submitting the uranium to chemical analysis. To her amazement…


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