Our next destination was supposed to be Corregidor, but we got side tracked in Mariveles on the way down. We were heading south to see about renting a banca, the traditional Filipino outrigger boat, which could take us out to…
Consecrated in the Blood of Two Peoples: Bataan (Part I)
Consecrated in the Blood of Two Peoples: Bataan War Memorials at Layac Junction and Mt. Samat (Part I) Today (Apr. 9, 2017) marks 75 years since the end of the Battle of Bataan. On Bataan, American and Filipino soldiers fought…
Cesar’s Story: Life Under Japanese Occupation
Cesar Salang has one piece of advice: never waste a grain of rice. As a child, Cesar lived through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, a time when food scraps were often one’s only meal. When he remembers that time,…
Farewells from Chiran
What drives men to willingly drive an aircraft into a ship and what goes through the mind of a person scheduled for death and seemingly embraces the opportunity? There are stories from pilots of many nations flying damaged aircraft and…
Tour Brugge (Video)
Here’s a little photo video from my trip to Bruges / Brugge, Belgium. A living yet preserved city of the middle ages, it was easy just to wander around and take pictures of the city itself and not just the…
A Short Military Tour of London
Sometimes I just want to see really big guns. And Winston Churchill. And castles. And enemy artillery melted down into monuments to the victor’s everlasting glory. Then I want to drink tea. Luckily, London can oblige in all these areas…
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It’s been fun working on this blog the past year but one of the things that’s bugged me is format limitations. I think of the blog as a place for telling stories and want to keep it easy to find…
First and Last Target: Yawata Steel Works
Many places in Japan suffered repeat bombings in World War II but one had the dubious distinction of being the first and among the last hit by B-29s. On the night of June 15/16, 1944, the then-Imperial Steel Works gained…
Atlantikwall
Today’s video takes us to a forbidding section of the Atlantic Wall, Nazi Germany’s coastal defense scheme that saw artillery batteries, bunkers and other defensive fixtures dot the seaside from Norway to France to keep out any potential liberating forces.…
Shaking the Heavens from Below: Ozushima Kaiten Memorial Museum
The sky was clear of enemy aircraft on the morning of Nov. 20, 1944 at Ulithi, the American anchorage and resupply base that kept the fleet moving towards victory over Tokyo in the latter part of the Pacific War. Fleet…