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A used bookshop owner in Japan found the memo tucked away in a journal. The document gives the first glimpse into conversation between Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo on the eve of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Tokyo –– A newly released memo by a wartime Japanese official provides what a historian says is the first look at the thinking of Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that thrust the United States into World War II. While far from conclusive, the five-page document lends credence...

President Donald Trump spoke to the VFW Convention today in Kansas City, Missouri. During his speech invited 94-year-old veteran Allen Jones on stage to share a few words. Allen stole the show. The World War II veteran told the story of losing his brother in World War II fighting. Then Allen turned to President Trump and made a request. Allen asked the US president if he could bring his family to the Oval Office next April when he turns 95. President Trump said yes and gave Allen a hug. This was an amazing American moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LacxeCjaLdE&feature=youtu.be

BY FAR THE greatest critique of the K98k is its rate of fire. As with any other bolt-action, soldiers could only fire as quickly as they could operate the bolt. Critics of the German’s bolt-action-armed infantry blame Hitler for losing WWII because he refused to arm his infantry with faster, semiautomatic rifles. When WWII began, the German infantry was not unlike other armies – armed with a mix of bolt-action rifles and some form of machine gun. Germany's strategy for implementing these weapons differed. They emphasized the machine gun, usually an MG-34 or an MG-42 (Maschinengewehr 34/42) as their primary...

A 24-year-old American tourist caused panic at Vienna Airport when she put an unexploded World War II artillery shell in front of Austrian customs officials and asked whether the "souvenir" could be taken onboard her flight home. Officials quickly called the bomb disposal unit to remove and dispose of the 7.5 cm (3 inch) caliber dud tank artillery shell. The incident shut down the arrival and luggage hall for 15 minutes. Police said at no time were passengers under threat. The 24-year-old was reported to prosecutors for negligent endangerment and fined €4,000 ($4,694). The woman had found the World...

After graduating from high school, Rickles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served for two years during World War II on the USS Cyrene as a seaman first class. He was honorably discharged in 1946. His ship departed Norfolk, Virginia 10 November 1944 transited the Panama Canal and arrived at Manus Province, in Papua New Guinea on 13 December to escort two squadrons of motor torpedo boats to Hollandia, New Guinea. She then sailed on convoy duty to Leyte Gulf, Phillipines, arriving 1 January 1945. Cyrene then served as tender for PT Boasts, and on 17 January 1945 became flagship...

Actor. Born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Canada, when he was eight years old his father, a railroad executive, moved his family to Santa Monica, California. He performed in high school plays and then joined "West Coast", a traveling theater company. His film debut was in "Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence" (1939). After World War II started, he put his career on hold and enlisted in the United States Marines. In 1992, Ford was awarded the French Legion of Honor Medal for his service in France during the war aiding those fleeing from the Nazis. He also served in...

Someone is impersonating the oldest man in America. Family members of Richard Overton, the 112-year-old World War II veteran who lives in Austin, learned that his personal bank account had been drained on Friday.

The Supreme Court just quietly overturned a decision that upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as part of a ruling upholding President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban that primarily targets majority-Muslim countries. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led the US government to force more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent into detention camps. The decision overruled by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Korematsu v. United States, was centered around a man named Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American who refused to comply with the order. On December 18, 1944, the Supreme...

James Arness, a World War II veteran beloved by millions for his iconic portrayal of Marshal Matt Dillon on the long-running Western TV series “Gunsmoke,” died June 3 after a long illness. At 6 foot 7 inches, Arness was, quite literally, a big star, towering over even the likes of his good friend and Hollywood mentor John Wayne. But it was that same impressive height that prevented Arness from fulfilling his dream of being a naval aviator in World War II—he was simply too tall for cockpit duty. As a soldier in the 7th Regiment of the U.S. Army’s Third...

Actor George Takei argued that "in one core, horrifying way," the family separations occurring at the United States' southern border are "worse" than the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. "At least during the internment, when I was just 5 years old, I was not taken from my parents," he wrote in an op-ed for Foreign Policy magazine that was published Tuesday. Takei, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry who was detained with his family at camps in Arkansas and California, wrote that there was a "hideous irony" in the comparison. "At least during the internment, my parents were...

Unlike Americans, Germans had no legal right to keep and bear arms and the liberal Weimar Republic sought to register, regulate and prohibit firearms. When Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party took power, they used those records to disarm and oppress the people, and that is why there was no armed resistance movement in Germany.  That is the story of Stephen Halbrook’s masterful 2013 Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State.”  Halbrook’s new book, Gun Control in Nazi-Occupied France: Tyranny and Resistance, charts the same process in occupied France. As he notes, of...

The internet is in uproar (again). Developer DICE’s decision to include a woman on the cover art for this year’s Battlefield offering has, for some reason, antagonised the most vocal parts of the gaming internet. Within minutes of DICE revealing its new game, detractors on reddit, Twitter and various online gaming forums were spouting their vitriol, furious that DICE had sacrificed authenticity in favour of ‘political correctness’. Here’s the thing, though: it hasn’t. Women have always played a vital role in the World’s wars, and to ignore that is to be willfully ignorant. From soldiers enlisted in active duty to...

Operation Overlord Normandy, Troops of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division are landing at Juno Beach on the outskirts of Bernieres-sur-Mer on D-Day. 6th June 1944. 14,000 Canadian soldiers were put ashore and 340 lost their live in the battles for the beachhead.

What most Americans these days know about D-Day comes from the movies "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) or "Band of Brothers" (2001), and that's pretty good! It's infinitely better than not knowing anything at all about this pivotal Allied invasion of World War II. However, to enhance your knowledge of this important battle whose anniversary is June 6, here are a few more interesting facts you may not have learned in school. 1. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. fought on D-Day. You remember the original Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War (1898) right?...

Timeline of the D-Day landings of 6th June 1944 hour by hour as events unfolded on the day

key Excerpt from the article - “Taylor is a luminous figure in the story of D Day, one of the forty-seven immortals of Omaha who, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and disaster. Courage and luck are his in extraordinary measure”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — William Roy Dover's memory of the World War II battle is as sharp as it was 75 years ago, even though it's been long forgotten by most everyone else. His first sergeant rousted him from his pup tent around 2 a.m. when word came the Japanese were attacking and had maybe even gotten behind the American front line, on a desolate, unforgiving slab of an occupied island in the North Pacific. "He was shouting, 'Get up! Get out!'" Dover said. Dover and most of the American soldiers rushed to an embankment on what became known as...

Bone with bullet hole found by Russians in 1946 came from an unknown woman, not the German leader Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin. Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of Hitler's death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment...

French researchers claim to have put an end to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler, after a study of his teeth proved he definitely died after taking cyanide and shooting himself in the head in Berlin in 1945. The researchers reached their conclusion after they were given rare access to fragments of Hitler’s teeth which have been held in Moscow since the end of World War II. "The teeth are authentic, there is no possible doubt. Our study proves that Hitler died in 1945," said professor Philippe Charlier. "We can stop all the conspiracy theories about Hitler. He...

A legendary Second World War bomber is set to go on display for the first time after being restored at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio. The B-17 'Flying Fortress' known as Memphis Belle was introduced as the anchor of an extensive exhibit in the Dayton-area museum's war gallery. The Memphis Belle has spent the last dozen years or so undergoing a piece-by-piece rehabilitation, from the clear plastic nose cone down to the twin .50-caliber machine guns mounted in the tail. The plane, known for its risque nose paintings featuring a pin-up girl, was celebrated...