World War Two – Page 41 – Old Magazine Articles

Outraged Soldiers and Marines
(U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 1944)

That administering government agency charged with the management of the Japanese-American internment camps was the War Relocation Authority, which was an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Much to their credit, in 1944, this bureaucracy saw fit to published a small booklet containing the letters of many outraged American servicemen who vented their anger on the subject that their fellow Americans were being singled-out for persecution:

…I’m putting it mildly when I say that it makes my blood boil…We shall fight this injustice, intolerance and un-Americanism at home! We will not break faith with those who died…We have fought the Japanese and are recuperating to fight again. We can endure the hell of battle, but we are resolved not to be sold out at home.

World War Two Hollywood
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The attached article is a swell piece of journalism that truly catches the spirit of home front America. You will read about the war-weary Hollywood that existed between the years 1941-1945 and the movie shortages, the hair-pin rationing, the rise of the independent producers and the ascent of Van Johnson (4-F slacker) and Lauren Becall:

Lauren, a Warner Brothers property, is a blonde-haired chick with a tall, hippy figure, a voice that sounds like a sexy foghorn and a pair of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it eyes

Washington, D.C. pt. II
(Click Magazine, 1942)

Another article about wartime Washington can be read here… Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…

Washington, D.C. During Wartime
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Washington, D.C. has always been described as a pretty dull place and the only ones who ever seem to feel differently must have had a good deal of experiences in far worse locations. In this case, I am referring to Iowa and the war-torn portions of the South Pacific, which are the only two locations this YANK journalist had ever called home; so he liked Washington just fine. The author in question, Sergeant Merle Miller (1919 – 1986), does not ramble on about historic bone-yards or any other pedantic clap-trap, but rather presents useful information that a G.I. can apply to his life:

Of course, getting a fair date while you’re in town is no problem. A Canadian newspaperman recently discovered that, judging from ration-book requests, there are 82,000 single girls of what he called the right marrying age of 20 to 24 in town, and only 26,000 men of the same age Therefore, he concluded, a girl has only about a 30-percent chance of getting a husband — or, for that matter, a date

The missing period at the close of the article, I assume, is due entirely to war-time shortages.

To read about the VJ-Day celebrations in Washington, click here.

What Did the Germans Think of Their Occupiers?
(Prevent W.W. III Magazine, 1947)

By the time this article appeared on paper, the defeated Germans had been living among the soldiers of four different military powers for two years: the British, the French, the Russians and the Americans – each army had their own distinct personality and the Teutonic natives knew them well. With that in mind, an American reporter decided to put the question to them as to what they thought of these squatters – what did they like most about them and what did the detest most about them?

The Germans did not truly believe that the Americans were there friends until they proved themselves during the Berlin Blockade; click here to read about that…

Peace Comes to the United States
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Even though the war had ended some four months earlier, the American people were still receiving envelopes from the Department of War about the deaths and maimings of their sons when this article appeared.

These columns reported that peacetime took some getting used to, but day by day, the nation was slowly swinging into its post-war stride.

What if the Atomic Bomb had never been invented? When would the war have ended?

Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.

VJ-Day and the End of the War
(Yank, 1945)

If you’ve been looking for a manifesto that would serve as a document of intention for the entire mass of Americans who make up the Greatest Generation, you might have found it.

While the other articles on VJ-Day on this site illustrate well the pure joy and delight that was experienced by so many that day, this editorial cautions the G.I. readers to remember all that they have learned from the war while laying the groundwork for the policy that would check Soviet expansion all over the globe.

Mid-War Production Figures
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1943)

During the Summer of 1943, James F. Byrenes, FDR’s Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, gave a report on the wartime production output for that period. 1943 proved to have been a turning point for the Allied war efforts on both fronts.

Glider Infantry on D-Day
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

A day by day account by Private George Groh, a member of the 101st Airborne, who joined the 1944 Normandy Invasion as a glider-infantryman.

Badass
(The American Magazine, 1943)

For those who survived it, the Second World War changed many lives – some for better, some for worse. Gale Volchok was rescued from a dreary job in New York retail and delivered to the proving grounds of two different infantry training camps in New Jersey. It was under her watchful eye that thousands of American soldiers learned to throw their enemies into the dirt and generally defend them selves.

1943: The Year Everything Changed for the Allies
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

By the Autumn of 1943 it was becoming apparent to both parties that the Allies were coming into their own. The Axis was discovering to their surprise that they were not the only ones who knew how to fight – they’d been routed from North Africa, creamed at Stalingrad and bloodied at the Bismarck Sea:

On every front in this global war Axis strategy is definitely on the defensive.

Similar articles can be read here and here…

One year later, this article would appear…

Americans Tell of Japanese Prison Camps
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A well illustrated magazine article which relays the tale of two Marines who were captured at the fall of Corregidor in 1941 and spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp on the island of Honshu, Japan. The two men told Yank correspondent Bill Lindau all about their various hardships and the atrocities they witnessed as well as the manner in which their lot improved when their guards were told that Japan had surrendered.

Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.

Click here if you would like to read about a World War One German P.O.W. camp.

The Japanese Prison Camp at Cabanatuan
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Here is an interview with the American P.O.W.s who were strong enough to survive the abuses at the Japanese Prison Camp at Cabanatuan (Luzon, Philippines).These men were the survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March:

You were on the Death March? somebody asked him.

Is that what they call it?…Yes, we walked to Capas, about 65 miles. Three days and three nights without food, only such water as we could sneak out of the ditches. We were loaded into steel boxcars at Campas, 100 men to a car – they jammed us in with rifle butts…

The rescue of these men by the 6th Ranger Battalion (U.S. Army) was dramatized in a 2005 television production titled The Great Raid.

Click here if you would like to read more about the 6th Rangers and the liberation of the Cabanatuan P.O.W. camp.

Prisoners of the Japanese
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

An escaped Australian Private, having been rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine, recalls how life was in the hell of a Japanese jungle P.O.W. camp, where all Allied prisoners were forced to build a railroad for the Emperor:

‘I often sit and wonder what I’m doing here’ reflected Pvt. James L. Boulton of Melbourne, Australia. ‘By the law of averages I should have been dead two years ago, and yet here I am smoking Yank cigarettes, eating Yank food with Yank nurses taking care of me. When I was a PW in the jungles of Burma I never thought I’d survive the beatings and fevers and ulcers.’

Click here to read articles about post-war Japan.

Richard McMillan with the United Press
(Newsweek Magazine, 1943)

McMillan, who was [in 1914] the first accredited correspondent with the BEF in France, was sent by the United Press from London to Gibraltar in November, 1940, on what he thought would be a routine assignment. He expected to be back in England in two days. Instead, he stayed in the Mediterranean two years.

Was He Brave?
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

Before December 7, 1941, the average American regarded the Jap as a comical little fellow who bowed deeply from the waist and said, ‘So sorry.’…[and] as a fighting man, the Jap was obviously a joke. His army hadn’t been able to to lick poor old broken-down China in four years… This picture was destroyed forever by the bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor… But what makes the Jap so brave? Briefly, the Jap has two words for it. The first is Shinto and the second bushido,

A Study of the Japanese Soldier
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Printed weeks before the close of the war, the carefully controlled presses at Yank printed this two page article explaining how the Japanese army worked and who exactly was the Japanese soldier.

Kamikaze Attacks
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A two page magazine article about the U.S. Navy destroyer Newcombe (DD-586), a hard-charging ship that suffered heavy damage from repeated Kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa on April 6, 1945 (the Ryukyu Islands):

Then the plane shot past them, ripped through the gun mount and shattered itself against the after-stack. There was a blinding flash. The Newcombe shuddered and rolled heavily to starboard.