I didn’t intend to start my day by crying at my desk (which is also my kitchen table—I’m working from home), but dammit, here we are. A brand new exhibit at a museum in Danville, Iowa contains copies of the only letters Anne Frank and her sister Margot wrote to their American pen pals, two school-age girls named…
Naomi Parker Fraley—who as a young woman took up war work shortly after Pearl Harbor and boasted perhaps the single best case for having inspired the iconic “We Can Do It!” Rosie the Riveter poster—has died at 96.
Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s brutal thriller about World War II’s Dunkirk evacuation, a bleak moment in which civilian boats were dispatched to rescue hundreds of thousands of British and French soldiers stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. The film is a relentless, and basically humorless, portrayal of the…
Today, singer Vera Lynn—who was incredibly popular in wartime Britain, with bittersweet hits like “We’ll Meet Again” and “(There’ll be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover”—turns 100.
If you haven’t watched Casablanca lately, you might have forgotten that this 1942 classic—routinely described as one of the greatest movies ever made—opens not with Humphrey Bogart in that crisp white dinner jacket, but rather with a description of the “torturous, roundabout refugee trail” that sprang up for those…
I remember the exact moment that I connected internment with my family. I was in elementary school, and we had learned all about the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in social studies. Later that week, I was at my grandparents’ house for a family dinner, and I was reciting all these things I had learned at…
On August 14, 1945, 21-year-old dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman joined a rejoicing crowd in New York City’s Time Square to celebrate the end of World War II. Shortly thereafter, sailor George Mendonsa approached and, with great theatrics, kissed her on her lips. Alfred Eisenstaedt caught the moment with his…
It took hard work by her family and a literal act of Congress, but Elaine D. Harmon, who served as a pilot in World War II, has been laid to rest—with full military honors—at Arlington National Cemetery.
Two women who were forced to work as “comfort women” (read: sex slaves) for the Japanese army during World War II have publicly criticized the deal made between Japan and South Korea on their behalf.
Norwood Thomas, a 93-year-old World War II army veteran, will finally reunite with his long-lost love, 88-year-old Joyce Morris. The two haven’t seen each other in over 71 years. Get ready to do some intense ugly-crying over this real-life Nicholas Sparks story.
At the end of World War II, an estimated 200,000 South Korean women were forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to work in brothels as “comfort women,” a euphemized term for sexual slavery, for the Japanese military. On Monday, South Korea accepted Japan’s reconciliatory apology and offer to contribute 1 billion yen…
Hey, history-of-fashion nerds: Amazon UK has just booked an eight-part period drama about French haute couture in the period immediately following World War II. Don’t get between a costume designer and any chance at working on this project, lest you be torn into a million pieces.
Sleepy Republican Ben Carson keeps comparing modern struggles to World War II. Why does he keep doing this? Is that the only part of history he knows?
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed legislation on Tuesday urging the city to build a memorial in remembrance of the approximately 200,000 women who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. The decision puts pressure on the city to take on the project, but does not actually…
Marie Jalowicz Simon spent the Holocaust hiding from the Nazis—living underground in Berlin, keeping to the fringes of society, using an assumed name, dodging the authorities and anyone who might denounce her.
Of all the things that could be used to replicate nylon stockings, gravy juice seems like a strange option.
On VE Day, not-yet Queen Elizabeth slipped out of Buckingham Palace and joined the festivities. Please enjoy this clip from a recent Channel 4 program about her evening on the town, in which women who came along reminisce about doing the conga through Piccadilly and down the streets of London then trooping into the…
The model for Rockwell’s famous “Rosie the Riveter” painting (not to be confused with the beloved “We Can Do It” poster) has died. Mary Doyle Keefe was 92.
The United States government has produced plenty of wartime propaganda, but they’ve had help! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (you know, the guys who give out the Oscars) owns a particularly large collection of short films in support of America’s martial undertakings, dubbed the Academy War Film…
Even as Nazis swept across Europe and harsh austerity measures gripped the United Kingdom, people still woke up every morning and got dressed. And despite it all, plenty of women wanted to look sharp. Hence: Fashion on the Ration, a new exhibit chronicling the creative street styles of the 1940s.
