greatest generation

Three of Doolittle’s Raiders, who helped boost American morale during the early days of World War II, recalled the dangers of their bold bombing attack on the Japanese mainland. (via Doolittle’s Raiders recall daring wartime mission | The Japan Times Online)

View high resolution

Iwo Jima flag raiser John Bradley with John Wayne during the filming of Wayne’s classic war film, The Sands of Iwo Jima. Bradley, along with Ira Hayes and Rene Gagnon, played himself in the movie. His son would go on to write Flags of Our Fathers. Clint Eastwood directed the movie based on the book.

Bradley, a medic and civilian mortician, struggled with PTSD his entire adult life and rarely talked about the war after the film was released. This suffering veteran, directly linked to our country’s greatest war actors, symbolizes the void between Hollywood and the sad realities of war.

View high resolution

US submarines ranked by ships sunk. Why isn’t there an infographic for this??

Check out Valor At Sea. More data and information about the US submarine fleet during WWII to keep you going for quite a long time.

View high resolution

“N.A.A. INC. B-25 Medium Bomber. Powerful, fast and hard hitting ships used by Brig. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle in the devastating raid on Tokyo - April 18th, 1942 - North American Aviation, Inc. Inglewood, California.”

An Okinawan child, orphaned by the war, shares a foxhole with two marines. April 1945

Today marks the 67th anniversary of the beginning of an 82 day battle for the island of Okinawa. 

(Source: Wikipedia)

View high resolution

A North American B-25 makes a bomb run on a Japanese destroyer escort off Formosa in April of 1945.

(Source: The Atlantic)

"They all died with the greatest possible violence. Nowhere in the Pacific War had I seen such badly mangled bodies. Many were cut squarely in half."

— Times reporter Robert Sherrod on Iwo Jima

View high resolution

The aftermath of a banzai attack…in Alaska. Yes, it happened. Read about the Aleutian Island Campaign. While most of the Allied troops in the Pacific fought in a tropical environment, these unlucky few had to fight off cold, snow, sleet, trench foot, mud, and banzai attacks springing out of the mist.