The picture is a rare glimpse of the bomb’s immediate aftermath, showing the distinct two-tiered cloud as it was seen from Kaitaichi, part of present-day Kaita, six miles east of Hiroshima’s center. […]
The person who took this photo would have been among the first to look out there and realize that this wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill bomb. It wasn’t the air raid that the citizens of Hiroshima had been anticipating for months. This was the beginning of a new world.
“It is a bit like painting with history,” Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse says of her project “Ghosts of History.”
She got the idea a few years ago when she found some old negatives at a flea market in Amsterdam, where she lives. “I was very curious about these mysterious photos and wanted to find out who took them and where. So I started to walk around Amsterdam and made photos in the same spot where the old photos were made and combined them on the computer.”
See more.[Images: Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse, Unknown, Tom Timmermans]
Starting in the 1980s, pit bulls came to embody all of the public’s fears and anxieties about what was wrong with America’s inner cities. The dogs have been stock images in a familiar, grim urban picture that includes drug dealing, racial tension, gun violence, and decay. Many cities and counties have banned them; Miami-Dade County in Florida just upheld a 23-year ban on pit bulls and related dogs by a 63.2 percent to 36.8 percent margin.
But all this time, there have been people who have spoken up for pit bulls as terrific companion dogs particularly suited to city life, one with a long history in American culture. There was Petey, of Little Rascals fame, and Buster Brown’s dog, Tige. World War II propaganda posters used the pit bull as a symbol of American spirit.
Today in 1940, Winston Churchill gave his famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech after the British army evacuated from Dunkirk. Listen above (jump to 8:50 for the memorable part), then read these fascinating accounts of Churchill’s life:
“Raising a flag over the Reichstag” the famous photograph by Yevgeny Khaldei, taken on May 2, 1945. The photo shows Soviet soldiers raising the flag of the Soviet Union on top of the German Reichstag building following the Battle of Berlin. The moment was actually a re-enactment of an earlier flag-raising, and the photo was embroiled in controversy over the identities of the soldiers, the photographer, and some significant photo editing. (Yevgeny Khaldei/LOC)
For the nations who were deeply involved in World War II, the war effort was total, with women volunteering in huge numbers alongside men and filling traditionally male positions at home, in industry, and the military. Women took both active and supporting positions in factories, government organizations, military auxiliaries, resistance groups and more. While relatively few women were at the front lines as combatants, many found themselves the victims of bombing campaigns and invading armies. By the end of the war, more than 2 million women worked in war industries, hundreds of thousands volunteered as nurses or members of home defense units, or became full-time members of the military. In the Soviet Union alone, some 800,000 women served alongside men in army units during the war. Collected here are images of women involved directly in the events of World War II, and some of what they experienced and endured
Above: Symbolic of the defense of Sevastopol, Crimea, is this Russian girl sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who, by the end of the war, had killed a confrimed 309 Germans — the most successful female sniper in history. (AP Photo)
Directed by John Ford, this Academy Award-winning documentary follows the battle with footage shot by Navy cameramen. Ford served in the U.S. Navy as a commander and documentary filmmaker during the war, and in this excerpt he was actually wounded by enemy fire while filming. He describes the experience in an interview with a Navy historian:
By this time the attack had started in earnest. There was some dive bombing at objectives like water towers, [they] got the hangar right away. I was close to the hangar and I was lined up on it with my camera, figuring it would be one of the first things they got. It wasn’t any of the dive bombers [that got it]. A Zero [Japanese plane] flew about 50 feet over it and dropped a bomb and hit it, the whole thing went up. I was knocked unconscious. Just knocked me goofy for a bit, and I pulled myself out of it. I did manage to get the picture. You may have seen it in [the movie] “The Battle of Midway.” It’s where the plane flies over the hangar and everything goes up in smoke and debris, you can see one big chunk coming for the camera.
Everybody, of course, nearly everybody except the gun crews were under ground. The Marines did a great job. There was not much shooting but when they did it was evidently the first time these boys had been under fire but they were really well trained. Our bluejackets and our Marine gun crews seemed to me to be excellent. There was no spasmodic firing, there was no firing at nothing. They just waited until they got a shot and it usually counted.
For photographs of Midway, see Alan Taylor’s World War II retrospective on In Focus.
Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan prepared to deal one more decisive blow to the U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific. The aim was to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers and occupy the strategically important Midway Atoll, a tiny island nearly halfway between Asia and North America that was home to a U.S. Naval air station. American codebreakers deciphered the Japanese plans, allowing the U.S. Navy to plan an ambush. On June 3, 1942, the Battle of Midway commenced. Aircraft from carriers of both navies and from Midway Atoll flew hundreds of miles, dropping torpedoes and bombs and fighting each other in the skies. The battle ended with a decisive victory for the U.S. Navy, and was later regarded as the most important battle of the Pacific Campaign. After several days of fighting, the Japanese Navy had lost four aircraft carriers and nearly 250 aircraft, and suffered more than 3,000 deaths. In contrast, U.S. losses amounted to a single carrier and 307 deaths. At the same time as this battle was taking place, a Japanese aircraft carrier strike force thousands of miles to the north was attacking the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, bombing Dutch Harbor and invading the tiny islands of Attu and Kiska. It was the first time American soil had been occupied by an enemy since the War of 1812. The Japanese dug in and held the islands until mid-1943 when a massive American and Canadian force recaptured the islands in brutal invasions.
Above: An SBD-3 dive bomber of Bombing Squadron Six, on the deck of USS Yorktown. The aircraft was flown by Ensign G.H. Goldsmith and ARM3c J. W. Patterson, Jr., during the June 4, 1942 strike against the Japanese carrier Akagi. Note the battle damage on the tail. (U.S. Navy)
A sailor at the Naval Air Base wears the new type protective clothing and gas mask designed for use in chemical warfare, in Corpus Christi, Texas, in August of 1942. (Howard Hollem/OWI/LOC)
In early 1942, as the Axis powers pursued their war aims, Allied forces were still reeling but working on a wider strategy. Japan swept through the southern Pacific, conquering Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and the Philippines. Germany regrouped on the Eastern Front, holding off several Soviet attacks and preparing for a summer offensive. But during this time, American bombers successfully struck Japanese targets in a daring, morale-boosting raid led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, and British forces destroyed an important dock facility in German-occupied St. Nazaire, France. Most of Doolittle’s raiders landed in China, receiving assistance from villagers. Those locals paid dearly when Japanese reprisals killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese. The fall of the Philippines left the invading Japanese with tens of thousands more U.S. and Filipino prisoners than they’d anticipated. This led to a brutal forced relocation now known as the Bataan Death March, where thousands of weak, starving men were beaten and killed en route to a Japanese prison camp.
Above: Sergeant P. Dorzhiev, a Russian sniper who killed 181 Germans on the Leningrad front, looking through binoculars, and holding a rifle, sometime in 1942.
![Rare Photo of the Mushroom Cloud Over Hiroshima Discovered in a Japanese Elementary School
The picture is a rare glimpse of the bomb’s immediate aftermath, showing the distinct two-tiered cloud as it was seen from Kaitaichi, part of present-day Kaita, six miles east of Hiroshima’s center. […]
The person who took this photo would have been among the first to look out there and realize that this wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill bomb. It wasn’t the air raid that the citizens of Hiroshima had been anticipating for months. This was the beginning of a new world.
Read more. [Image: Honkawa Elementary School]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a8f9523656b7f21cfe01fb9d8a121945/tumblr_mggsz5vNiN1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
![Pit Bulls, the Ultimate Urban Dog
Starting in the 1980s, pit bulls came to embody all of the public’s fears and anxieties about what was wrong with America’s inner cities. The dogs have been stock images in a familiar, grim urban picture that includes drug dealing, racial tension, gun violence, and decay. Many cities and counties have banned them; Miami-Dade County in Florida just upheld a 23-year ban on pit bulls and related dogs by a 63.2 percent to 36.8 percent margin.
But all this time, there have been people who have spoken up for pit bulls as terrific companion dogs particularly suited to city life, one with a long history in American culture. There was Petey, of Little Rascals fame, and Buster Brown’s dog, Tige. World War II propaganda posters used the pit bull as a symbol of American spirit.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9tx3ddiNB1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
