World War Two

Find old World War 2 articles here. We have great newspaper articles from wwii check them out today!

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…

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Prisoners of the Japanese (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »

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,

Was He Brave? (Coronet Magazine, 1943) Read More »

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.

Kamikaze Attacks (Yank Magazine, 1945) Read More »

Engaging The Japanese Soldier (The American Magazine, 1945)

Wherever they have fought in this war, the Japs have shown an amazing aptitude for the queer and fantastic. They have staged solemn funeral processions in the midst of hot battle. They have blown themselves to bits with hand grenades, have stabbed themselves with daggers, sabers, bayonets and even with scythes. They plunged forward in stupidly blind Banzai charges. They have danced wildly atop ridges while exposed to American fire. And they have directed artillery action while lounging in hammocks.

Engaging The Japanese Soldier (The American Magazine, 1945) Read More »

The Japanese Soldier In China (Literary Digest, 1933)

An article that seems remarkable for lacking those politically correct qualities we’re all so used to reading in today’s magazine columns, this article presents a somewhat slanted, pro-Western vision of the Japanese Army, depicting it as an organized and highly disciplined peasant army:

Some of the finest raw material in the world makes up Japan’s infantry…The material is not so adaptable for horsed and mechanized units, as the Japanese possess little natural aptitude for dealing with animals or machines.

Some attention is paid to the strict diet of the Japanese soldier.

The Japanese Soldier In China (Literary Digest, 1933) Read More »