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On July 21, 1944 American forces landed on the coral strewn beaches of Guam against fierce Japanese resistance. It was a long awaited and much prayed for day for the suffering Chomorran peoples, who had been brutally repressed by the Japanese occupation forces. It was also poignant due to Guam being the first US territory lost to the Japanese during the dark days of December 1941 to be taken back. The Japanese were known for brutal treatment of conquered peoples, but there was special brutality for the Chamorrans who were American citizens. As many as a dozen Guamanians were beheaded...

Parliament pays tribute to victims of 1943 massacre 11.07.2008 The Polish Parliament has marked with a minute of silence the 65th anniversary of the massacre of ethnic Poles in Volhynia during World War II. An estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Poles, including women, children and elderly people, were murdered in an act of ethnic cleansing conducted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The attacks started in November 1942, culminating in a massacre of Poles in three counties on 11 July 1943.

The daughter of a Second World War RAF pilot who reprimanded a teenager who she accused of vandalising a war memorial has been convicted of assault (edit)But Mrs Lake was arrested after giving a boy, whom she believed to be the ringleader, a talking-to and a 'cuff round the ear'.She tackled him after she saw at least one youth riding a BMX bike through freshly-laid flower beds.Magistrates heard that when she grabbed his shirt collar, he said: 'That's assault'. (edit) 'I lost my temper in frustration after two years of trying to get something done and immediately the police...

RPG game about Warsaw Risisng 05.07.2008 It was published by Bully Pulpit Games, in the US and designed by Jason Morningstar. It proved a huge success in America, though has not found its way to Poland yet. ‘Grey Ranks is a game for three to five players’, write the publishers, ‘that puts you in the shoes of child soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising. The game is designed to be played over three sessions and includes a scene structure, with each scene corresponding to a specific date in 1944. As the game progresses, success becomes increasingly difficult and the player is...

General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the leader of Poland's wartime government in exile, died 65 years ago this month when his plane plunged into the sea off Gibraltar. A British inquiry in 1943 found that the crash was caused by the plane's controls jamming. But rumours persist of a plot to kill Gen Sikorski, whose defence of the Polish national cause threatened to derail Britain's relationship with the Soviet Union. Now Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, and his prime minister, Donald Tusk, have demanded that Gen Sikorski's body be exhumed from its tomb in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the traditional burial place of...

The Indian general who commanded the military campaign that led to the creation of Bangladesh has died at the age of 94. Sam Manekshaw, whose career spanned four decades, was one of India's best known and well-respected soldiers. Under the British, he was decorated for gallantry in World War II for his part fighting the Japanese army in Burma. After India gained independence, he became chief of the army in 1969 and in 1973 was made field marshal. 'The brave' Under his command, India went to war with Pakistan in 1971, supporting Bengali nationalists in what was then East Pakistan....

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=KBwwFsKTJGs

Today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day. Two items for you to commemorate. 1) First, read Ronald Reagan’s unforgettable Pointe du Hoc speech on the 40th anniversary. 2) Watch this brilliant video produced last year by The Combat Report on how today’s media would have covered the 1944 Normandy invasion.

To have participated in Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II, now that’s something. To have waded ashore through a deathly brew of bullets, blood and floating bodies, well, that’s a feat of a totally different stripe. But to have been a Navy frogman, the first to touch beach the morning of June 6, 1944, that’s the stuff legends are made of. A forerunner to the Navy special operations force known as the SEALs, Naval Combat Demolition Units cleared the way for the initial invasion force on that historic day. "There was stuff blowing up all...

"I was moved by his story, impressed by his bravery," Bambagiotti said on Memorial Day, standing on the lush green lawn among the sea of white headstones that mark the final resting places for 4,202 U.S. soldiers and airmen who perished in Italy fighting in World War II. The emergence of the Internet prompted Bambagiotti to seek out Lang’s surviving kin. Hundreds of searches, and about three years, netted the professor a clue to Lang’s surviving sister, who had supplied information for a research project by high school students in Avon, S.D. Bambagiotti drafted a typewritten letter, in not-so-perfect English,...

We haven't had an installment of our ongoing series presenting Churchill's speeches in a long time. We now return the series with Part 9: Churchill's eulogy for Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons. It is so exemplar of Churchill's ability to use the English language. Never does he sacrifice one inch of his beliefs regarding the differences between these two British leaders, and yet he praises Chamberlain so highly and kindly nonetheless. So honorable, and truly amazing.There are lessons here. Moral lessons, about how we should retain our humanity in spite of political differences. Political lessons, as shown in...

A Cannon Falls man who travels the world looking for the remains of U.S. troops still missing in action has found another 21 dog tags. Eighty-year-old Bryan Moon spent two weeks earlier this month in the jungles of Papua-New Guinea. It was his sixth trip the South Pacific Island. While there, he says bought 21 dog tags from American servicemen from local villagers. He doesn't know if they were left behind or are from missing troops. The tags have been turned over to the U.S. Army Recovery Unit in Hawaii for further investigation. Moon says he also found two "killing...

About 16,000 people were temporarily evacuated and services on a railway line were partially suspended while an unexploded bomb was being disposed of in western Tokyo on the weekend, local government officials said. The Chofu Municipal Government on Sunday morning sealed off an area within a radius of 500 meters from where the bomb was found, and a Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) unit began to dispose of the dud at 11 a.m. The bomb was removed by noon. As the team disposed of the bomb, about 16,000 people, including 150 inpatients at a nearby hospital, were temporarily evacuated. Services on...

The cruiser HMS Exeter, best known for its valiant role in the Battle of the River Plate when it hunted down the pride of the German navy, the Admiral Graf Spee, was located by divers searching the Java Sea. The British vessel was sunk on March 1, 1942, when, with two escorts, the destroyer HMS Encounter and the American destroyer Pope, it was intercepted by nine Japanese warships. All three Allied ships were lost in the action. The wreck of Encounter, which had passed up a chance to escape by turning back in a brave but futile attempt to protect...

Pictured: Lancaster bomber in dramatic flypast to mark 65th anniversary of Dambusters raidLast updated at 18:49pm on 16th May 2008  It is one of the most stirring images of the Second World War - a Lancaster bomber coming in terrifyingly low over a huge dam.  Today, the last surviving pilot of the epic Dambusters operation was present to witness a spectacular re-enactment as one of the bombers flew again above the Derwent Valley dam in Derbyshire to mark the 65th anniversary of the raid. Scroll down for more...Bombs away: The world's only flying Lancaster makes a low pass over...

Russia's display of heavy weapons in this year's Victory Day parade in Moscow is "not sabre-rattling", President Vladimir Putin insists. Tanks and intercontinental missiles are to be paraded for the first time since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The outgoing Russian leader said that Friday's parade to mark the end of World War II would demonstrate Russia's growing defence capabilities. "We do not threaten anyone and do not intend to do so," he said. A dress rehearsal for the parade was conducted on Monday. Mr Putin is stepping down as president on 7 May to be replaced...

I'd like to say so myself. It's time we realize we're actually in a war together and that all of us who do NOT participate at the front line have a special kind of obligation towards the brave men and women who ARE. I'm 38 years old and one thing I've learned from being alive this long is that a group of people who stand united, devoted to something of eternal value are, virtually, indestructable as such. Apart from being somewhat "old", I'm of Swedish stock (- like food a lot, but I'm not a Swedish chef in fact:D -)...

[Some color pics from Der Spiegel Online. Click the URL below] http://www.spiegel.de/flash/0,5532,10269,00.html

The haunting discovery of the watery graves of long lost Australian, German and Japanese sailors has uncovered vital clues to two World War II mysteries. The 66-year-old secrets of two of Australia's strangest wartime naval encounters have been at least partially revealed through the location of three sunken ships over the past 18 months. In November 2006, a Japanese midget submarine involved in a daring raid on Sydney harbour in the heart of the nation's biggest city was found off the beach of the Pacific east coast. The sub is believed to be the tomb of its two-man crew, who...

Franco 'collaborated with Nazis' to prove Canary Islands were home to Aryan race By Fiona Govan in Madrid Last Updated: 7:12pm BST 11/04/2008 Spanish archaeologists collaborated with the Nazis in their attempts to prove the theory of Aryan supremacy and justify their claims of racial superiority over the Jews, according to a new book. Spain wanted to promote the idea that the Aryan race could be traced to the Canary Islands, amid claims they were all that remained of the lost continent of Atlantis. Archaeologists appointed by Franco were asked to look into claims the Canary Islands were the remains...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States will search for remains of several World War Two aircraft and airmen lost over the forested mountains of India's northeast, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday. The U.S. military says it lost some 430 Americans in 90 planes in India while they were on missions to resupply China's besieged army in the city of Kunming, desperately trying to hold out against the invading Japanese during World War Two. The wreckage of six U.S. planes have been found in the jungles of India's Arunachal Pradesh state, giving the U.S. Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in...

Regional World War plane wreckages found in ArunachalItanagar (PTI): Arunachal Pradesh is gradually becoming the missing link of hundreds of war heroes who disappeared while flying fighter planes during the Second World War in the eastern front. And no else but the state Governor Gen (Retd) J J Singh, former chief of Army staff, took notes on Monday evening from Oken Tayeng who had already spotted wreckages of aircraft of the Allied Forces in eight locations in Lohit, Dibang valley, Upper Siang and Papum Pare districts. It all started when Tayeng, a local tour operator, joined an American investigator...

The Rival Boy Band: The Backseat Boys Larger Than Life What an honor to showcase a true gentleman & patriot ...FReeper Wheelbarrow, AKA, Bill Barrows is a WW2 vet & recipient of the Bronze Star. He is active politically & has been to FReeps in Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Bath, Richfield, greater DC. BTW Bill became "famous" here at FR by posting a thread of Viking Kitty notoriety.(BTW his first/only thread.. he thought he was responding on a thread)Heoo Dolly Bill was part of the September Honor Flight to Washington DC THREAD HERE Here is one pix from that thread of...

Even a book as bad as "Human Smoke" (Simon and Schuster, 576 pages, $30), Nicholson Baker's perverse tract about the origins of World War II, helps to confirm the continuing centrality of that war in our moral lives. Myths call forth debunkers, and the myth of "the good war" — that complacent phrase that camouflages the most deadly conflict in human history — has provoked Mr. Baker to remind us of some of the ways in which World War II was not good. There is nothing to object to in this: On the contrary, no one is more alert than...

Saddam and the Third Reich Few people realize that the Baath party was actually formed upon the principles and organizational structure of the Nazi party. Iraq, because of its oil and hatred of Jews, was an important battleground between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II. Nazi propaganda was broadcast throughout Baghdad, and Iraqis often went on rampages against Jews throughout the war. One of the most ardent Nazi supporters during WWII was named Khairallah Talfah. Talfah was Saddam's uncle. After the war, many of the key Iraqi Nazi supporters, all of whom evaded prosecution, wound up involved...

How the Eton-educated wartime Aga Khan offered '30,000 armed Arabs' to help Hitler - but still evaded treason trialLast updated at 18:34pm on 8th March 2008 Secret plan to help Hitler: Aga Khan III, pictured at the races   Britain dropped a secret plan to charge the Aga Khan's grandfather with treason despite evidence that he offered to help Hitler in the war, documents just released reveal.  Ministers shelved the proposed prosecution of Sultan Muhammad Shah – who was Aga Khan III at the time – for fear it would inflame Muslims.  The spiritual leader of the world's Zizari Ismaili...

BIALLA, Papua New Guinea (AP) - The Japanese fighter caught the American pilot from behind, riddling his plane with machine-gun rounds. The left engine burst into flames. It was time to bail out. He yanked on the release lever but the cockpit canopy only half- opened. He unbuckled his seat belt, rose to shake the canopy loose and was instantly sucked out. Swinging beneath his opened parachute, he plunged toward a Pacific island jungle of thick, towering eucalyptus trees, of crocodile rivers and headhunters, into enemy territory, and into an unimagined future as a hero, "Suara Auru," Chief Warrior, to...

Bhanubhakta Gurung, VC Last Updated: 2:37am GMT 04/03/2008 Havildar Bhanubhakta Gurung, who has died aged 86, was awarded a VC when serving as a rifleman in the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in Burma on March 5 1945. At that time the Fourteenth Army was making a drive toward Mandalay in central Burma, and the task of the 25th Division (of which the 2nd Gurkhas were part) was to engage in diversionary action along the coastal sector of Arakan. The 3rd Battalion landed at Ru-Ywa and advanced to the high ground east of Tamandu. Capturing the area would...

'Wolf woman' invents Holocaust survival tale By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  Last Updated: 4:14pm GMT 29/02/2008     A woman's best-selling account of how she lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived by living with wolves in the forests of Europe has been exposed as a fabrication.   Mrs Defonseca's book became a runaway bestseller   "Surviving with Wolves", first published 11 years ago, has been translated into 18 languages and was recently turned into a film. But in a statement issued by her lawyers, Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, confessed that while her parents, members...

Like any soldier, he loved to relax with a cigarette and a bottle of beer when out of the firing line. But in the heat of battle, he became an inspiring figure - bravely passing ammunition along to supply the guns. All the men in the Second Polish Transport Company agreed that the recruit they called Voytek was the perfect comrade. As for Voytek, he was just happy to be part of the unit... ever ready to lend a helping paw. The 250lb brown bear, standing more than 6ft tall, was possibly the most remarkable combatant of the Second World...

Adolf Hitler's 'lost fleet' found in Black Sea By Jasper Copping  Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 03/02/2008     The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed "Hitler's lost fleet", has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea. The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey.   On the road: One of the U-boats being taken to Ingolstadt  ...

Introduction World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose. Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Officials said they have unearthed more than 400 pounds of World War II-era bombs and munitions from the grounds around Odyssey Middle School in Boynton Beach over the holiday break. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to detonate them Saturday, and warned residents they would be hearing several large blasts. Among the items found since Dec. 27 were about 50 bombs, several rockets, a rocket booster and a cannon. sponsor Part of the school grounds was used by the Army in the 1940s to train bombardiers for combat. The Army Corps announced its clean-up of the...

Crumpled map solves mystery of German gun behind D-Day massacreLast updated at 17:03pm on 4th January 2008A baffling mystery of the D-Day landings was solved by an amateur historian - after he found a crumpled map at a fair in Stockport.  Experts have long disputed the location of the main Nazi gun battery which caused carnage on Omaha Beach, in terrible scenes which were recreated for the Hollywood film Saving Private Ryan.  The Germans had built a decoy gun emplacement overlooking the area while the location of the real guns which blasted the beach, where 2,000 men lost their...

PALMDALE - Getting into uniform to do your bit and help beat the Nazis gathered in fearsome strength just across the English Channel often meant being ready to lie about your age. And that's what Stella Slydell was willing to do to help win a war that had to be fought. "We all lied about our age during that time," Slydell said. "I was not quite 17 when I entered the Air Force (in) late '42 or early '43," the Palmdale resident remarked of her days serving in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force for the United Kingdom during World War...

TOKYO - Warren Nobuaki Iwatake's family has seen more than its share of calamity. When he was still a child his father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell on Hiroshima.

TOKYO - Warren Nobuaki Iwatake's family has seen more than its share of calamity. When he was still a child his father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. But through it all one thing has remained constant. The tree. His parents bought it in 1937, and his family has brought it out every Christmas since, without fail, even when that meant risking arrest. "This tree was a shining light, because it was...

Two days ago - On December 18th, 2007 and amazing memorial has been unveiled in my hometown Lowicz (Poland). The idea of this memorial is to commemorate the Jewish and Polish citizens of Lowicz and also the Soviet POWs - all the victims of two forced labour camps located near Lowicz during WW2. The memorial has been built of 3 blocks of basalt wrapped togehter with barbed wire. The speaker of the Polish Parliament Bronislaw Komorowski, the ambassador of Israel David Peleg and the ambassador of Russia Vladimir Grinin took part in the ceremony. The Israeli ambassador said, that the...

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The families of eight U.S. military men who died in a 1944 plane crash in the Himalayas want the Pentagon to step up efforts to recover their remains from the crash site discovered last year by a mountaineer. Exactly what happened to the B-24 bomber dubbed "Hot as Hell," was a mystery for more than 60 years. It disappeared while on a flight from Kunming, China, to Chabua, India, to pick up weapons and other supplies and return to base in China. Clayton Kuhles of Prescott, Ariz., a mountaineer who has made it his mission to...

Is Hitler's child living in the UK?HITLER'S child was born in the Britain and could be living here today, according to astonishing claims made today. British socialite Unity Mitford was desperately in love with the Nazi dictator and had his child after a failed suicide attempt when the Second World War broke out in 1939, the New Statesman reports. Miss Mitford, sister of the Duchess of Devonshire, suffered brain damage after the suicide bid in Munich and returned to the UK. Now Oxfordshire man Martin Bright has claimed that Miss Mitford had the Fuhrer’s baby at her aunt’s home in...

As a 17-year-old military policeman in Occupied Japan, Ron Wulkan worked with Japanese police who had witnessed, if not participated in many Imperial war crimes. A few G.I.’s called him "a gook lover" because of his admiration for the people and their culture. He could not equate the decent Japanese he knew with the brutal war crimes of Imperial Japan. Only after a career as a newspaperman, Army Reserve staff officer, corporate executive, ‘hired gun’ for the Robert Kennedy presidential primaries, and owner of a marketing firm did he resolve the dilemma. His novel, The Gook Lover, is the result....

Park Place, Boardwalk, and a hidden map with a secret escape route? For Allied POWs during World War II, Monopoly® games came equipped with real-life "get out of jail free" cards. During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. The original notion was simple enough: Find a way to sneak useful items into prison camps in an unassuming form. But the idea to use Monopoly came from a series of happy coincidences, all of which started with maps. Smooth as silk...

When the blasts started, Remo Cuniberti thought he was done for, but not that the United States was under attack. Cuniberti was in the forward magazine of the battleship USS West Virginia, which was moored in Pearl Harbor. "I was with a couple friends of mine, way up in the forward magazine near the bottom of the boat, and we were checking propellant charges," said Cuniberti, who now lives in west Palmdale. In those days, some of the ship's munitions didn't have powder built in and needed powder cartridges - large pellets - for their propellant. Checking the cartridges was...

  A Byrd's eye look at the historic 'Israeli - Arab conflict' towards Annapolis 2007    Around 2,000 years ago, the Romans that have conquered Israel, the Jewish people, the Jewish land, (after killing Jesus) destroy Jews' second temple, massacre hundreds of thousands after a rebellion against Rome's oppression and prohibition on practicing Judaism and mass torture [an armed rebellion which was disapproved by the rabbis & any religious leaders], and expell majority of Jews out of the land [as was expected throught the Jewish prophets, because God expects from his people - the Jews much more than from other...

Israeli Holocaust survivors asked Germany's finance minister Thursday to improve a reparations arrangement set up a half-century ago, but he said no additional money would be paid...

War through the eyes of a PoW in Japan  Last Updated: 2:43am GMT 23/11/2007     Sketches by a Second World War Serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese prisoner of war camp, are to be exhibited for the first time. Fred Goodwin began the war servicing aircraft. After the Battle of Britain he was sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) with 605 Squadron.     They were to try to halt the Japanese advance, but were under-prepared. Mr Goodwin was captured. As a prisoner he witnessed unspeakable horrors. However, throughout the war he made...

ISRAEL - PEACE - SURVIVAL, NOT GENOCIDE! In the beginning...Israel has always faced genocide, from the moment the Islamo Arab fascist leader, the infamous [later on exposed as Hitler's buddy] Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini has called, incited, led to "kill the Jews" in the 1920s. The Mufti, that prior to inciting to "kill the Yahud [Jews]" & leading massacres such as Hebron 1929 and the Farhud in 1941, has participated in the massacres and genocide of Christians, the Armenian Genocide that is [http://Armenian-Genocide.org], where 1.5 Million Christians were brutally murdered. An ally of the Nazi "Fuhrer": Adolph Hitler,...

NEW YORK - Sixty-five years after an American P-38 fighter plane ran out of gas and crash-landed on a beach in Wales, the long-forgotten World War II relic has emerged from the surf and sand where it lay buried. Beach strollers, sunbathers and swimmers often frolicked within a few yards of the aircraft, unaware of its existence until last summer, when unusual weather caused the sand to shift and erode. The revelation of the Lockheed "Lightning" fighter, with its distinctive twin-boom design, has stirred interest in British aviation circles and among officials of the country's aircraft museums, ready to reclaim...

Exhibit honors Polish squadron By SCOTT WHIPPLE,, Herald Press staff 11/11/2007 WINDSOR LOCKS - The Kosciuszko Squadron flies again. An exhibit of the gallant squadron of Polish fliers at the New England Air Museum officially opens to the public at 10 a.m. The exhibit will become a permanent part of the museum's collection and can be viewed on a daily basis. The aviation unit, named for Polish-American Revolutionary War hero, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, helped defend the newly re-constituted Polish nation from early Soviet attacks in World War II. "The Kosciuszko Squadron has become symbolic of Polish-American cooperation," said Jack Miller, president...

Statue salutes Polish man who warned FDR of Nazi camps BY CLARE TRAPASSO DAILY NEWS WRITER Monday, November 12th 2007, 4:00 AM A statue of the Polish hero who warned President Roosevelt in vain of the existence of Nazi concentration camps was unveiled Sunday in front of the Polish Consulate in Manhattan. Former Mayor Ed Koch and Polish dignitaries honored the life of Jan Karski before a crowd of about 150 who gathered on Poland's Independence Day. Karski, a Catholic member of the Polish Underground, repeatedly risked his life and was imprisoned and tortured as he tried to inform the...