Review of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Memoir
Not surprisingly, the British magazine Spectator printed a terribly dry and unsympathetic review of My Memoirs by Kaiser Willhelm II […]
Recent Articles
“We Gave the Red Army Its Speed”
Leo Thomas Crowley (1889 – 1972) was a senior administrator for FDR as the head of the Foreign Economic Administration, and in this
Corsets
Although this journalist couldn’t know it, she was writing one of the last corset reviews in fashion history. No doubt,
American Ski Troops
There were many different new types of personnel the U.S. military had to train and deploy if they were to
Ike’s Boys
When this article appeared in print the war in Europe had been over for three and a half months. Nonetheless,
War Criminals
(Collier’s Year Book, 1946)
“The main Japanese war trials started with the indictment on April 29 of twenty-eight political and military leaders on fifty-five counts charging crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and ‘conventional’ war crimes… The twenty-eight accused war criminals were formally arraigned before an eleven-nation tribunal presided over by Chief Justice Sir William Webb of Great Britain on May 3 and 4.
Rapid Progress Made
(Collier’s Year Book, 1946)
“Under the supervision of Allied occupation authorities, Japan made more substantial recovery during 1946 than any of the other defeated Axis powers.”
Land Reform in Occupied Japan
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1945)
“In December 1945, SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) issued a sweeping directive demanding that Japanese peasants be freed from the burden of absentee landlordism, oppressive debt, discriminatory taxation, usury and other evils that had plagued the Japanese peasants for centuries.”
1946: The Camps Close
(Collier’s Year Book, 1947)
“On June 30, 1946 the central office of the War Relocation Authority [an arm of the Department of the Interior] closed on schedule with substantial completion of its war-time task of providing ‘relocation, maintenance, and supervision’ of the 120,313 persons of Japanese ancestry who were in its custody as a result of the War Department’s evacuation in 1942 of the West Coast. Of this number, 5,981 were born in the ten relocation centers maintained by the Authority.”
Anti-Nisei Bigotry in Two States Compared
(PM Tabloid, 1945)
In the wake of the SCOTUS opinion, Korematsu v. U.S., some talk could be heard about the return of the Japanese Americans to the previous homes. This article examines the anti-Nisei attitudes in two Western states, California and Oregon. It was the conclusion that the former had become a bit more tolerant and the later a bit worse (sadly the last paragraphs, printed on brittle brown paper, withered away in our hand.)
Winston Churchill Recalled the U-Boat Problem
(Liberty Magazine, 1941)
Former Lord of the Admiralty (1911 – 1915), Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) wrote the attached article sometime after the First World war and recalled the tremendous difficulties faced by the Royal Navy when this new form of warfare came to the fore:
“There followed the fourth prime feature of the war — the grand U-boat attack on the Allied shipping and the food ships and store ships which kept Great Britain alive. Here again we were exposed to a mortal risk. Not merely defeat but subjugation and final ruin confronted by our country.”
The Sullivans
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)
In 1943, Twentieth Century Fox released a movie that told the story of one of the earlies heroes of the war, The Sullivans. These five Iowa brothers enlisted in the U.S. Navy just three weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. Assigned to the cruiser Juneau, three were killed that summer during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (1942), and the two others died the next day. The nation as a whole was very moved by this saga and cherished their memory.
“Five unknown actors play the Sullivan lads. And because their faces are fresh and new, they seem amazingly convincing and real.”
Nazis on Trial
(Collier’s Magazine, 1946)
War correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998) filed this article concerning her observations and insights gleaned at the Nuremberg Trials:
“The second charge against these twenty-one men was crimes against peace. War is the crime against peace. War is the silver bombers, with the young men in them, who never wanted to kill anyone, flying in the morning sun over Germany and not coming back. War is the sinking ship and the sailors drowning in a flaming sea on the way to Murmansk. War is the casualty lists and bombed ruins and refugees, frightened and homeless and tired to death, on all the roads.”
A Mighty Voice Talent
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)
“Eleven years ago, when Fred Allen, then a vaudeville star, was just starting in radio, somebody urged him to hire – as a screwball character – a certain young girl who weighed about a hundred pounds, stood scarcely five feet tall, and had about as much glamor as a sack of cement.”
– so begins the Liberty article about Minerva Pious (1903 – 1979), the zany comic, well-known back in the day for bringing to life some of the kookiest characters on radio.
A Nastier Enemy
(Liberty Magazine, 1943)
The Germans we fought in World War Two were very different from the ones we fought twenty-one years earlier.