Yank Magazine – Old Magazine Articles

The First Black Marines
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The editors at Yank (an Army possession) seldom wrote about the Marines – and they loved dissing their weekly magazine, The Leatherneck. However, they did recognize an historic moment when they saw one. As remarked in another article on this site, the Navy was the most prejudiced of all the branches of service, and the Marines had previously rejected all Black recruits, but that changed in 1942, and this article served to introduce their readers to this consequential lot. The first African American Marines trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, NC from August 26, 1942 until the camp was decommissioned in 1949. The greatest number of black Marines to serve in combat during the Second World War was during the Battle of Okinawa (2,000 strong).

Sailors Who Served on Both Seas
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Assorted well-campaigned swab-jockeys lounge-about and discuss their various experiences on both oceans.

Click here to read the observations of a general who fought both the Germans and Japanese.

Julius Streicher
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

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”Buzz-Bombs Blitz”
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Launched by air or from catapults posted on the Northern coast of France, the German V-1 “Buzz-Bomb” was first deployed against the people of London on June 12, 1944. Before the V-1 campaign was over 1,280 Britons would fall on greater London. 1,241 of these rockets were successfully destroyed in flight.

Accompanied by a diagram of the contraption, this is a brief article about London life during the “Buzz-Bomb Blitz”. Quoted at length are the Americans stationed in that city as well as the hardy Britons who had endured similar carnage during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns earlier in the war.

An Eye-Full of Post-War Tokyo

An eyewitness account of the devastation delivered to Tokyo as reported by the first Americans to enter that city following the Japanese surrender some weeks earlier:

The people of Tokyo are taking the arrival of the first few Americans with impeccable Japanese calm. Sometimes they turn and look at us twice, but they have shown no emotion toward us except a mild curiosity and occasional amusement…They are still proud and a little bit superior. They know they lost the war, but they are not apologizing for it.

Click here to read about the humbled Japan.

Bill Mauldin Of The Stars & Stripes
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

No other cartoonist during the Second World War ever portrayed the American GI so knowingly and with more sympathy than the Stars & Stripes cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin (1921 – 2003), who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons in 1945.

Mauldin wrote the attached essay at the end of the war and gave the Yank Magazine readers an earful regarding his understanding of the front, the rear and all the the blessed officers in between

Click here to read a wartime interview with another popular 1940s American cartoonist: Milton Caniff.

An Army of Juan
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Some have said that America’s first introduction to Latin culture came with Ricky Ricardo; others say Carmen Miranda, Xavier Cugat, Charo or Chico and the Man. The dilettantes at OldMagazineArticles.com are not qualified to answer such deep questions, but we do know that for a bunch of unfortunate Nazis and their far-flung Japanese allies, their first brush with la vida loco Latino came in the form of Private Anibal Irizarry, Colonel Pedro del Valle and Lieutenant Manuel Vicente: three stout-hearted Puerto Ricans who distinguished themselves in combat and lived to tell about it.

In 1917 the U.S. Congress granted American citizenship rights to the citizens of Puerto Rico – but they didn’t move to New York until the Fifties. Click here to read about that…

Click here to read an article about Latinas in the WAACs.

‘Occupied England”
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

This Yank Magazine article, written just after the Channel Islands liberation, tells some of the stories of the Nazi occupation of Jersey and Guernsey Islands.

Before the war the English Channel Islands – long known as a vacation spot for the wealthy – were wonderful places to ‘get away from it all.’

Then the Germans came to the islands after Dunkirk, and for five years 100,000 subjects of his majesty the King were governed by 30,000 Nazi officers and their men.

An American Corpse at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

From time to time, it was the practice of the German military to separate American Jewish soldiers from their fellows and transfer them to concentration camps. The corpse of one of these men was found at the Nazi concentration camp in Ohrdruf, Germany.

Click here to read about the malnourishment and starvation of Allied prisoners of war…

Home Front Teen Slang
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A 1945 Yank Magazine article concerning American teen culture on the W.W. II home front in which the journalist/anthropologist paid particular attention to the teen-age slang of the day.

Some of today’s teenagers —pleasantly not many — talk the strange new language of sling swing. In this bright lexicon of the good citizens of tomorrow, a girl with sex appeal is an able Grable or a ready Hedy. A pretty girl is whistle bait. A boy whose mug and muscles appeal to the girls is a mellow man, a hunk of heart break or a glad lad.

To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…

Click here to learn how the Beatniks spoke.
Click here if you would like to read a glossary of WAC slang terms.

•Suggested Reading• Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang

Death of a Baby Flat-Top
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The baby flat-top Liscome Bay was sunk by a torpedo from an enemy submarine on the day before Thanksgiving of 1943. The Liscome Bay was on her first battle assignment, covering the occupation of Makin in the Gilbert [islands]…The torpedo struck a half an hour before dawn and it was still dark when Liscome Bay sank.

The ship went under in less than twenty-four minutes; up to that time it was the U.S. Navy’s second largest loss since the sinking of the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Only 260 men survived.

The Sinking of the Liscome Bay
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

A World War Two article from YANK MAGAZINE recalling the sinking of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier off the coast of the Gilbert Islands –

The Battle of Midway
(Yank Magazine, 1943)

Written months after the battle, this is the Yank report on the naval engagement that was the turning point in the war:

The Jap had failed to get a foothold on Australia. Strategists reasoned that he would now strike east, at an outpost of the North American continent. Alaska became the No. 1 alert; bombers were flown to Midway; carriers came north and Admiral Nimitz pushed patrols far out toward the Bonins and Wake islands… A navy patrol found the enemy first, in the early hours of June 3 [1942]… Reconnaissance showed a Jap force of about 80 ships approaching Midway.

– the contest that followed proved to be the first truly decisive battle in the Pacific war.

Click here to read more about Midway.

An Interview with U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

Yank correspondent H.N. Oliphant interviewed Admiral Chester William Nimitz (1885 – 1966) for the August 4, 1944 issue regarding the progress in the Pacific Theater of Operations. At that time, the battle of the Marianas was being waged and it was a subject of much concern as to it’s significance.

In the Central Pacific, we have in three swift leaps advanced our sea power thousands of miles to the west of Pearl Harbor. Now our western-most bastions face the Philippines and undoubtedly worry the man on the street in Tokyo concerning the immediate safety of his own skin.

Click here to read about Admiral Mischer…

Click here to read a unique story about the Battle of the Sula Straits…

Tarawa
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The editors at Yank Magazine were always aware that the publication existed primarily to keep U.S. Army morale on the upward swing, but they never wished to patronize their readers by feeding them Army approved malarkey either. They knew fully that they had to give the straight dope as often as possible or they, too, would be eating k-rations at the front. There are examples of articles that seriously downplayed the disappointing outcomes of major engagements (such as Kasserine Pass and Operation Market Garden) but, by enlarge, the sugar-coating was lighter than you might think. That is why this 1944 article concerning the Battle of Tarawa is important. Yank correspondent John Bushemi (1917 – 1944) made it quite clear the U.S. Marine losses were heavy, and for that reason alone the battle was of historical significance.

Click to read about the U.S. fabric rationing during W.W. II.

The End of the Road for Ernie Pyle
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

This article was penned by Yank correspondent Evans Wylie; it is an account of Ernie Pyle’s (1900 – 1945) surprise appearance during the Okinawa campaign and the violent death that Pyle had long anticipated for himself. His end came while he was being driven along a road in the company of Marines in a sector that was believed to have been safe.
Of all the many American war correspondents writing during World War II, Pyle was, without a doubt, the most well loved; he was adored by readers on the home front as well as the GIs in the field. Like many men, Pyle struggled in his career as a younger man; yet when the war broke out he very quickly found his voice – and his readership soon followed.

Two months after the death of Ernie Pyle, United Artists released a movie about him; Click here to read about it…

Home Front Philadelphia
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

You can boil down nearly all the changes that have taken place in Philadelphia since Pearl Harbor to one word: prosperity.

In 1940 the average factory worker in Philadelphia was making $27 a week and the city’s total factory pay roll was 393 millions. In 1943 Philadelphia’s factory workers averaged $48 a week and the total factory payroll was one and a quarter billions…The Philadelphia social life, too, has taken a terrific shot in the arm…

Read about Wartime San Francisco.

Click here to read about wartime Washington, D.C..

The Comic Book Industry: Tweleve Years Old in 1945
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

This is an article about the 1940s comic book industry and the roll it played during W.W. II.

The writer doesn’t spell it out for us, but by-and-by it dawned on us that among all the various firsts the World War Two generation had claim to, they were also the first generation to read comic books. Although this article concentrates on the wartime exploits of such forties comic book characters as Plastic Man and Blackhawk, it should be remembered that the primary American comic book heroes that we remember today were no slackers during the course of the war; Superman smashed the Siegfried Line prior to arresting Hitler as he luxuriated in his mountain retreat; Batman selflessly labored in the fields of counterintelligence while Captain America signed-up as a buck private.

Click here to read an article about the predecessor to the American comic book: the Dime Novel.

If you would like to read a W.W. II story concerning 1940s comic strips and the failed plot to assassinate General Eisenhower, click here.