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Picture of the Day


A Japanese balloon bomb drifted 6,000 miles to deliver a deadly blow to a party of Sunday school picnickers in Bly, Oregon.

In 1945, In Bly, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it.

They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II.

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On This Day In History – April 7, 1945

sinking of yamato

April 7, 1945 – The Japanese battleship Yamato, the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, is sunk on her way to Okinawa

Yamato was the lead ship of her class of battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy shortly before World War II. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing nearly 72,000 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 in) Type 94 main guns, which were the largest guns ever mounted on a warship.

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Picture of the Day

french collaborator

French female collaborator punished by having her head shaved to publicly mark her, 1944

Throughout France, from 1943 to the beginning of 1946, about 20,000 women of all ages and all professions who were accused of having collaborated with the occupying Germans had their heads shaved. Just as the identity of those who carried this task out varied so too did the form it took.

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Why Did Japan Think It Was Worthwhile To Attack The US at Pearl Harbor?

The Japanese leadership had come to the conclusion that they needed national self-sufficiency for their growing military aspirations.

They didn’t have the oil and other natural resources in their own territories to make this a reality.

They had two choices: Take it from Russia in the form of Siberian resources, or take it from Western colonies in SE Asia. The first required a lot more Army units than they had. So, they went with taking them from SE Asian colonies.

The Japanese understood that they could not win a prolonged war with America. Their solution was to destroy America’s offensive ability in the Pacific theater and remove Americas will to fight so that they would sue for peace.

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Picture of the Day

Edward Shames, Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, the last surviving Band of Brothers officer, dies at 99

In September 1942, Shames joined the Army, Volunteering for the Paratroopers. He was sent to Toccoa, Georgia for training. He started as a private for Item Company, Third Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and was promoted to Operations Sergeant in England. Prior to the paratroopers making their jump into Normandy, he built the sand tables the Airborne unit used in planning the airdrop into Normandy.

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Picture of the Day

Flag Raising On Iwo Jima, 1945

It is but a speck of an island 760 miles south of Tokyo, a volcanic pile that blocked the Allies’ march toward Japan. The Americans needed Iwo Jima as an air base, but the Japanese had dug in. U.S. troops landed on February 19, 1945, beginning a month of fighting that claimed the lives of 6,800 Americans and 21,000 Japanese.

On the fifth day of battle, the Marines captured Mount ­Suribachi. An American flag was quickly raised, but a commander called for a bigger one, in part to inspire his men and demoralize his opponents. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal lugged his bulky Speed Graphic camera to the top, and as five Marines and a Navy corpsman prepared to hoist the Stars and Stripes, Rosenthal stepped back to get a better frame—and almost missed the shot.

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What Was The Most Formidable Military The U.S. Has Ever Faced?

There are a couple of ways to answer this. I’d argue that, in order of formidability, the most determined enemies the United States has faced in battle are:

  1. Themselves (the combined military forces of the Confederacy and Union).

  2. The military forces of the Empire of Japan (the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces).

  3. The military forces of Nazi Germany (the German armed forces, or the Wehrmacht, consisted of the Heer (Army), the Kriegsmarine (Navy) and the Luftwaffe (Air Force).

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The Thoughts And Feelings Of A Nazi SS Guard As He Is About To Execute 23 People

Felix Landau was a member of the feared German SS. For much of the war he belonged to an Einsatzkommando, a mobile death squad charged with exterminating Jews, Romani gypsies, Polish intellectuals, and a number of other groups within Nazi-occupied territory. Landau operated throughout Poland and Ukraine, slaughtering his way from town to town.

His remarkable diary details his appalling crimes, often in graphic detail. This entry, from July 1941, records his actions in the city of Drohobych in western Ukraine.

The lack of emotion he feels during the killings is typical of SS officers who took part in mass executions.

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How Would Japan Have Fared In A Fight, Had The US Landed On Mainland Japan And No Nukes Had Been Dropped Or Developed?

japan ww2

Japan would have lost, horribly.

And it would have been a blood bath for the invaders. I personally question how much of Japan or Japanese culture would have survived such an invasion.

If the US had landed in Kyushu as originally planned, they would have been fighting against about 1,000,000 well fortified troops; troops that were well dug in.

The Japanese would have been heavily bombed and heavily shelled for months, and it still would have been hell for the invaders and death for the defenders. Just like the battle of Okinawa, the Japanese would have lost inflicting horrible casualties.

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