On June 15, 1944, U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan


On June 15, 1944, U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan, with a goal of gaining a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers directly at Japan’s home islands.

 Facing fierce Japanese resistance, Americans poured from their landing crafts to establish a beachhead, battle Japanese soldiers inland and force the Japanese army to retreat north.

 Fighting became especially brutal and prolonged around Mount Tapotchau, Saipan’s highest peak, and Marines gave battle sites in the area names such as “Death Valley” and “Purple Heart Ridge.”

 When the U.S. finally trapped the Japanese in the northern part of the island, Japanese soldiers launched a massive but futile banzai charge. 

On July 9, the U.S. flag was raised in victory over Saipan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The actual execution of Amon Goeth.

Image
This is the actual execution of Amon Goeth. He was famously depicted in the movie Schindler’s List, as firing on concentration camp prisoners with a sniper rifle from his balcony. Amon Leopold Göth  (German: [ˈɡøːt] (listen); alternative spelling  Goeth ; 11 December 1908 – 13 September 1946) was an Austrian SS functionary and war criminal. He served as the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Płaszów in German-occupied Poland for most of the camp's existence during World War II. Göth was tried after the war by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland at Kraków and was found guilty of personally ordering the imprisonment, torture, and extermination of individuals and groups of people. He was also convicted of homicide, the first such conviction at a war crimes trial, for "personally killing, maiming and torturing a substantial, albeit unidentified number of people." Göth was...
Read more

Poland, Women naked, before their execution

Image
Among the millions of photographs that are related to Nazi death camps, only four depict the actual process of mass killing perpetrated at the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau. They show a completely different perspective, which makes them unique when dealing with visual material of the Holocaust and the Holocaust as a topic itself. They were taken inside the epicenter of the horror, from which no other visual material exists. They were taken clandestinely at the height of the Final Solution in 1944 by one of the so-called  Sonderkommando  – Jewish prisoners forced to help carry out the atrocities by removing the Nazis' victims from the gas chambers and destroying the corpses through fire or mass burial. One of the photographs shows a group of naked women; the others show the cremation of corpses. Poland, Women naked, before their execution If we agree that photography not only reflects reality, but also interprets it, than we need to take a closer look at the photograp...
Read more

GERMAN WAR CRIMINAL PETER BACK HANGING FROM A NOOSE, GERMANY, JULY 1945

Image
GERMAN WAR CRIMINAL PETER BACK HANGING FROM A NOOSE, GERMANY, JULY 1945 Photograph. Convicted German war criminal, Peter Back, hanging from a noose in a wooden scaffold at a prison, hood over his head. Official Caption: "Rome, 7/11/45 --A German pays for his crime--His head hooded with a black cloth Peter Back, convicted German war criminal, hangs in the noose at a prison near Cologne, Germany. He and two other German civilians were hanged June 29, 1945, for murdering an American airman who parachuted down near Priest, Germany, in August, 1944.--U.S. Signal Corps photo through Rome OWI--Approved by appropriate military authority (List B out) 7081."”Near Cologne, Germany. 11 July 1945 COLLECTION LEVEL:  Items from the service of Isaac "Ike" Bethel Utley, who was born in Smith Mills, Kentucky on 3 March 1920. Ike enlisted in the Army Air Corps on 19 January 1942. He was shipped overseas to the European Theatre and worked with a supply division based out of the...
Read more

Anne Boleyn is Executed outside the Tower of London.

Image
Anne Boleyn is Executed outside the Tower of London. 487 years ago today, the 19th of May 1536, Anne Boleyn was beheaded by order of her husband, King Henry VIII. She had been found guilty of false charges in a show trial arranged by Henry’s “fixer”, Thomas Cromwell.  Henry had fallen in love with Anne’s lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, after Anne suffered a series of tragic miscarriages. Henry horrifically blamed Anne for them.  Anne had borne Henry one daughter, Elizabeth, but Henry wanted a son. And he was done trying to have that son with Anne. He had decided that Anne was too feisty and not submissive enough. Henry wanted a more quiet, traditional Queen who would quickly provide him with a male heir.  And so, on the morning of May 19, Anne made her way outside from her chambers in the Tower of London. A large crowd awaited her, some friends, some foes. All there to watch her die for a crime many suspected she didn’t commit. Even Anne’s long-standing rival, Imperial amb...
Read more

The most incredible historical fact about King Edward VII

Image
The most incredible historical fact about King Edward  VII King Edward VII, had a special chair made for digging in... When Edward VII was still a young prince devoid of any responsibility for the crown, he travelled far from the British capital in search of leisure and pleasure. On one of his visits to Paris, he approached Le Chabanais, one of the best-known brothels in Paris. It was located relatively close to the Louvre Museum. Edward VII was assigned his own room whenever he frequented the brothel. The prince's main problem was his overweight. To overcome the physical impediment, the cabinetmaker Louis Soubrier made what he called "the chair of love". The chair was made in such a way that the future king could act without getting too tired. Also, the shape of the chair suggests that it was made so that the man could lie with two women at once.
Read more

Miriam Steiner was just five years old when Nazi Germany and its Axis partners invaded her native Yugoslavia On This Day in 1941.

Image
“I felt crippled emotionally for a very, very long time."  Miriam Steiner was just five years old when Nazi Germany and its Axis partners invaded her native Yugoslavia On This Day in 1941.  Eventually, Miriam and her parents were arrested. While her father managed to escape, Miriam and her mother, Zora, were forced onto trains bound for Stara Gradiška, a concentration camp administered by Nazi-allied Croatian authorities. Zora was pushed in another direction as Miriam was forced onto a freight car designated for children.  "I start screaming, Mama. Mama. And she turned around, and she saw me, and I saw her. But the next moment, she was gone," Miriam remembered. For four days, Miriam and the other children were trapped in the dark car unaware of their destination. Not knowing that her mother was unable to reach her, Miriam wondered, "Where is my mother? … Why is she not with me?" When the two eventually reunited at the camp, Miriam barely recognized her mother....
Read more

DID you know that George Joseph Smith who later became known in 1914 as the ‘Brides in the Bath Murderer’ set up a small shop at 389

Image
DID you know that George Joseph Smith who later became known in 1914 as the ‘Brides in the Bath Murderer’ set up a small shop at 389, Gloucester Road, Bristol as a second-hand furniture dealer. (near Ashely Down Road junction). A callous crook, he murdered women he had conned into marriage weeks, and sometimes just days after their wedding.  Always insuring their lives and having had them make out a will in his favour, he thought he had found a fool-proof get rich quick scheme.  A cold-hearted con-man whose crimes were motivated purely by financial gain, he was born in the East End of London in 1872 and by the age of nine had been sent to reform school for thieving. He left at 16 with a talent for exploiting women.  George Joseph Smith (January 11, 1872 – August 13, 1915) was an English serial killer and bigamist. In 1915 he was convicted and subsequently hanged for the slayings of three women, the case becoming known as the "Brides in the Bath Murders".  As well as ...
Read more

Sharpeville massacre South African history [1960]

Image
Sharpeville massacre South African history [1960] Sharpeville massacre , (March 21, 1960), incident in the Black township of Sharpeville, near Vereeniging, South Africa, in which police fired on a crowd of Black people, killing or wounding some 250 of them. It was one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a splinter group of the African National Congress (ANC) created in 1959, organized a countrywide demonstration for March 21, 1960, for the abolition of South Africa’s pass laws. Participants were instructed to surrender their reference books (passes) and invite arrest. Some 20,000 Blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, located about 30 miles (50 km) south of Johannesburg. After some demonstrators, according to police, began stoning police officers and their armoured cars, the officers opened fire on them with submachine guns. About ...
Read more

Workers race to dig out man buried alive under gravel after truck driver accidentally tips the load onto him

Image
Workers race to dig out man buried alive under gravel after truck driver accidentally tips the load onto him  This is the moment a man was buried alive for three minutes under a pile of gravel before finally being dug out by his fellow workers. The worker, from Nairobi, Kenya, was covered when a truck driver tipped the gravel at a construction site unaware he was standing directly behind it. One man grabbed his legs - which were sticking out the gravel mound - while others used shovels to get to him. Video footage shows the man unconscious after being pulled from the gravel, but came round after first aid treatment and CPR. Geography teacher Dicken Muchena, 27, who filmed the footage, said: 'This team was transporting the gravel to a construction site when the driver of the tipper lowered the material without knowing that one of them was behind it. 'The victim was buried from the head and for more than three minutes all those around struggled to remove him from the materi...
Read more

What shocking Nazi experiments were conducted that horrified the world?

Image
What shocking Nazi experiments were conducted that horrified the world? During World War II, the Nazi regime, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, conducted numerous horrific and unethical experiments on human subjects. These experiments were carried out by various individuals, including doctors and scientists, in concentration camps and other facilities. While it is important to note that there were many different experiments conducted, I will mention a few of the most shocking experiments they have done 1)Auschwitz Twins Experiments: Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," conducted experiments on twins at Auschwitz concentration camp. He aimed to study heredity and genetics by subjecting twins to various brutal procedures, including injecting them with different substances, amputations without anesthesia, and surgically joining twins together. 2)Freezing Experiments: These experiments, led by Dr. Sigmund Rascher, involved subjecting prisoners to extreme c...
Read more