Gallery
History's First Carrier Battles
The mid-1942 clashes in the Coral Sea and at Midway were the world's first fights between aircraft carriers. Plenty of photos were taken to remember them by.
Gallery
sECRETARIES OF WAR
Thousands of women spent the early 1940s working in government offices in Washington, DC, getting vital information into the right hands to keep the war machine running.
Gallery
The Pacific Fleet Strikes Back
After surviving the Pearl Harbor raid unscathed, US aircraft carriers lead the counterattack against the Japanese. Things went well. But not everything.
Gallery
Welcome to
the Service, son
New recuits got an occasional fatherly pat on the back, but being indoctrinated into the military was hardly a family picnic at the park. There was exercise and long marches and drilling. And more exercise.
Gallery
Raid liberates
American POWs in the Philippines
US Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas free hundreds of ill and starving Allied captives from the Japanese Cabanatuan prison camp on Luzon in early 1945.
Anniversary
VE!
Rooting out pockets of Nazis one by one, American
troops and tanks rolled steadily across the Rhine and on to victory in
Europe.
On May 8, 1945, the Germans officially surrendered and the celebration began.
Gallery
Greyhound: On the Road
through WWII and Beyond
There was no escaping the world war, and America's intercity bus company changed with it like everything else did--while peering through a rose-colored windshield at the promising postwar future on the horizon.
Interview
A Talk with Frank Buckles
Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I and a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, died on February 27, 2011, at age 110. Read what he told us in 2009.
Gallery
Disney to the front
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and an army of their kindred cartoons join the war effort at home and overseas.
Article
Ernest Borgnine Recalls WWII Navy DAYS
The Screen Actors Guild just gave Ernest Borgnine its Lifetime Achievement award. Here at America in WWII, we're as interested in his navy service as in his acting career, so our editor asked him about it. Read the interview from our recent special issue Stars in WWII.
Article
Chocolate!
The War's
Secret Weapon
Our GIs went to war well supplied with weapons and clothing—and chocolate!
Remembering Pearl harbor
ship that weeps for her dead
For 69 years, drops of oil have seeped from the wreckage of the USS Arizona, black tears for the 1,177 US sailors killed by the Japanese planes that bombed the battleship to the bottom of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Photo gallery
Battle of the Bulge 2010
'''GI" Joe Razes and more than 1,000 other reenactors march into Pennsylvania's Fort Indiantown Gap to re-create the winter of 1944-1945 fight in the Ardennes forest.
Article
Japan's
Pacific blitz
Pearl Harbor wasn’t the only target left in flames when imperial Japan seized power in Asia and the South Pacific in December 1941.
Photo gallery
Heading home
at last
Across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, America’s victorious GIs pack up, tear down, and head home to restart their lives—and their country.
65 years ago
The End
It was the end. It was the beginning. It was hope. At home and around the world, Americans celebrated like never before.
Article
The faithful four
On a torpedoed troop ship in the icy North Atlantic, four army chaplains made a heroic choice to put other men's survival before their own.
65 years ago
the Bomb is born
On a test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, men of science and men of war watched the world change forever when they witnessed the first explosion of an atomic bomb. The blast begins about 8:50 in this cut of US government footage.
Footage
iconic kissing nurse dies at 91
Edith Shain, the nurse made famous for a kiss with a sailor on Victory over Japan Day, has died. In an interview with WGAL TV news, America in WWII editor Jim Kushlan talks about her and what she means to Americans today. View the clip
Photo gallery
Victory over Japan Day Mania!
Americans cut loose around the world as they learn of Japan’s surrender and start the countdown to a new life and a brighter future.
