THE WAR . Save Favorites

Save your favorites

Your "favorites" are stored temporarily in a cookie on your computer's hard drive. If you want to assure that you can access them later, enter your e-mail address below and we will send you an e-mail with your favorites. You can use this e-mail to access the photos, videos, and historical artifacts you have collected.

Your e-mail address:

Your favorites title:

Comments about your favorites(optional):

Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator, was first published in 1988. - - - - - - - Ray Leopold http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5188&type=4 Ray Leopold was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on December 13, 1914, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Latvia. He graduated from Wilby High School in 1933 and became a mortgage broker. He was drafted in September 1943, and after basic training was assigned to the 16th Armored Division and sent to Ft. Smith Arkansas for training. Then, the Division was disbanded and Leopold was shipped to Europe as a replacement infantryman. In the fall of 1944, he was assigned to the 28th Infantry Division, which (including Tom Galloway of Mobile) had recently arrived in the Ardennes after suffering terrible losses in the Hurtgen Forest. In late November, Leopold was shot in the thigh while on guard duty. He crawled back to his dugout and, because his unit\'s medic had been killed a few days earlier, he used a German first aid kit and treated his own wound. Soon thereafter, his commanding officer made him a medic and assigned him to K Company, 3rd Battalion, 112th Regiment. On December 16, 1944 in Luxembourg, Leopold\'s Division, was among the first American units to be caught up in the massive German counter-attack that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Throughout the six week battle, Leopold worried about what would happen to him if he were taken prisoner, and hid his dog tags (marked with \"H\" for Hebrew) in his glove. After the Bulge, Leopold remained with the 28th as they fought through the rest of the European campaign. From January to March 1945 they were charged with the defense of a series of positions around and along the German border. In April, when Leopold and his unit passed through the town of Hadamar, Germany, he climbed a nearby hill to see for himself the local hospital, where Nazis doctors had taken the lives of more than 15,000 men, women, and children, and had conducted medical experiments on living human beings who had been deemed \"unworthy of life\" by Hitler. Leopold went home on leave in July 1945, expecting to be sent to the invasion of Honshu. He was discharged on Thanksgiving Day 1945, and for a time returned to Waterbury to live. He married, had two children, and eventually became a fund raiser for many Jewish charities. - - - - - - - Glenn Frazier http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5171&type=4 Glenn Dowling Frazier was born December 1, 1923 and grew up in the little farming town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. In the summer of 1941, he discovered that the girl he loved was interested in someone else. Frazier was so angry and upset that when the owner of a juke joint refused him service, he stalked outside, climbed onto his motorcycle, and roared through the door, shattering bottles and smashing furniture. As he raced away, the bar-owner chased him down the street with a shotgun. The next morning, humiliated, scared, and unable to face his parents, Glenn Frazier went to the nearest recruiting office, lied about his age and joined the peacetime army. Mindful of the war already raging in Europe, he volunteered to serve on the other side of the world, in the Philippines. He landed on the Philippine island of Luzon on September 18, and was assigned to the 75th Ordinance Depot and Supply Company. When the Japanese attacked on December 8th, 1941, Frazier, a corporal now, found himself in the midst of a war he thought he would never have to face. Under orders from General MacArthur, Frazier retreated onto the Bataan Peninsula, along with thousands of American and Filipino troops. Most of their supplies were left behind; rations were soon cut in half. On April 9 ,1942, Frazier became part of the largest surrender by the United States Army in its history -- 78,000 American and Filipino troops. He then endured the Bataan Death March, and months of horrific conditions at Camp O\'Donnell where hundreds of prisoners died every day from disease, starvation and abuse. One day, he volunteered to work on a burial detail, and decided to throw one of his two sets of dog tags into mass grave, hoping that if he died somewhere in the Philippine jungles, his parents would have some idea \"what had happened to me.\"? In October of 1942 Frazier was shipped to Japan, and spent nearly three nightmarish years in a succession of prison camps there. Forced to perform slave labor, Frazier and his fellow prisoners did their best to sabotage the Japanese war effort, putting rocks into cement mixers, drilling holes in the bottoms of oil barrels, pouring sand into gas tanks, and loosening blocks so that a submarine under repairs slid into the . . . - - - - - - - Leo Goldberg http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5182&type=4 Leo Goldberg was born in Manhattan on July 25, 1919, and grew up in Brooklyn. He tried to enlist in the army after he graduated from high school but was rejected because of poor eyesight. After a series of low-paying jobs, Goldberg headed to Waterbury in July of 1940, hoping to find a job in one of the town’s many booming factories. He quickly got hired as a saw sharpener at the Scovill Manufacturing Company and also enjoyed a brief romance with Ethel Leopold (sister of Ray Leopold). In the spring of 1942 he received a draft notice from his Brooklyn draft board. His supervisor applied for a deferral for Goldberg, but Leo asked for the deferral to be discontinued. He was inducted into the army as a private in October of 1942. After basic training in Corvallis, Oregon, Goldberg was assigned to the Headquarters Detachment of the 150th Ordnance Battalion, promoted to Sergeant, and placed in charge of the motor pool. In late 1943, his outfit joined Patton’s 3rd Army in England. They arrived in France in mid-July 1944 with the responsibility to keep munitions flowing to a number of front line units. In December of 1944, while driving a jeep toward Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, Goldberg collided with an ambulance, shattering his kneecap. He was sent back to the United States for recuperation. In July of 1945, while hospitalized, he rekindled his relationship with Ethel Goldberg of Waterbury and they were married on May 19, 1946. When Goldberg’s injury had fully healed, they returned to Waterbury where he owned and operated a bicycle and locksmith store. They have three children. - - - - - - - Maurice Bell: Kamikaze attack http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5278&type=3 A kamikaze pilot dove straight where Maurice Bell stood aboard the USS Indianapolis. - - - - - - - Harry Schmid http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5172&type=4 Harry Schmid was born in 1921, a 5th generation Sacramentan. His father worked for the telephone company and moved the family to Stockton in the mid 1930s, but Schmid returned to Sacramento after high school, got a job as a bookkeeper at the telephone company and studied accounting at Sacramento Community College. He was drafted in November of 1941, and went on active duty a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. He was trained as a medic, then assigned to work in an army hospital in the United States, but, he says, he didn’t want to change bedpans for the whole war, and volunteered to become a pilot. His less than perfect eyesight disqualified him from becoming a fighter pilot, so he trained to became a glider pilot instead. He also received infantry training because after landing his glider behind enemy lines, he would need to fight on the ground as well. In January of 1944, he was assigned to the 96th Squadron, 440th Troop Carrier Group in the 9th Air Force. Schmid was scheduled to fly on D-Day, but his group was scratched at the last minute. He flew his first combat mission August 15, 1944, as part of the invasion of Southern France. Three days after the landings, he was evacuated and sent back to England for more training In September of 1944, Schmid flew into Holland as part of the largest aerial mission of the war, Operation Market Garden. Because so many pilots had been lost in Normandy, an infantry sergeant flew in his co-pilot seat, and Schmid tried to teach him as much as possible about flying the glider while they were en route to the drop zone. Schmid did manage to land safely, and was then assigned to help guard a command post of the 82nd Airborne near the town of Groosbeck. He and his unit spent weeks behind the lines, subjected to constant German shelling. During the Battle of the Bulge, Schmid was co-pilot in a C-47 and flew several missions dropping supplies into Bastogne. He remembered that the German anti-aircraft fire lit up the night sky like fireworks on the 4th of July. On March 24, 1945, Schmid flew his last combat mission, as part of a massive airborne drop across the Rhine. It was his worst . . . - - - - - - - Burnett Miller: Saying our goodbyes http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5272&type=3 We came home and said goodbye to our parents. We had no idea what we were getting into. - - - - - - - Rocket reload http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=2733&type=1 As smoke lifts from the previous blasts, soldiers reload artillery, Hurtgen Forest, November 26, 1944. Source: National Archives (111-SC-207018) - - - - - - - Japanese Relocation http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5089&type=3 U.S. Government-produced film defending the World War II internment of Japanese-American citizens. (9:25) Source: Produced by the U.S. Office of War Information - - - - - - - Daniel Inouye http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5165&type=4 Daniel Inouye, the son of a Japanese immigrant, was born in Hawaii, September 7, 1924. He was a seventeen year old high school senior on December 7, 1941, and witnessed first hand the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As a Red Cross volunteer he helped tend to the many civilian casualties in his neighborhood. Like all Japanese Americans, Inouye was declared an \"enemy alien,\" unfit for military service, soon after America entered the war. After graduating from high school he began pre-medical studies at the University of Hawaii in the fall of 1942. But when the government reversed its policy on Japanese Americans serving, he volunteered for the new all Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He left home in March of 1943 and was sent to Mississippi for training. He was assigned to E Company, 2nd Battalion. In the late spring of 1944 he was promoted to Sergeant. Along with the rest of his unit, he arrived in Italy just before the liberation of Rome. On his first day of action, June 26, his unit came under an artillery barrage and his captain was killed; Inouye was the only squad leader not hurt that day. For the next three months, Inouye led his men against the German Army north of Rome. In October he and the 442nd were sent to the Vosges Mountains of southern France. In October of 1944, Inouye was taken off the line to receive a battlefield commission, becoming the youngest officer in his regiment. He rejoined his company on November 6, l944, a few days after the Lost Battalion campaign. His platoon of 20 men now had only 11, including him. E Company, which normally consisted of l97 men, now included only 40. After a few months of rest and rebuilding, Inouye and his unit were sent back to Northern Italy, and attached to the 92nd Infantry Division. On April 21, 1945, with the war in Europe in its final days, they were given orders to attack a heavily defended ridge, Colle Musatello. As he led his men up the slope, three machine gun nests began firing at them and Inouye was hit in the abdomen. He continued to lead his men up the slope, hurled a grenade to knock out the first machine gun nest, then killed its crew with . . . - - - - - - - Tom Galloway http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=2554&type=1 A portrait of Tom Galloway taken after graduation from officer candidate school. Galloway suvrived the battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He, along with Herndon Inge, later was one of the prisoners temporarily freed in the Hammelburg Raid. Source: Tom Galloway - - - - - - - Tom Galloway http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5196&type=4 Thomas M. Galloway an only child, was born December 14, 1923 and grew up in Mobile, Alabama. His father was in charge of the United States Lighthouse Service Supply Base located in Mobile which serviced lights and aids to navigation along the Gulf Coast. Tom entered the army in the spring of 1943, during his senior year in ROTC at Auburn University. He was sent to Officer Candidate School and trained to be an artillery officer and forward observer. In the summer of l944, Galloway arrived in France, and was assigned to the 28th Infantry Division as a replacement 2nd lieutenant in the 109th Field Artillery Battalion. On September 11, 1944, the 28th Division was the first to cross the border into Germany. On November 2, l944, Galloway and the 28th were ordered into the Hurtgen Forest, just south of the German city of Aachen. The two divisions that had fought in the forest in October had lost 4500 men in three weeks \"“ and moved less than three miles. The 28th would suffer similar losses there: in two weeks of fighting the officers of every single rifle company would be killed or wounded. Of the 15,000 men from the 28th who started into the forest, only 7,000 emerged unhurt. Galloway survived, with wounds treated by the battalion surgeon who used a house at the edge of the forest for a make shift hospital. He and his unit were sent for rest and recuperation to a quiet area near the town of Buckholz just west of the Our River in Luxemburg. At 5:30AM on December 16th, Galloway was awakened by a German artillery round landing in the garden of the house where he was sleeping. It was the beginning of the massive German counter-attack that would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. Galloway was able to hold out against the German onslaught for a few days, but on December 19th was captured while on reconnaissance near the town of Margaret, about five kilometers from Bastogne. He was taken to Germany and imprisoned at Stalag 2A, Stalag 4B, and finally Offflag 13B in Hammelburg, near Frankfurt. Galloway met fellow Mobilian Lieutenant Herndon Inge in Hammelburg, and both were there when an ill fated task force sent by General Patton arrived to . . . - - - - - - - John Gray http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5178&type=4 John Gray was born in his grandparents\' home in Chickasaw, Alabama on November 27, 1924, and was living in Mobile when the war began. His father had left the family and gone north to work in the steel mills in Youngstown, Ohio. His mother worked as a cook and housekeeper. Gray lied about his age to get a job as a carpenter\'s helper in the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company in Mobile. He began attending college but was drafted into the Marines in May of 1943. He was assigned to a new segregated section of Camp LeJeune called Montford Point, where all African-American Marines were trained. Gray was assigned to the 51st Defense Battalion, which was then one of the only black units being trained for combat in the Marines. Their commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Floyd Stephenson, a veteran of Pearl Harbor, won his men\'s loyalty by declaring, \"there is nothing\" that black troops cannot be taught. They became expert at firing 155mm coastal artillery guns and 90mm anti-aircraft guns, and were shipped out from San Diego on February 11, l944. They replaced the 7th Defense Battalion on the islands of Nanomea and Nukufetau near American Samoa, and were later sent to Eniwetok, but in nineteen months overseas, the 51st was never put into combat. They took to calling themselves \"the lost battalion.\" Gray sailed back to the States on an AK 121 troop ship in November of 1945. He recalls celebrating two birthdays on board the ship -- one before and one after they crossed the International Date Line. He arrived back home in early 1946, finished college on the GI Bill, married, raised a family and became a teacher. He taught for 22 years at Dunbar, Mobile\'s all black high school, and in the 1970s became a teacher and principal in the city\'s newly integrated school system. In 1998, after 50 years as a revered educator and civic leader, John Gray retired. - - - - - - - Walter Ehlers http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5198&type=4 Walter Ehlers was born on a farm in Junction City, Kansas on May 7, 1921, and enlisted in the Army in October of 1940, along with his older brother, Roland. Both men were assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, 30th Infantry Regiment – Walter was trained as a mortarman, while Roland was a scout. In November of 1942 they shipped out for North Africa where they saw President Roosevelt up close when he reviewed the troops at Casablanca. Soon afterwards, both brothers were both transferred to the First Infantry Division, assigned to K Company, 18th Regiment, and fought at El Guettar, where their company held off a German panzer unit advance at great cost, and then helped push the enemy all the way to the Mediterranean. The Ehlers next fought in Sicily, and were subsequently sent back to England to train for D Day. Before the invasion, their company commander told the brothers that casualties for the invasion could be as high as 50 percent, and that the Army had therefore decided to separate them. Walter was promoted to sergeant, made a squad leader and transferred to L Company Ehlers’ orders for D Day were to land on Omaha Beach and lead a 12-man reconnaissance team to the town of Trevieres about five miles inland. Ehlers’ landing craft let him and his squad off in water that was nearly over their heads, and they had to wade to the beach under heavy enemy fire. Under Ehlers’ leadership, the entire squad made it off the beach and up into the bluffs, where they captured a German pill box. In the days following, Ehlers and his squad were engaged in a number of firefights in the Norman hedgerows. On June 9th they were pinned down, under fire from German machine guns as well as mortars. Ehlers began to advance on the enemy positions, but encountered four German scouts. He single-handedly killed all of them, then destroyed the machine gun nest and the eight Germans manning it. He went on to disable another machine gun nest that day. The next day Ehlers and his squad again were surrounded by the enemy, and Ehlers and one of his men covered the rest of the squad’s withdrawal until both were shot by a sniper. Although he was wounded himself, Ehlers killed the sniper and then carried his wounded . . . - - - - - - - Jim Sherman: Inviting soldiers to dinner http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5304&type=3 The Sherman family always invited soldiers to dinner over the holidays. - - - - - - - Babe Ciarlo http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5407&type=4 Corado \"Babe\" Ciarlo grew up in Waterbury, and lived with his family at 1032 North Main Street. His parents had immigrated to America from Italy, and his father, Tomaso, ran a successful grocery store and butcher’s shop. But in 1937, Tomaso passed away, leaving his widow, Martina, to care for their five children. Babe graduated from Leavenworth High School in l941, and wanted to join the Navy at 18, but his mother talked him out of it, asking him to wait until he was called up. He got a defense job at the Waterbury Steel Ball factory, which made aircraft parts. When he was called up, he acceded to his mother’s wishes again, and requested a six month deferment. But when the time came to request a second deferment, he wouldn’t hear of it, and was drafted into the Army in the spring of 1943. He became a corporal in the 3rd Infantry Division, 15th Regiment, Company G, and fought in Italy in 1943 and 1944. - - - - - - - Respite in the Hürtgen http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=2714&type=1 In the Hürtgen Forest, three exhausted soldiers take a break from the action. November 18, 1944 Source: National Archives (111-SC-196619) - - - - - - - Eugene Sledge http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5206&type=4 Eugene B. Sledge was born in Mobile November 4, 1923, the grandson of Confederate officers. Bookish and frail as a child, he had been taught to hunt and fish by his physician father and spent much of his free time roaming the woods on the outskirts of town with his best friend, Sidney Phillips. He was a freshman at the Marion Military Institute, studying to become an officer, when he decided to sign on as a private in the Marines instead; he was afraid that if he waited for graduation he might not get a chance at combat. He was assigned to the 1st Marine Division as a replacement, and trained as a mortarman. He fought on Peleliu in September of 1944, and on Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Throughout the many brutal months he spent overseas, Sledge kept an unauthorized journal, jotting down his impressions of the fighting and slipping his notes between the pages of his bible. He later turned those notes into a memoir, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. After the war he returned to Alabama, married Jeanne Arcenaux, had two sons, and became a biologist and teacher at the University of Montevallo. Sledge’s voice is read by Josh Lucas. - - - - - - - Willie Rushton: Getting a haircut http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5296&type=3 Wounded and taken to a hospital ship, Willie Rushton sought a haircut after being treated. The ship\'s barber refused. - - - - - - - Christmas presents in the Hürtgen http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=2710&type=1 Soldiers in the Hurtgen Forest receive early Christmas gifts. November 14, 1944. Source: National Archives (111-SC-196533) - - - - - - - Susumu Satow: Baseball http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5313&type=3 As a young boy he chased foul balls at nearby baseball games. - - - - - - - William Perkins: New in town http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5311&type=3 As a newcomer, he quckly made friends and eventually met his wife Jeroline Green. - - - - - - - With the Marines at Tarawa http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5091&type=3 Documentary short film depicting the harrowing battle between the U.S. Marines and the Japanese for control of the Pacific Island of Tarawa. (18:00) Source: Directed and produced by Louis Hayward for the Office of War Information/Warner Bros. Pictures - - - - - - - Asako Tokuno: Feeling uncomfortable http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5284&type=3 I would get this terrible feeling that people were watching, looking at me. - - - - - - - D-Day: Invasion news http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5345&type=3 The news of D-Day reaches across America - - - - - - - Jeroline Green: Working at McClellan http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5314&type=3 McClellan kept her busy but she knew it mattered to getting the war over. - - - - - - - Burt Wilson http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5162&type=4 Burt Wilson was born January 24, 1933 and grew up in a well to do neighborhood in Sacramento. His father was an engineer at the Luppen and Hawley Plumbing Company. Wilson’s mother and maternal grandparents were German and he had cousins and aunts and uncles in Germany and sent them care packages every few months. He was in 2nd grade when Pearl Harbor was attacked and due to his age, the war often seemed to be an abstraction to him. But when a British schoolmate’s father was killed by a U-Boat, the conflict and its cost began to seem more concrete. Wilson followed the news of the war in the newsreels and by reading the headlines on the newspapers he delivered on his daily paper route. He saved his earnings to buy a toy gun that he used for hours of enjoyment, playing war in the backyard. Wilson participated in the war effort too – he helped with the family’s victory garden, collected scrap, fat, and tin cans, and once got his picture in the Sacramento Bee with his wagon full of cardboard. Every week Wilson and his friends went to the local Atlantic Ridgefield gas station to collect the newest color photo of a war plane and learned to draw each one as it came out. Planes from McClellan and Mather air force bases flew overhead every day, and Wilson loved going out to see the air bases on “open house day.” The war began to come closer when a family in Wilson’s neighborhood, the Bakers, lost a son -- killed in Europe --and put a gold star in their window. From then on, people always spoke in hushed tones when passing that house. - - - - - - - Luverne: The war comes home http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5402&type=3 Al McIntosh writes of personal losses the war brought to those in Luverne. - - - - - - - Tim Tokuno http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5195&type=4 Tim Tokuno was born and raised on a farm in Palermo, California in the Sacramento Valley. He was one of seven children born to Japanese immigrants, who raised olive and walnut trees. He was drafted six months before Pearl Harbor and tried to go into the Marines, but was told that “no Orientals” were wanted there or in the Navy. Instead, he joined the Army and was still in training when Pearl Harbor happened. The men in his squad immediately rallied around him, promising to protect him if anyone tried to give him any trouble. His parents were forced to evacuate their farm and made hurried arrangements with a friendly family nearby to look after it while they were gone. They were sent first to the Tule Lake internment camp, and then to Topaz, but Tokuno was unable to get a furlough to go see them. For a while, the Army did not know what to do with Tokuno and the 500 other Nisei soldiers already in its ranks. They were sent to Camp Robinson, Arkansas for a time and assigned menial work there – collecting garbage, etc. Then they were transferred to Ft. Riley, Kansas where Tokuno drove a truck and then became a dispatcher for a motor pool. A colonel saw him once and said, “people like you should be in Leavenworth.” In l943, after President Roosevlet signed the order to form the 442nd Tokuno, along with most of the Nisei in his unit, volunteered. After training with the 442nd at Camp Shelby, Alabama, Tokuno finally received a 15 day furlough to see his parents for the first time since he went into the service. His last night in camp, his mother prepared a Japanese dinner and as he was leaving, she said, “whatever you do, don’t ever disgrace your name or your country. I want you to come back. But don’t be a coward. Even if you have to die. Don’t bring dishonor to our family or our country.’’ Tokuno arrived in Italy with the 442nd in May, 1944 and was assigned to Company M, Heavy Weapons, 3rd Battalion, as a transport sergeant – he was in charge of 19 jeeps and a weapons carrier. During the course of the war in Europe, Tokuno served with the 442nd in Italy and France. He . . . - - - - - - - William Perkins: Racist Marines http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5295&type=3 Delivering lumber on Guam, William Perkins couldn\'t believe the racist attitude of fellow Marines. - - - - - - - Pearl Harbor: The attack http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5339&type=3 Daniel Inouye was preparing to go to church with his family when the attack on Pearl Harbor began. - - - - - - - African-American troops training http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5373&type=3 Despite the bravery of African Americans in all of America’s previous wars, despite the argument made by the NAACP and others that “a Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world,” the armed forces of the United States remained strictly segregated. - - - - - - - Joe Medicine Crow http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5177&type=4 Joe Medicine Crow was born October 27, 1913 on the Crow Indian reservation near Lodge Grass, Montana. One of his grandfathers, White Man Runs Him, was a scout for George Armstrong Custer before the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Another grandfather, Medicine Crow, was a legendary tribal chief. Joe Medicine Crow was raised by his elders in the tribe’s warrior tradition. He was taught to master his fear, to ride bareback, to track game, and to withstand extreme cold. He was also schooled in the stories of those who had distinguished themselves in battle against the Crow’s ancient enemies, the Cheyenne and the Lakota. Only the greatest warriors, those who accomplished four particularly dangerous war deeds in combat, could become a chief. They had to touch a living enemy, take an enemy’s weapon, steal an enemy’s horse, and lead a victorious war party. Joe Medicine Crow was the first member of his tribe to go to college, and was in graduate school in California when America entered the war. He joined the Army, became a scout in the 103rd Infantry Division, and fought in Europe. Whenever he went into battle, he would paint red stripes on his arms beneath his uniform, and he carried in his helmet a sacred, yellow-painted eagle feather provided by a Sun Dance medicine man to shield him from harm. While he was in combat in Europe, and without quite meaning to, Joe Medicine Crow performed the four necessary war deeds to become a war chief like his grandfather. First, he led a seven-man squad carrying explosives through a wall of artillery fire to blast German positions along the Siegfried Line. Then, while helping to take over a German-held village, he literally ran into a German soldier, knocking him down. He quickly disarmed the soldier, taking away his rifle Finally, in the last weeks of the war, he stole dozens of horses from a battalion of German officers. He is the last Crow Indian to become a war chief. - - - - - - - Susumu Satow http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5194&type=4 Susumu Satow was born in 1923, in Mayhew, California and grew up on his family’s 20 acre farm in Sacramento. One of nine children born to Japanese immigrants, his parents sent him and his siblings to Japanese language school after church on Sundays, but he didn’t much like it. He loved baseball and played on his high school team. Satow was a senior in high school when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He asked his father, “What is going to happen to us?” His father replied, “it is not going to be good.” In the following weeks, a number of the fathers in his neighborhood were rounded up and taken away, suspected of being enemy agents. Satow’s father kept a small bag packed just in case he was arrested. One day that winter, Satow came home from school to discover FBI agents combing through his family’s home, looking for evidence of subversion. They came upon a book in Japanese which aroused their suspicion – the Satows tried to explain that it was a Japanese translation of the bible. They were finally able to convince the agents by pointing to a picture of Jesus at the Last Supper that hung in the living room. One month before he was to graduate from high school, Satow and his family learned that they, along with all the Japanese Americans on the West Coast, were going to be sent to inland relocation camps. They were given one week’s notice, and asked some neighbors to harvest their crop of strawberries in their absence. After more than a year in camp, Satow volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and was inducted into the Army in July of 1943. He was put in as an 81mm mortar section of Company H and was assigned to lay telephone wire from the gun position to the forward observers’ positions. Satow and the rest of the 442nd arrived in Italy in June of 1944 and went into combat just north of Rome on June 26th. He fought with the 442nd in Italy through the summer and early fall of 1944, and then went with his unit to the Vosges Mountains in France. In October, he was wounded in the back from shrapnel, and was therefore recuperating in a hospital when the Lost Battalion campaign decimated the 442nd. Satow and the men who . . . - - - - - - - Shermans open fire http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=2718&type=1 Sherman tanks mounted with 105-mm. howitzers open fire in a muddy field amid the Hürtgen Forest on November 17, 1944. Source: National Archives (111-SC-196963) - - - - - - - Japanese Internment http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5380&type=3 In Sacramento, soon after Order 9066 was issued, hand-lettered signs went up all over town, saying “Japs must go.” - - - - - - - Olga Ciarlo http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5408&type=4 Olga Ciarlo was born in 1921 in Waterbury, and lived with her family at 1032 North Main Street. Her parents had immigrated to America from Italy, and her father, Tomaso, ran a successful grocery store and butcher’s shop. But in 1937, Tomaso passed away, leaving his widow, Martina, to care for their five children. After high school, she got a secretarial job in the offices of the Waterbury Steel Ball company. Olga’s older brother, Corado, known as “Babe,” graduated from Leavenworth High School in l941, and had also been working at Waterbury Steel Ball when he was drafted into the Army in 1943. He became a corporal in the 3rd Infantry Division, 15th Regiment, Company G, and fought in Italy in 1943 and 1944. - - - - - - - Quentin Aanenson: The impact of killing http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5277&type=3 Killing made him sick, but it didn\'t change his resolve to do it again and again. - - - - - - - Dwain Luce http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5167&type=4 Dwain Luce was born April 25 1916, and grew up in Mobile. His father was in the lumber business. Luce graduated from high school in l934 and from Auburn in l938, with a reserve commission. After graduation he went to work at his family\'s cannery business in Mississippi. On December 8, 1941 he asked to be recalled to active duty, and reported on January 15, 1942. He married Margaret Wilson on February 24, 1942 and their first child was born in early 1943; their second child was born in November of that year. Luce began the war as a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division\'s 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion and trained extensively before participating in the invasions of Sicily and then Italy. He was promoted to captain and, along with his unit, sent back to England to train again, this time for the invasion of France. Early in the morning of June 6, 1944, the tow rope on Luce\'s glider broke on takeoff, and it was several hours before he was able to take off again for Normandy. The fighting was already raging when he landed near Saint-Mere-Eglise, and Luce soon discovered that there were no established lines separating the Germans from the Americans there. The fighting was so confused that the men of Luce\'s artillery squad often found themselves firing two howitzers simultaneously in opposite directions. Luce survived 33 days of fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy. A few months later, Luce and his unit went into combat again, dropping behind enemy lines into Holland in September as part of Operation Market Garden. Luce\'s glider crash landed some five miles southeast of Nijmegen, a few hundred yards from a German anti-aircraft battery that had been firing at them minutes earlier. After a brief firefight the Germans backed off and Luce and his men set off the find the rest of their unit. It got dark, and Luce soon discovered that they had inadvertently wandered into Germany but he managed to lead his men safely to the American lines by the next day. Luce would remain in Holland for six weeks, battling the deepening cold as well as the relentless German shelling. Luce and the 82nd went into action again during the Battle of the Bulge, where they were assigned to anchor the northern flank of . . . - - - - - - - Walter Ehlers: Worrying about living http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5274&type=3 You forget about dying, you\'re worrying about living. - - - - - - - Quentin Aanenson http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5187&type=4 Quentin Aanenson, the 5th of 6 children, was born on April 21, 1921, on a 160 acre farm five miles from Luverne. His grandparents had come to America from Norway and both of his parents grew up speaking Norwegian at home. He graduated from high school in 1939 attended the University of Minnesota for two years. In the summer of 1941 he moved to Seattle, where he got a job at Boeing and attended the University of Washington and was there when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Although Aanenson hoped to become a pilot, colorblindness disqualified him -- until he took the eye test enough times to memorize it. He was accepted into the Army Air Corps in February 1943 and by early 1944 had graduated from flight school and been selected for fighter pilot training at Harding Field in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Two weeks after he got there, Aanenson met a local girl, Jacqueline Greer, at a dance. They began to date and quickly fell in love. They promised to write to each other every day while he was overseas, and she agreed not to date any other man more than three times. In mid-May of 1944 Aanenson arrived in England and in June was assigned to the 366th Fighter Group, 391st Fighter Squadron. Aanenson\'s first combat mission was D-Day, June 6, 1944; he flew his P-47 Thunderbolt over the English Channel and dropped his bombs on German positions behind Pointe du Hoc in advance of the Allies\' landing. On June 16th his squadron relocated to Normandy, and from there he flew bombing and strafing missions aimed at enemy troops and strong points. On July 25, 1944 Aanenson and his fighter group were among the 3,000 planes that bombed the German lines as part of Operation Cobra. On August 3, 1944, on a mission over Vire, France, Aanenson\'s plane was hit by flak and caught on fire. When he tried to bail out but couldn\'t, he put his plane into a steep dive, trying to crash as quickly as possible. The change in air pressure extinguished the cockpit fire, and Aanenson managed to fly back to his base and crash-land, suffering a concussion, dislocated shoulder, and burns. As soon as he recovered, he was back in the air again. November 17, 1944 was one of the most devastating days for . . . - - - - - - - Bill Lansford: Tougher jobs http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5302&type=3 Latino soldiers tended to volunteer for the more dangerous tasks during the war. - - - - - - - Samples from the columns of war correspondent Ernie Pyle http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5238&type=2 Samples from the columns of journalist Ernie Pyle Source: National Archives - - - - - - - Maurice Bell http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=5183&type=4 Maurice Bell was born in Mississippi on February 17, 1925, and grew up in the northeast corner of the state. Throughout 1942, he traveled around the country with his father on a construction crew that was building army camps. While in Indiana in early 1942, he met and started dating a local girl, Lois Richards. In early 1943, Bell went to Mobile, Alabama to work in the shipyards. He easily found work as an electrician\'s helper, and got a room in a boarding house there. He was drafted in the summer of 1943 and decided to sign on with the Navy because, he said, he didn\'t want to sleep in a hole in the ground. In September, l943 he became a gunner on a heavy cruiser, the USS Indianapolis, the flagship for the 5th Fleet. Bell witnessed the invasions of Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu and Iwo Jima from the ship\'s deck, as well as the naval battle of the Philippine Sea (also known as the \"Great Marianas Turkey Shoot\"?). After more than a year overseas, Bell went home on leave and married Lois on October 29, 1944. In March of 1945 Bell\'s ship took part in the pre-invasion bombardment of Okinawa, and was hit by a kamikaze on March 31. The Indianapolis was seriously damaged and sent back to California for repairs. On July 16, 1945, she headed back out to sea, bearing top secret cargo bound for the American air base on Tinian -- cargo that Bell helped to load. It was the atomic bomb. After delivering the bomb, the Indianapolis set out for the Philippines on July 30. In the middle of the night, the ship was hit by a torpedo from a Japanese submarine and sank in minutes. Of the nearly 1,200 men aboard, only Bell and some 900 others made it into the water alive. Bell survived four days and five nights in the water, but some eight hundred and eighty crewmen died. Bell returned to the states on November 1, 1945, and worked in construction and school maintenance. He and Lois have three children. - - - - - - - A lull in action http://www.pbs.org/thewar/search_details.php?id=891&type=1 Infantryman of the 121st Infantry Regiment during a lull in the fighting near Hürtgen, Germany. December 5, 1944. Source: National Archives (111-SC-196969) - - - - - - - " />

A note about email addresses: E-mail addresses will only be used to transmit this correspondence. They will not be shared or sold or used for any other purpose. For more details, see the PBS Privacy Policy.