Members of the Japanese Independent Congregational Church attend Easter services in Oakland, California, 1942

Who Helped Japanese Americans after Internment?

Resettlement was difficult and traumatic, but the religious community worked to provide housing, food, and job opportunities.
A pile of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils sits in front of a poster urging people to donate aluminum kitchen ware to help the US Air Force

The Environmental Costs of War

Using aluminum as a case study, a geographer shows how wartime "commodity chains" can devastate the Earth.
The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb blast at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954

How the H-Bomb Led to a Reckoning in Japan

For years, the trauma of the atomic bomb was hardly talked about in Japan. The H-bomb test at Bikini Atoll changed that.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_G._Robinson_and_Joan_Bennett_in_%27Scarlet_Street%27,_1946.jpg

How Fritz Lang’s Flight from Nazi Germany Shaped Hollywood

German expressionism--imported to Hollywood by Jewish exiles--brought a lasting tradition of shadows, duality, and mirroring to mainstream American cinema.
Großer Garten in Dresden

Regrowing Germany’s Trees After WWII

The cities of Dresden and Hamburg saw their green spaces decimated by WWII, but each city grew back its trees in a very different way.
Bar in Hotel Scribe by Floyd MacMillan Davis

How Janet Flanner’s “High-Class Gossip” Changed America

The journalist's witty Paris Letters for the New Yorker helped establish Americans' feelings of superiority over Europe.
The first black marines decorated by the famed 2nd Marine Dvision somewhere in the Pacific. (Left to right) Staff Sgt Timerlate Kirven and Cpl. Samuel J. Love, Sr., received Purple Hearts for wounds received in the Battle of Saipan.

Who Were the Montford Point Marines?

The first African-American recruits in the Marine Corps trained at Montford Point, eventually ending the military’s longstanding policy of racial segregation.
Into the Jaws of Death by Robert F. Sargent

The Weather Forecast That Saved D-Day

Operation Overlord launched the invasion of German-occupied Europe during WWII. But the right weather, tides, and moonlight were essential for it to work.
Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of Resistance

The dark, absurdist humor of Samuel Beckett's work was directly informed by his time in the French Resistance during World War II.
Painting by Jozef Czapski

Painter, Proust Scholar, P.O.W.

Józef Czapski was a painter, writer, and Proust scholar -- as well as one of the few Polish military officers not executed by the Soviet Union in 1940.