World War 2

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• SOURCE: NPR Codeswitch
  3/24/2020
  

  The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans' Campaign For Reparations

  The fight for Japanese American reparations came with significant resistance—not just from the American public at large, but from the Japanese American community itself, as John Tateishi writes in his new book. 

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• SOURCE: Jewish News
  3/22/2020
  

  Czech Museum Director Fired

  Director of the Lidice memorial, Martina Lehmannová, was let go amid accusations that the government is trying to whitewash inconvenient facts to suit its preferred narrative.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/17/2020
  

  Social Distancing Won’t Happen Until Governments Order It

  by Edward J.K. Gitre

  To truly confront this threat we need to think bigger, to the greatest challenge the United States has had to face in the modern era, and yet overcame: World War II.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  3/14/2020
  

  Czech Village Razed by Hitler at Heart of Row on Truth and History

  Lidice’s survivors hit back at claims that Jewish woman was denounced to Nazis as academics resign over state interference.

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• 3/15/2020
  

  Churchill, Stalin and the Legacy of the Grand Alliance: An Interview with Professor Geoffrey Roberts

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  Geoffrey Roberts assesses the history and legacy of the wartime alliance and political relationship between Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/9/2020
  

  ‘We Hated What We Were Doing’: Veterans Recall Firebombing Japan

  American airmen who took part in the 1945 firebombing missions grapple with the particular horror they witnessed being inflicted on those below.

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• 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.

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• 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.” 

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• SOURCE: Seattle Times
  3/2/2020
  

  Bellevue College President, Vice President Out after Mural on Japanese American Incarceration was Altered

  The deletion was condemned by the Seattle chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, which called the act “tantamount to agreement with the hate speech of decades past.”

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/18/20
  

  California Plans to Apologize to Japanese-Americans Over Internment

  Nearly 80 years after Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps, the State Assembly plans to formally apologize for its role in the detention.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/19/20
  

  When Jim Crow Reigned Amid the Rubble of Nazi Germany

  by Alexis Clark

  Thousands of African-American troops were sent to a defeated Germany to promote democracy, even as they were confined to the social order of Jim Crow.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/18/20
  

  A farm boy became a fearsome warrior at Iwo Jima. And he did it with a flamethrower.

  The Japanese soldiers came out of their concrete “pill box” with bayonets fixed, determined to get the Marine who had been killing them all afternoon with a flamethrower.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/13/20
  

  Historic Iwo Jima footage shows individual Marines amid the larger battle

  by Greg Wilsbacher

  When most Americans think of the World War II battle for Iwo Jima – if they think of it at all, 75 years later – they think of one image: Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest point.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/13/20
  

  How Dresden Looked After a World War II Firestorm 75 Years Ago

  Mourning all of the war’s victims has been central to Germany’s remembrance efforts since reunification in 1990.

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• 2/16/20
  

  A Gallon of Talk and a Teaspoon of Action, Then Label the Problem "Insolvable" and Plan Another Conference

  by Robert Scott Kellner

  What shall it avail, the latest speech-laden conference on this topic, when seventy-five years of intensive Holocaust education had no effect on Holocaust deniers and could not stop the resurgence of the virulent anti-Semitism that had infected Germany one hundred years ago?

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• 2/16/20
  

  Remembering Soldier's Bravery at Iwo Jima, 75 Years Later

  by Jack H. Lucas

  "I had no way of knowing that in a matter of a few short hours I would make the most important decision of my life and in the lives of three members of my fire team. The choice would be mine: either I could die alone or all of us would die together."

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• 2/16/20
  

  75 Years After the Dresden Bombings

  by Sinclair McKay

  History in Dresen is not an abstract academic pursuit; instead, it is palpable and passionate. It matters enormously. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the horror that made Dresden – deep in eastern Germany - a by-word for annihilation.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/9/20
  

  In Amazon’s Bookstore, No Second Chances for the Third Reich

  The retailer once said it would sell “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Now it has banished objectionable volumes — and agreed to erasing the swastikas from a photo book about a Nazi takeover.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/6/20
  

  How two women pulled off a medieval manuscript heist in post-war Germany

  by Jennifer Bain

  After the Dresden bombings, the Soviet Army seized and inspected the surviving vault. The first bank official to enter the vault afterwards found it pillaged, with only one manuscript remaining. The bank could never confirm if the vault was emptied in an official capacity or if it was plundered.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  2/4/20
  

  We’re Still Living in Stalin’s World

  by Diana Preston

  At the Yalta Conference 75 years ago, the Soviet leader got everything he wanted — and shaped global politics for decades.