World War Two – Page 23 – Old Magazine Articles

The Pearl Harbor Story
(Yank Magazine, 1942)

When this article went to press the Pear Harbor attack was already over a year old – and like the articles that came out in ’41, these two pages capture much of the outrage that was the general feeling among so many of the American people. The article serves to give an account as to how the ships that were damaged that morning have largely recovered and were once again at sea (excluding the Arizona).

Five months after the Pearl Harbor attack the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea, click here to read about it…

Japan Could Not Afford to Go to War
(St. Louis Star-Times, 1941)

The day following Japan’s debut performance at Pearl Harbor found American economists assessing the economic strength of that country in an effort to understand how long their military would be able to exert power:

Government economists doubted today that Japan’s economy could withstand a long war with the United States.

Four years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a Japanese newspaper editorial expressed deep regret for Japan’s aggressiveness in the Second World War, click here to read about it…

How Americans Were Seen by The Japanese
(American Magazine, 1942)

In this article, photographer Frederick L. Hamilton recalled his two years in Japan prior to the Pearl Harbor attack; he let’s lose with all he learned concerning how the Japanese perceived the Americans:

They think we are soft, wasteful, irreverent and stupid…Most serious of all to the Japanese is their belief that we have no spiritual quality, no sense of honor.

Novelty ”Victory Fashion” Makes An Appearance
(Newsweek Magazine, 1941)

It’s hard to believe – but Victory Fashion hit the American home front before it was even called the home front. However by mid-1941 Americans were pretty outraged by fascist aggression: the U-boats, London bombed, Nanking ravaged, France invaded – the list goes on. When this article went to press, we were not in the war but we were firmly on the Allied side. The word victory made its way into fashion circles and the nation’s couturiers began turning out novelty accessories and garments. Even the hairdressers contributed.

Pierre Laval: French Premier and Traitor
(Collier’s Magazine, 1943)

French collaborator Pierre Laval (1883 – 1945) is remembered as the Nazi tool who presided over France between 1942 and 1944, allowing for the deportation of Jews and French laborers into Germany. On D-Day, Laval stood before the radio microphones cautioning his countrymen not to join in the fight against the German occupiers. His many sins would be known a year later during the liberation of Paris, but this writer was very accurate in cataloging all his many failings, both as a citizen of France and as a Human Being.

Laval was captured in Spain; you can read about that here…

CLICK HERE to read about Laval’s Norwegian counterpart: Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling…

The Capture of Laval
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

The game was up. At the Prat de Llobregat airfield outside Barcelona the traitor sat heavily on a camp stool, waiting for the reprieve. It did not come. The Franco government had found Pierre Laval too hot to handle… Laval shrugged: ‘I suppose if Petain can face the music, I can’. But later he shouted: ‘It is unfair… delivering me to my country.’

More about Laval can be read here

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.

German Boy Soldiers in Captivity
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A fascinating article reporting on the Baby Cage, the Allied prisoner of war camp that held some 7,000 boy soldiers of the German army, ages 12 through 17.

In light of the fact that so manyGerman youths had been indoctrinated from their earliest days in Nazi dogma and then dumbfounded to a far greater degree within the Hitler Jugend system, the Allied leadership post-war government believed that this group needed to be instructed in the ways of tolerance before being let loose into the general population.

Click here to read about the Nazi indoctrination of German youth.

Nighttime Tank Battle
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Canadian war correspondent M.H. Halton reported from the Egyptian desert concerning one of modern war’s most dramatic spectacles – [a] battle of tanks in the dark.

The Man Who Stopped Rommel
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

– from Amazon: KEY WORDS: Lt General Sir Leslie Moreshead in North Africa 1941,British north african commander Lt General Sir

Brereton Steps Up
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Major General Lewis E. Brereton (1890 – 1967) is the new commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Japan: More power For The Military
(Newsweek Magazine, 1937)

As 1936 came to an end in Tokyo, the aftershocks of the February 26, 1936 failed military coup could still be felt throughout the halls of Japan’s Government. The uprising of the military hardliners resulted in four assassinations and a suicide before the constitutional powers regained control. This article covers a more peaceful dust-up on the Parliament floor – and when it was concluded the Generals had the upper hand.

Still the country’s most privileged class, military leaders – modern equivalent of the Samurai, medieval knights – can exert pressure on the government by reason of a 42-year-old imperial edict: the War and Navy Ministries must be headed by army and navy officers; if either resigns, the Cabinet falls.

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.

The Redhead, The Blonde and the Brunette
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

This brief column tells the story of three women war correspondents who marched at the point of the spear alongside the American infantry in order to report on the collapse of Hitler’s Germany. The correspondents in question were:

• Lee Carson in Remagen

• Iris Carpenter in Remagen

• Ann Stringer in the city of Bonn

Women In The War Effort
(PM Tabloid, 1942)

Eight months into America’s entry into the war came this article from PM reporting the War Manpower Commission and their data as to how many American women up to that point had stepped up to contribute their labor to the war effort (over 1,500,000):

Women have been found to excel men in jobs requiring repetitive skill, finger dexterity and accuracy. They’re the equals of men in a number of other jobs. A U.S. Employment Service has indicated women can do 80 percent of the jobs now done by men.

Sex During the Second World War
(Coronet Magazine, 1955)

At the beginning of World War II, our army was a mixture of callow boys and and domesticated men. The older men were homesick for wives and children…There were plenty of lonely wives, too, and it soon became evident that a fair number of them were committed to the belief that continence was bad for women.

Marriage vows were one of the unsung casualties of the Second World War: by 1944 many married women who hadn’t seen their drafted husbands in years began producing babies; you can read about that here…

In 1943 a woman on the home front introduced a sexual component that she believed would bring an end to the problem of industrial absenteeism – click here to read about her idea…

The Work Starts
(Newsweek Magazine, 1945)

As the American occupation forces began to pour in and spread throughout the cities and countryside of Japan, both occupied and occupier slowly get to learn of the other. The cordial attitude of the Japanese leads General MacArthur to conclude that the military presence need not be as large as he had once believed:

Curious and awed, increasingly friendly Japanese flocked to watch what they called the ‘race of giants’ at work.