A party of samurai camped on a mountainside south of modern day Odawara, answering the call to rise up against the Taira clan who had seized power and replaced the reigning emperor with a puppet of their own bloodline.…
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…
Nagoya Castle: History Lost and Regained
This week, in between Mr. Krigbaum’s articles on WWII in The Philippines, I will go back to talking about castles here in Japan. Nagoya Castle is a grand reconstructed castle a couple of hours south of Tokyo by shinkansen with…
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,…
Discovering Local History – Chigasaki’s Oldest Place
I took a long walk down Route 1 back when I lived in Chigasaki, Japan, and on my walk I found a large torii gate standing along the highway, seemingly by itself. At the time, I thought this was…
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…
Himeji – Japan’s Premier Castle
If you have ever spent any time reading about Japan, or even just looked at a tourism guide about the country, you have likely seen the beautiful bright white Japanese castle that often adorns Japan’s promotional literature. That…
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…
Hikone Castle – One of Japan’s Finest Castles
If you’ve ever traveled around Japan you know that they love their castles. Almost every old castle town has either rebuilt their castles, preserved the grounds as a park, or, in rare cases, preserved their castle through the centuries. …
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…