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A 1939 magazine article that reported on the assorted activities of Japanese spies operating around the Tijuana/San Diego region (their presence was well-documented by the Mexican military in addition to the F.B.I.).
A year and a half before the Pearl Harbor attack, Naval Intelligence sold a Japanese agent some bogus plans of the naval installation – more about this can be read here.
Here is a 1943 article that was cabled from Stockholm, Sweden, relaying assorted eyewitness accounts of the Allied bombing campaign over the German city of Hamburg in 1943:
The people of Germany have now learned, through the terror-filled hours of sleepless nights and days, that air mastery, the annihilating blitz weapon of the Nazis in 1939 and 1940, has been taken over by by the Allies…The most terrible of these punches has been the flood of nitroglycerin and phosphorus that in five days and nights destroyed Hamburg.
Click here to read about the bombing of Japan.
It was an Englishman nick-named Bomber Harris who planned and organized the nightly raids over Nazi Germany: click here to read about him.
This notice was the Yank magazine account of what has come to be known as the Great Raid that was commanded by Lt Col. Henry A. Mucci (1909 – 1997). On January 30, 1945 Mucci lead a raiding party of 121 hand-picked men of the 6th Rangers accompanied by some 300 Filipino guerrillas into the jungles on Luzon (The Philippines) in order to liberate the survivors of the Bataan Death March from the Cabanatuan Prison Camp. At the loss of only two men, the raiders freed 510 American POWs.
Click here to read more about the Cabanatuan POW camp.
The first time the American public learned of the existence of the now famous U.S. Army Rangers was through articles like this one, that appeared during August of 1942. This article made public the fact that fewer than 100 Rangers had participated in the not-terribly-successful raid on Dieppe.
The Rangers were named after Rogers’ Rangers, the rough and crafty Indian fighters of colonial days who battled near the Canadian border under their leader, Major Robert Rogers… All Rangers are volunteers, selected for strength and ability to use such weapons as daggers, grenades, fists, tommy guns and mortars.
The summer of 1942 found the German Army in the Soviet Union nearing the end of its oil reserves. It was decided that this problem could best be solved by seizing the Red oilfields of the Caucasus Mountains – and so began the Battle of the Caucasus (25 July 1942 – 12 May 1944).
During the Cold war, as many as 400,000 American military personnel were forced to witness Atomic explosions. Having been sworn to secrecy, this veteran wrote his testimony under the penname, Soldier X:
Then I saw the true power and fury of nature as a giant fireball sluggishly rolled upward through the thick layer of dust: I estimated its distance at about 1500 feet up. Surrounding the red mass are twisting white snakes of clouds….This is color as few humans have ever seen it, magnificent, threatening and horrible.
Here is a news article about Madame Marie Curie (1867 – 1934), it concerns the fact that although she discovered Radium, and conducted numerous important experiments upon it, she didn’t possess so much as a gram of the stuff. This problem was remedied by a coterie of American women of science who convened and agreed to provide her with the missing gram.
Three years before terms such as Enola Gay and Atom Bomb would become household words, this five page article appeared in an American magazine informing the folks on the home front that this monstrosity was being developed silently behind the scenes.
We have no doubt that the FBI was knocking at the publisher’s door the very second that the issue appeared on the newsstands.
Said Winston Churchill in offering thanks for Divine help in the race for atomic power, ‘By His mercy British and American science outpaced all German efforts.’
Thank God, to be sure. But it should not be overlooked that for this work He had an able servant in Lief Tronstad. As saboteur par excellence, the young professor was a ball and chain on Nazi ankles in this race to the atomic finish line.
The British have struck heavily at the Mareth Line in what both sides call the opening blow of the long-awaited big battle of Tunisia.
(The Mareth Line was a system of bunkers built by France in southern Tunisia during the late Thirties. The line was intended to protect Tunisia against an Italian invasion from its colony in Libya.)
General Lunsford Errett Oliver (1889 – 1978) wrote this article about his experiences commanding the American Army in Tunisia. As many of you may know, the American efforts in North Africa were fraught with many difficulties, the least of them were the Germans. The biggest one referred to by the general was the total lack of air cover for his advancing army.
Click here to read about the retreat of the Africa Corps.
This article was penned by YANK correspondent Sergeant George Slim Aarons (1916 – 2006) concerning his travels throughout the Allied occupied portions of Tunisia in 1943. Aarons reported on the heavy presence of German military debris that could be found scattered throughout the deserts – evidence that spelled out the imminent eviction of the Germans from that continent:
Some of these tanks lay in groups, showing how they had clustered together and fought it out to the bitter end. Other iron carcasses were alone in the desert, burned and twisted – relics of a hopeless, single-handed struggle against the Allied forces.
Click here to read about the retreat of the German 7th Army from Normandy.
What a thoroughly outrageous article this is! In my experience reading news pieces from both world wars I have never once come across one in which the journalist pinpoints a particular fighting unit and labels it as substandard – but that is exactly what happens in this article about the all-black 92nd Division. Previously, I never thought such a thing would ever happen with a censored press that sought to preserve the morale of both soldiers and home front – but I was wrong.
– from Amazon KEY WORDS: Japanese Minister of Finance Shigenori Tōgō war criminal,Japanese Commerce Minister Nobusuke Kishi war criminal,Japanese Rear
An article in which Bataan Death March survivor Dean Sherry, tells the tale of his jailer, a kindly school teacher known only as Captain Uemumra, and remembers him with a tremendous sense of gratitude.
An unusual story during a horrible time.
The reason the Nazis banned The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse was that it was a political preachment against Hitler ‘socialism,’ by a man [Fritz Lang] whose films were appreciated by the Germans as true interpretations of the social trends of post-war Germany… Lang’s intention in the film was, in his own words, ‘to expose the masked Nazi theory of the necessity to deliberately destroy everything which is precious to a people so that they would lose all faith in the institutions and ideals of the State. Then, when everything collapsed, they would try to find help in the new order.’
Society photographer Slim Aarons (1916 – 2006) is remembered for chronicling the swells of Palm Beach and Newport during the 1960s for TOWN & COUNTRY, among other magazines, but before he was able to have those villa doors open for him he had to first pay his dues at Yank Magazine, photographing the dung and destruction of World War Two.
This is an article he wrote about all that he saw during the Battle of Monte Cassino (January 17, 1944 – May 19, 1944), accompanied by five of his photographs.
This article first appeared at the end of America’s first full year of war and it is composed of the names and pictures of Hollywood’s leading men who were absolved from fulfilling their military obligations during the war.
The personalities of the fabulous films are on the spot in the matter of serving their country. It is useless to deny that the motion picture stars have been getting the best of it. Some have been given special draft deferments and choice assignments and often have been allowed extra months to finish their pictures before having to report for duty.
Click here to read about the American draft-dodgers of the Second World War.
