Articles from 1945
A two page magazine article about the U.S. Navy destroyer Newcombe (DD-586), a hard-charging ship that suffered heavy damage from repeated Kamikaze attacks off of Okinawa on April 6, 1945 (the Ryukyu Islands):
Then the plane shot past them, ripped through the gun mount and shattered itself against the after-stack. There was a blinding flash. The Newcombe shuddered and rolled heavily to starboard.
Wherever they have fought in this war, the Japs have shown an amazing aptitude for the queer and fantastic. They have staged solemn funeral processions in the midst of hot battle. They have blown themselves to bits with hand grenades, have stabbed themselves with daggers, sabers, bayonets and even with scythes. They plunged forward in stupidly blind Banzai charges. They have danced wildly atop ridges while exposed to American fire. And they have directed artillery action while lounging in hammocks.
At long last the impact of of total war had bruised the American consciousness. Despite the initial success of General MacArthur’s victory on Luzon and the Russians on the Eastern front, the first three weeks of 1945 had brought the nation face to face with the realities ahead as at no time since Pearl Harbor. No single factor could this metamorphosis be attributed, but it was plain that the stark lists of causalities and the growing hardships at home had contributed to it.
The last eight months of the home front saw the suspension of all horse racing (in the interest of preserving tires and gas) and more foods, both delicious and otherwise, became a good deal harder to locate.
During the closing months of the war, the draft pool was increased, as well – click here to read about it.
Gathered from all the various battlefronts around the globe, the attached article serves as a archive of spontaneous reactions uttered by a smattering of stunned GIs when they heard that President Roosevelt had died:
Pvt. Howard McWaters of Nevada City, California, just released from the hospital and waiting to go back to the Americal Division, shook his head slowly. ‘Roosevelt made a lot of mistakes,’ he said. ‘But I think he did the best he could, and when he made mistakes he usually admitted it. Nobody could compare with him as President.’
Click here to read about President Harry Truman…
From inside Germany last week emerged the picture of a state that by all normal standards was in the last stages of dissolution… All signs indicated a physical breakdown perhaps as great as that of France in 1940… Refugees, mostly women and children with blankets around their bodies and shawls on their heads to protect them from the sub-zero weather, queue up for hours outside bakeries to get a loaf of bread. Draftees ride tanks in never-ending columns.
With the fall of imperial Japan, YANK correspondent Robert MacMillan was
one of the very first journalists to interview the Japanese Kamikaze pilot Norio Okamoto, which allowed his readers to gain some understanding as
to how the Kamikaze Corps operated:
Okomoto’s story took all the wind -the Divine Wind – out of the Kamikaze sails. Even the interpreter, a Japanese civilian, was surprised. He had worked for radio Tokyo and while he knew a lot of the propaganda stories were ridiculous, he had believed the Kamikaze legend.
Its been said that World War Two was the first high-tech war, and a passing look at many of the military tools used between 1939 and 1945 will bare that out to be true. It was not only th the first war in which jet engines and atomic bombs were used, but also the first war to deploy walkie-talkie radios, rockets, and radar. This article concerns what the U.S. Department of War classified as a weapons system just as revolutionary as the atomic bomb: the VT fuse artillery shell (a.k.a. the time proximity fuse). It was used with great success in various theaters: anti-Kamikaze in the Pacific, anti-personnel in the Ardennes and anti V-1 in defense of Britain.
This is a short article that goes into greater detail outlining the successes listed above and explains how the system worked; it also is accompanied by a diagram of the shell.
Click here to learn about the timing fuses designed for W.W. I shrapnel shells.
To the American G.I.s serving along the Italian Front, the presence of rockets was like a page out of a Buck Rogers comic book. They had grown accustomed to seeing them mounted on the wings of quickly speeding American fighter aircraft, but to see and hear them up close and personal when fixed to the turret of a Sherman tank (pictured) seemed altogether too bizarre. This article, Rockets in Italy, will allow you to learn about the use and deployment of the U.S. Army’s ground rocket-gun and how it amazed all the men who ever came near enough to see one.
Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.
War correspondents see and hear about many courageous acts that serve as a testimony to the level of personal commitment held high by many (but not all) of the American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who served in the Second World War, and when I read the opening paragraphs about this hero, I knew it was going to be unique:
His name is Staff Sergeant Henry E. Erwin of Bessemer, Alabama. He was the radio operator on a B-29, and what he did, we think, was the bravest thing we ever heard of.
General Marshall listed a number of clear advantages that the American G.I. had over his German and Japanese counterpart: the M-1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, the jeep and the two-and-a-half ton truck (Deuce and a half):
It is interesting to trace the planning and decisions that gave us the Garand rifle and the tremendous small arms fire-power that went with it, noting especially that the War Department was strenuously opposed.
Here is a series of articles from YANK magazine that reported on the funeral of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One of these four correspondents was assigned to write about the general sense of loss that New Yorkers felt upon learning of the death of their president:
Not in my lifetime or in yours, will we again see see such a man.
CLICK HERE… to read the obituary of President Kennedy.
Bernard Baruch (1870 – 1965) was a major player in President Franklin Roosevelt’s Brain Trust; during World War Two he served that president as a respected adviser concerning economic matters. Not long after this interview, during the Truman Administration, he was appointed to serve as the first U.S. Representative on the U.N Atomic Energy Commission.
Click here to read a 1945 article about the funeral of FDR.
In South China, 6,000 French troops stood ready to reenter French Indo-China. A portion of the French fleet and a French air force unit prepared to back them up.
We are definitely taking over.
In 1954 the French gave up on Vietnam and the U.S. accepted the challenge – click here to read about it…
Hanoi is now the fountainhead of the largest and most successful anti-French insurgent movement ever mounted in Indo-China. Here Vietminh (first and last words of Viet Nam Doclap Dong Minh, meaning the league for the independence of Viet Nam) has set up the provisional government of the Viet Nam Republic. Viet Nam is the ancient name for the coastal provinces of Indo-China. Vietminh has been actively in existence since 1939. The President of Viet Nam and leader of the whole insurgent movement is a slight, graying little man of 55, named Ho Chi Minh who commanded guerrillas in collaboration with American officers in Northern Tonkin… For 43 years he has devoted himself to anti-French activity. Constantly reported captured or dead, he never actually fell into French hands.
…There were crowds in Piccadilly Circus and Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Quite a few people got rid of their waste paper by throwing it out the windows, a sign that the need for saving such things for the war effort was just about over.
Click here to rrad about VE-Day in London.
Hundreds of GIs were gathered at the Rainbow Corner Red Cross Club in Piccadilly when bundles of Stars and Stripes extras were tossed out free. The paper bore a huge banner headline, ‘Germany Quits!’ and contained the official Ministry of Information announcement which all England had just heard on the air.
News of the Reich’s final and complete surrender found Piccadilly, Marble Arch and other popular intersections jammed with people. At first incredulous, the cautious British worked up to a pitch of demonstrative joy…
Click here to read about VJ-Day in London.
Walking into Hiroshima in broad daylight, wearing an American uniform and knowing that you were one of the first Americans the people in that utterly ruined city had laid eyes on since the bombing, was not a comfortable feeling.
After the war it was discovered that one quarter of the Hiroshima dead were Koreans who were there as slave laborers.
The October 3, 1946 issue of the Atlanta Constitution ran a front page headline declaring that Imperial Japan had successfully tested their own Atom Bomb during the summer of ’45. Click here to read more on this topic.
Click here to read General Marshal’s opinions regarding the Atomic Bomb.
