Departments

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Pacific Theater

  • 9/13/2020

    Making History with Music

    by Jason Burt

    PFC Richard Burt played the trumpet in a military band tasked with raising morale in the fight to retake the Philippines before a career as a music teacher. His grandson, a history teacher, wants to make him and his bandmates posthumous recording stars.

  • 8/16/2020

    The Other Western Front

    by Aimee Liu

    Historical novelist Aimee Liu uncovered the history of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the western front of the Pacific theater in World War II, in the course of plotting her new novel "Glorious Boy."

  • 8/9/2020

    Unconditional Surrender: The Domestic Politics of Victory in the Pacific

    by Marc Gallicchio

    The terms on which the United States pressed Japan for surrender were shaped by American domestic politics; New Deal Democrats and their liberal allies succeeded in convincing Harry Truman that it was necessary to dramatically rebuild Japan's society along more social-democratic lines. 

  • SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
    8/3/2020

    What Europeans Believe about Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and Why it Matters

    A European's belief that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a military necessity that ultimately saved lives correlates with less acceptance of nuclear disarmament. History is important for citizens' ability to judge issues related to the dangers of nuclear weapons. 

  • 8/2/2020

    Did the Atomic Bomb End the Pacific War? – Part I

    by Paul Ham

    Many people, including historians, believe that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan's unconditional surrender, saved a million American lives, and was the least morally repellent way to end World War II. Paul Ham contends that none of this is true. 

  • 3/6/2020

    A Price to Be Paid

    by Col. Arthur Shaw (Ret.) and Robert L. Wise

    None of us had any idea how terrible the cost would be before we finished taking Okinawa. The casual observer might have concluded that the landing was so easy, war must be a walk in the park.

  • 3/6/2020

    Kamikazes at the Battle of Okinawa

    by Joseph Wheelan

    On May 6, 1945, a twin-engine kamikaze plane’s bomb exploded beside the destroyer Luce, part of the radar picket ship screen surrounding Okinawa, and ripped her starboard side “like a sardine can.”