World War Two – Page 95 – Old Magazine Articles

The Atomic Bomb
(Dept. of the Army, 1956)

In ten lines the U.S. Army history section succinctly outlined Japan’s grim situation and the events that led up to the dropping of the bomb:

By the summer of 1945 it was obvious to most responsible leaders in Japan that the end of the war was near. For the first time those who favored ending the war came out in the open and in June, Japan sent out peace feelers through the Soviet Union. The rejection of the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July, however, sealed the doom of Japan…

Click here to read an article about American public opinion during the early Cold War years

The Atomic Crusade
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1948)

Attached is a 1948 article by the Nobel laureate Arthur Holly Compton (1892 – 1962) concerning the widespread understanding among nuclear physicists to wrestle control of atomic energy away from the military and firmly in the hands of civil authorities, where it’s benefits can be put to general use and harnessed as positive force in the lives of all mankind.

Awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1927, the SCRIPT MAGAZINE editors believed that Arthur Compton, more than anyone else, deserved the title Daddy of the Atomic bomb. When the U.S. Government decided to proceed with the research and development of this weapon, Compton was assigned the double task of attempting a nuclear chain reaction and of designing the bomb itself.

Compton is remembered as the senior physicist at the Manhattan Project who hired Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

Click here to read an article about American public opinion during the early Cold War years.

Click here to read about the invention of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

600 Nisei Judged Disloyal
(L.A. Times, 1944)

About 630 American-born Japanese over the age of 17, now at the Poston (AZ.) relocation center, were found to be openly disloyal or of questionable loyalty to the United States, the Dies subcommittee learned at its hearing yesterday in the Federal Building…Among the 630 there were 606 men and 24 women.

Laval Testifies in the Petain Trial
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

Neither the prosecution nor the defense wanted Henri Philippe Petain’s oily accomplice to testify in the trial of the old marshal. Both sides feared his slanderous tongue and his slimy skill for wriggling out of blame.

The Betrayal of French Jewry
(Newsweek Magazine, 1942)

The Nazis quickly extended the dread Nuremberg laws to the occupied territory. Jews lost jobs, businesses, property, liberty, even their lives. They were flung into primitive concentration camps and deported to Polish ghettos. And with them the Nazis brought the usual wave of Jewish suicides.

The American Half-Track
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

This YANK MAGAZINEarticle was written shortly after the U.S. Army’s triumphant performance during the Battle of El Guettar in Tunisia (March 23 – April 7, 1943) and rambles on with much enthusiasm regarding the admirable performance of the M2 Half Tracks. Half Tracks were used on many fronts throughout the war and in many ways, yet as this article makes clear these armored vehicles at El Guettar were mounted with a field gun and used to devastating effect as tank-destroyers against the German 10th Panzer Division.

The writer, Ralph G. Martin

went on in later years to become a prolific historian and biographer.

Click here to read an article about German half-tracks.

The American Half-Track
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

The writer, Ralph G. Martin

went on in later years to become a prolific historian and biographer.

Click here to read an article about German half-tracks.

The American Half-Track
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

The writer, Ralph G. Martin

went on in later years to become a prolific historian and biographer.

Click here to read an article about German half-tracks.

Hello, Denim
(Collier’s Magazine, 1942)

The editors at COLLIER’S MAGAZINE could not have known the significance of this subject back in 1942, yet to those Americans born after 1960 who read these old columns, it seems like a sign post that pointed the way to the sportswear of the future. Verily, few are the Americans who tread the fruited plane today who do not see at least one pair of jeans every day. Blue jeans have become the symbol of the nation, just as much as the flag.

This 1940s article pointed out that more and more Americans are waking up to denim. They found that it suited them and deemed it a sensible fabric in light of the new agricultural and industrial toil that needed to be finished if the fascists were to be beaten. However, denim was not some newfangled wartime invention; denim has been on the American scene since 1853 – in the Western gold mines and barnyards, roundhouses and cattle ranges.

Some seven years before this article hit the newsstands American teenagers began wearing jeans, but it was W.W. II that created a market for women’s jeans, and for good or ill, the course of American sportswear was forever altered.

A far more thorough fashion history of blue jeans can be read here.

‘They, Too, Have Fought and Died”
(Maptalk, 1945)

You’re damn right those Nisei boys have a place in the American heart, now and forever. And I say soldiers ought to form a pickaxe club to protect the Japanese-Americans who fought the war with us. Any time we see a barfly commando picking on those kids or discriminating against them, we ought to bang them over the head with a pickaxe. I’m willing to be a charter member.

General Joseph W. Stillwell

Read the letters of American soldiers and Marines who recognized
the injustice that was done to the Japanese-Americans…