1944 – Page 4 – Old Magazine Articles

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 First Wave (Newsweek Magazine, 1944)

Down ramp!‘ shouted the coxswain from the elevated stern.

Down it came with a clank and splash. Ahead – and it seemed at that moment miles off – stretched the sea wall. At Lieutenant Crisson’s insistence we had all daubed our faces with commando black. I charged out with the rest, trying to look fierce and desperate, only to step into a shell hole and submerge myself in the channel. Luckily my gear was too wet and stinking to put on so I was light enough to come up.

This Newsweek journalist was the only allied war correspondent to have witnessed the derring-do of those in the first wave.

A Report on the War Reporters (Click Magazine, 1944)

A well-illustrated 1944 article by Leonard Lyons pertaining to the assorted wartime experiences of ten American war correspondents:

• Martin Agronsky for NBC News

• Vincent Sheean with The N.Y. Tribune

• Henry Cassidy of the Associated Press

• Bob Casey of the Chicago Tribune

• John Gunther of The Chicago Daily News

• Jack Thompson of The Chicago Tribune

• Cecil Brown of CBS News

• W.L. White of the Associated Press

• Quentin Reynolds of Collier’s Magazine

• Cyrus Schulzberger with the NY Times

More Reports on the War Reporters (Pic Magazine, 1944)

Published four months after the above article, here is a similar, well-illustrated piece that lists the names of the photographers and reporters who were killed – and the younger breed of writers and lens-men who took their places.

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.

‘Hitler” of Hollywood (The American Magazine, 1944)

Song and Dance man Robert Watson (1888 – 1965) was Hollywood’s-go-to-guy when they needed a fella to tread the boards as the Bohemian Corporal (Adolf Hitler). Throughout the course of his career he played him nine times.

Japanese Prisoners at Camp McCoy (Collier’s Magazine, 1944)

A midget Jap submarine went aground on the morning of December 8, 1941, off the island of Oahu in Hawaii, and a lieutenant just one year out of the Imperial Naval Academy walked ashore and became the first, and for many weeks our only, W.W. II prisoner. He eventually wound up at Camp McCoy…

Taro Yashima (Direction Magazine, 1944)

Many are the names of the refugee-artists who fled Hitler’s Germany for the United States – but few are the Japanese artists we remember who departed fascist Japan for America. This slim article tells the story of Taro Yashima (born Atsushi Iwamatsu, 1908 – 1994) who was brutalized by the militarists in his homeland and fled in 1939.

What was Yank Magazine? (Coronet Magazine, 1944)

Inasmuch as OldMagazineArticles.com is devoted to archiving the articles from the olde Yank, we are also keen on posting article about the magazine and its editorial policies, for few periodicals said as much about that generation and their lot in the Forties better than Yank. Attached is a photo essay from Coronet Magazine, illustrated with some 23 images, that tell the tale of how that weekly operated.

When W.W. II came to a close Yank Magazine was no more, this article was written –

American Fascists Exposed (Coronet Magazine, 1944)

This is a wonderful read. Writing under the name John Ray Carlson, the journalist Arthur Derounian (1909 – 1991) went under cover into the seedy world of American fascist organizations and discovered that they all spoke with each other. Having impressed the German Bundists, he moved quickly up the ranks of American fascism and was soon given the task of uniting every antisemitic, anti-democratic, pro-fascist clique in the country. Here is a list of some of the groups he was in contact with during his four years in the underground: America First, the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, American Nationalist Party, Chicago Patriot’s Bureau, New England Christian Front, National Workers League, Detroit Mothers, American Mothers, Yankee Freeman and Mothers of the United States of America. He finally found himself in the company of Lawrence Dennis, a creepy book-worm who was known in those low circles as the dean of American fascism.