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Allows readers to understand World War II, not as seen through the eyes of soldiers, but through the eyes of children who survived the bombings, the blackouts, the hunger, the fear, and the loss of loved ones caused by the war.
In May 2004, the sixtieth anniversary year of D-Day, the nation paid tribute to its World War II heroes with the dedication of a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This beautifully illustrated keepsake offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the memorial and its place in American history. Exclusive photographs show the memorial in all stages of development, accompanied by text exploring the symbolism of each part -- the Rainbow Pool, the Wall of Remembrance, the Field of Stars, the Freedom Wall, and the Pillars of the States and Territories. George H. W. Bush, former senator Bob Dole, Yogi Berra, and other veterans share their personal stories, and leading military historians contribute essays on the war efforts at home and abroad. Like the memorial it commemorates, this book pays tribute to the "greatest generation" -- the everyday Americans who rose up to defend our freedom.
Remembering the Second World War brings together an international and interdisciplinary cast of leading scholars to explore the remembrance of this conflict on a global scale. Conceptually, it is premised on the need to challenge nation-centric approaches in memory studies, drawing strength from recent transcultural, affective and multidirectional turns. Divided into four thematic parts, this book largely focuses on the post-Cold War period, which has seen a notable upsurge in commemorative activity relating to the Second World War and significant qualitative changes in its character. The first part explores the enduring utility and the limitations of the national frame in France, Germany and China. The second explores transnational transactions in remembrance, looking at memories of the British Empire at war, contested memories in East-Central Europe and the transnational campaign on behalf of Japan’s former ‘comfort women’. A third section considers local and sectional memories of the war and the fourth analyses innovative practices of memory, including re-enactment, video gaming and Holocaust tourism. Offering insightful contributions on intriguing topics and illuminating the current state of the art in this growing field, this book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of the history and memory of the Second World War.
“A vivid and compelling account by a true master of oral history.” —General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret.), Supreme Allied Commander, Europe On February 19, 1945, nearly 70,000 American soldiers invaded a tiny volcanic island in the Pacific. Over the next thirty-five days, approximately 28,000 soldiers died, including nearly 22,000 Japanese and 6,821 Americans, making Iwo Jima one of the costliest battles of World War II. In his most important work to date, best-selling author Larry Smith lets twenty-two veterans of the conflict tell the story of this epic clash in their own words. Many of these soldiers were no more than teenagers when they answered their country’s call, and yet the men relate the momentous events of this terrible conflict as if they occurred just last year, instead of more than half a century ago. Describing the initial charge across the treacherous black ash of the landing beach under heavy fire is Chuck Lindberg, the last survivor of the two teams that planted the flags on Mount Suribachi—a moment captured forever in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph for the Associated Press. General Fred Haynes recounts his heroic attempts to keep order amid tremendous casualties on the battlefield. Woody Williams and George Wahlen, two of the battle’s twenty-six Medal of Honor recipients, tell their unbelievable stories, and Samuel Tso relates his role as one of the famous Navajo code talkers. Though the flags went up just days after the invasion, the fighting wasn’t over: through nearly eight miles of tunnels, thousands of Japanese troops defended the island despite hundred-degree heat, famine rations, and the overpowering stench of sulfur. To get both sides of the story, Smith interviewed the daughter of Captain Tsunezo Wachi, one of the most prominent Japanese survivors, and presents new evidence about the disappearance of the famed Japanese commander Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who waged a brilliant defense of the island only to allegedly commit suicide rather than submit to the Americans. Smith also investigates the controversy surrounding Rosenthal’s famous photograph of the flag raising, and he interviews bomber and fighter crewmen to hear firsthand whether they believed the terrible cost of capturing the island was truly justified by its strategic use as an emergency stop for B-29 Superfortress bombers. Through the story of Navy Cross recipient John Ripley, Smith brings the history of the island up-to-date—from its return to Japan in 1968 to the dramatic discoveries made in the caves of Iwo in the 1980s and the Japanese-American Reunion of Honor now held annually on the island. With dozens of photographs and maps, Iwo Jima is a stunning history of this emblematic battle, but it is also a personal history of the generation of soldiers, many now in their final years, who waged one of the most important wars in American history.
Fighting in the Jim Crow Army is filled with first-hand accounts of everyday life in 1940s America. The soldiers of the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions speak of segregation in the military and racial attitudes in army facilities stateside and abroad. The individual battles of black soldiers reveal a compelling tale of discrimination, triumph, resistance, and camaraderie. What emerges from the multitude of voices is a complex and powerful story of individuals who served their country and subsequently made demands to be recognized as full-fledged citizens. Morehouse, whose father served in the 93rd Infantry Division, has built a rich historical account around personal interviews and correspondence with soldiers, National Archive documents, and military archive materials. Augmented with historical and recent photographs, Fighting in the Jim Crow Army combines individual recollections with official histories to form a vivid picture of life in the segregated Army. In the historiography of World War II very little has emerged from the perspective of the black foot soldier. Morehouse allows the participants to tell the tale of the watershed event of their participation in World War II as well as the ongoing black freedom struggle.
When author Gail Okawa was in high school in Honolulu, a neighbor mentioned that her maternal grandfather had been imprisoned in a World War II concentration camp on the US mainland. Questioning her parents, she learned only that “he came back a changed man.” Years later, as an adult salvaging that grandfather’s memorabilia, she found a mysterious photo of a group of Japanese men standing in front of an adobe building, compelling her eventually to embark on a project to learn what happened to him. Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile is a composite chronicling of the Hawai‘i Japanese immigrant experience in mainland exile and internment during World War II, from pre-war climate to arrest to exile to return. Told through the eyes of a granddaughter and researcher born during the war, it is also a research narrative that reveals parallels between pre-WWII conditions and current twenty-first century anti-immigrant attitudes and heightened racism. The book introduces Okawa’s grandfather, Reverend Tamasaku Watanabe, a Protestant minister, and other Issei prisoners—all legal immigrants excluded by law from citizenship—in a collective biographical narrative that depicts their suffering, challenges, and survival as highly literate men faced with captivity in the little-known prison camps run by the U.S. Justice and War Departments. Okawa interweaves documents, personal and official, and internees’ firsthand accounts, letters, and poetry to create a narrative that not only conveys their experience but, equally important, exemplifies their literacy as ironic and deliberate acts of resistance to oppressive conditions. Her research revealed that the Hawai‘i Issei/immigrants who had sons in military service were eventually distinguished from the main group; the narrative relates visits of some of those sons to their imprisoned fathers in New Mexico and elsewhere, as well as the deaths of sons killed in action in Europe and the Pacific. Documents demonstrate the high degree of literacy and advocacy among the internees, as well as the inherent injustice of the government’s policies. Okawa’s project later expanded to include New Mexico residents having memories of the Santa Fe Internment Camp—witnesses who provide rare views of the wartime reality.
The first major empirical study of the long-term effects of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II
From bailouts to belly landings, flaming cockpits to lurching carrier decks, here are the heoic tales of pilots from all backgrounds, united by a desire to fight their country's enemy to the finish. Drawn from a small corner of Tennessee, these men flew in all theatres of combat, in every front-line fighter aircraft. They soared to victory in the air--and fled from capture on the ground. This is a memorable anthhology of combat tales with great appeal both for veterans and historians.
The introduction to this book reviews the background to World War II, the course of that war, and the participation of Saskatchewan & its residents in the conflict. The main section tells the stories of 78 Saskatchewan men who gave their lives in that war and describes the geographical feature of the province named after them. The appendix contains a comprehensive list of Saskatchewan's World War II casualties.
