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SciTech Tuesday: The 75th Anniversary of the Doolittle Raid

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Seventy-five years ago today, on April 18, 1942, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle led a group of 16 B-25s filled with 79 men (in addition to himself) on the first bombing run of Japanese territory in World War II.

Medium bombers had not been launched from a carrier beforecarriers had only 467 feet of takeoff space. The idea for the mission came from Navy Captain Francis Low, who saw planes landing and taking off from an airstrip in Norfolk, Virginia, where a carrier’s outline had been painted on the runway for practice. He noticed that the medium bombers could often take off before crossing the carrier’s outline. Doolittle was put in charge of planning a mission to boost American morale and to damage Japanese confidence.

The B-25 was chosen, even though it was new and untested, because of all the two-engine bombers it was the most capable of taking off from an aircraft carrier. Other planes had longer ranges, but their wingspan was longer and would limit the number of planes that a carrier could fit. The aircraft were modified so that they could complete the 2,400-mile mission with a payload of 2,000 pounds of bombs. The normal range of the B-25 was 1,300 miles. To extend their range they were equipped with extra fuel tanks, most of their defensive guns were removed, and their Norden bomb sights were removed, too.

The 15 planes took off from the carrier Hornet in the western Pacific, flew over Honshu to target military installations in Tokyo and other cities, and then headed for mainland China. The planes each carried three high-explosive bombs and one incendiary bomb. The planes had to take off hours sooner and hundreds of miles farther from Japan than expected when Japanese airplanes were spotted from the Hornet. The Hornet was accompanied by the Enterprise and her escort ships, which comprised Task Force 16 under the command of Admiral William Halsey. Landing in Vladivostok would have made a shorter trip, but the Soviets had signed a neutrality pact with Japan in 1941.

The planes flew over Honshu at about 1,500 feet, receiving little resistance, about six hours after their launch. They dropped several bombs around Tokyo, and others near Yokohama, Nagoya, Kobe, and Osaka. After dropping their bombs, all but one plane turned southwest toward eastern China. One B-25 was low on fuel and headed toward Vladivostok. That plane landed on a base at Vozdvizhenka, where the plane was captured and the crew interned. Aided by a strong tailwind of about 29 miles per hour, the remainder of the B-25s reached the Chinese coast about 13 hours after launch. Without that tailwind, they probably would not have made it to China. Over land, the pilots crash-landed or bailed out. Three men died while bailing out, two perished at sea, and one over land. Three men were executed after capture by the Japanese, and another five were held as POWs. Of those, four survived to the end of the war and were liberated in August 1945. The remainder were rescued, often aided by Chinese, who suffered severe retribution afterward.

Doolittle feared that his loss of all 16 planes would lead to a court-martial. Instead, he was promoted to brigadier general while still in China, and awarded the Medal of Honor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt upon his return home.

The raid caused little material damage to Japan. However, it did have its intended effects—to boost morale in the United States and to dent Japan’s confidence. It also led to the Japanese military’s determination to hold the central Pacific, leading to the Battle of Midway and the overextension of Japanese naval forces in that direction.

The last surviving Doolittle Raider is retired Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cole, who was Doolittle’s copilot. He is now 101 years old.

Cole’s Museum oral history is here.

All images from the collection of The National WWII Museum.

Learn more here about the Museum’s B-25.

Posted by Rob Wallace, STEM Education Coordinator at The National WWII Museum

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WWII Quiz Bowl Finals Telecast Set for March 30 on Cox Communications

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Teams from 23 high schools competed in the Museum’s 13th annual WWII Quiz Bowl on Saturday, March 11.

Teams from 23 high schools competed in the Museum’s 13th annual WWII Quiz Bowl on Saturday, March 11.

Teams from 23 high schools competed in The National WWII Museum’s 13th annual WWII Quiz Bowl on Saturday, March 11, with the St. Thomas High School Chindits of Houston and the Jesuit High School Enola Jays of New Orleans emerging as finalists. Congratulations to all who participated!

The finals will be televised live by Cox Communications at 6:00 p.m. March 30 on YurView (Channel 4 in New Orleans). The action will also stream live everywhere at YurView.com. Follow the Museum on Twitter (@WWIIMuseum) to receive start-time prompts. YurView replays of the March 11 event have aired in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, Louisiana; Roanoke, Virginia; Pensacola, Florida; and Fort Smith, Arkansas; among other markets.

To find the live stream, visit the above address and enter “Quiz Bowl” in the search box. There, at 6 p.m. Thursday, you’ll find the St. Thomas High School Chindits of Houston and the Jesuit High School Enola Jays of New Orleans battling for the crown of 2017 WWII Quiz Bowl champs. Good luck to both teams!

The WWII Quiz Bowl is sponsored by The New Orleans Advocate.

 

Quiz Bowl finalists: Tyler McStravick, Nate Belcher, and Nicholas Kurzy of St. Thomas High School; quizmaster and Museum Director of Education Kenneth Hoffman; Matthew Granier, Ethan Lagrand, and Preston Warwick of Jesuit High School.

Quiz Bowl finalists: Tyler McStravick, Nate Belcher, and Nicholas Kurzy of St. Thomas High School; quizmaster and Museum Director of Education Kenneth Hoffman; Matthew Granier, Ethan Lagrand, and Preston Warwick of Jesuit High School.

Watch the 2016 finals here.

 

 

 

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The National WWII Museum Social Media Guidelines

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State of Deception

State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda

Dear Friends,

News of the opening of “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” a powerful exhibition created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has already generated some passionate conversation on social media.

We’re honored to be hosting this thought-provoking exhibition, which was created in 2009 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has been displayed in other great institutions around the country, including the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and, most recently, the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas. State of Deception is a historical study of propaganda, and poses questions about the power of communication and the importance of mindful media consumption. Some have asked if the Museum timed the exhibit to coincide with the current political climate. We did not. In fact, the exhibition has been scheduled since January 2015, and was created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum before that—in 2009. However, we know that the tone of the recent election and other current events have heightened sensitivity to this subject matter.

Please note that the exhibit itself (which predates the recent election by seven years) does not have any political agenda. Nor does the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or The National WWII Museum. Rather, the exhibition’s goal is to raise questions about the power of propaganda and to encourage people to think critically about the messages they receive. It’s exciting to see that the exhibit is already striking a chord with so many.

We encourage you to visit the exhibition while it’s in residence at the Museum (through June 18) or experience it virtually via the links presented below to form your own opinions. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we’ll share the latest news about the exhibit and surrounding programs, and we hope you’ll Like and Follow us to hear the latest. These channels are also a wonderful forum for discussion and we welcome your engagement! However, in order to ensure that the conversation remains welcoming to all who view our posts—including people of every political stripe as well as school groups, veterans and their families, Museum visitors, and more—we ask that all commenters on these channels remain mindful of the educational intent of these posts, and respectful of the community receiving them.

To that end, please pause before posting to consider the following social media guidelines, modeled on the guidelines used by our friends at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to encourage an engaging, inclusive dialog.

Social media guidelines:

The goal of our social media platforms is to share news of The National WWII Museum and World War II, and secondarily offer a forum for conversation and feedback about our posts. We reserve the right to remove posts and comments that violate these guidelines:

— Comments should be relevant to the post’s topic.

— Courtesy is essential. Comments with vulgarity, threats, or abuse aimed at others are not acceptable.

— Comments are an appropriate place to question or disagree with ideas and opinions, but not make attacks against groups or individuals.

— Comments that share misleading or historically inaccurate information will be deleted.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of the above guidelines, and thank you for your continuing support of The National WWII Museum.

Our social media channels:

Facebook: Facebook.com/WWIIMuseum

Twitter: @WWIIMuseum

Instagram: wwiimuseum

State of Deception links:

Find a listing of all of the public programming scheduled for the exhibition here.

Find the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s main site for the exhibition here.

Find the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s accompanying educational site here.

Watch a live walk-through of State of Deception with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum educator Sonia Booth here.

Stream the January 26 opening reception for the exhibition here.

Watch a Lunchbox Lecture by Assistant Director of Education Gemma Birnbaum about propaganda specifically aimed at the youth of Nazi Germany here.

 

 

 

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Robert M. Citino, PhD, joins Museum as Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian

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Robert M. Citino, PhD, recently joined The National WWII Museum as Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, a job title that only hints at the many roles he’ll play here.

Robert M. Citino.

Robert M. Citino.

Consider: With Museum Senior Director of Research and History Keith Huxen, PhD, Citino will cohost the upcoming 2016 International Conference on World War II—stream it live at ww2conference.com from November 17–19—and will cap the Conference’s prelude Espionage Symposium by conducting a sure-to-be-fascinating conversation with Major General John Singlaub.

With Museum President & CEO Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, he’ll lead an exciting new 2017 Museum tour of Normandy, the Seine River, and Paris.

Dr. Citino was sparked to a lifelong interest in World War II when his father, a veteran of the Pacific war, handed him a copy of Guadalcanal Diary.

“So I sat down and read the book,” said Citino of Richard Tregaskis’s classic account of embedding with US Marines for the early stages of the battle. “From there, I couldn’t read enough books on World War II.”

He went on to write nine books of his own, with a 10th due soon. Citino comes to the Museum after academic postings at the University of North Texas, Eastern Michigan University, Lake Erie College, the US Military Academy at West Point, and the Army War College. He currently chairs the Historical Advisory Subcommittee of the Department of the Army.

Among his areas of specialization as a historian is the German military, a pursuit enhanced by his fluency in the German language, which he began to study as an undergraduate at Ohio State University. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he went on to get advanced degrees at Indiana University. Among his many academic honors, Dr. Citino was voted the No. 1 professor in the nation on the student-populated website RateMyProfessors.com

Dr. Citino is a regular contributor to World War II magazine and other publications, and speaks about the war widely, including as a regular presenter at the International Conference. Among the  roles he’ll fill at the Museum, Dr. Citino will play a key part in the formation of the planned Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

“I think the sky is the limit for what this place can achieve in the future,” he said.

Here’s an edited Q&A with Dr. Citino:

Q: Is there a moment you recall when you started on this path? Was there something you read, or a teacher, or one of your parents, who inspired you? I know your father was in World War II. Was there a eureka moment when you saw your path?

A: I get asked that a lot, because I’m an American who writes books on the German army, which is a kind of unusual career path perhaps. In a broader sense, in terms of World War II, you mentioned my father. My father was Army, and he fought on Guadalcanal. The word sounded so exotic to me as a little kid. What is Guadalcanal? I remember my father purchasing Richard Tregaskis’s great book, Guadalcanal Diary. Tregaskis was, at the time, what we would call an embedded reporter, for lack of a better term, with the Marine Corps on Guadalcanal. And my dad handed me this book called Guadalcanal Diary.

I was a precocious little boy. I don’t know how old I was, 4th or 5th grade maybe, but my dad told me to read this book. So I knuckled down, sat down and read the book. From there, I couldn’t read enough books on World War II. For me, oddly enough, that was my dad’s war—the Pacific war, carriers, aircraft soaring through the Pacific sky. Even today that stuff gets me going. Not in a scholarly way; I just love reading about it. You might say I’m a buff on the Pacific war. I loved reading books on World War II and that lasted all the way through high school. I went off to university—I was born in Cleveland, so I went down to Columbus—and in those days you had to take a foreign language to graduate. As you may know, that’s not necessarily true at a lot of American universities anymore. I don’t think it’s quite this flippant, I may be inventing it in my mind, but I think German was offered at a time that seemed to fit in the rest of my schedule. It wasn’t at 8 in the morning and it wasn’t 7 at night. I took German and I had an aptitude for it. I learned to read it really quickly and to read it a pretty high level. I feel thankful I was given that particular gift.

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I have this WWII love and I have this language, so it was two eureka moments—my dad giving me Guadalcanal Diary and that I could access fairly sophisticated literature in another language. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I read German-language literature—archival sources, memoirs—in order to get some sense of what was going on in what Wellington famously called “the other side of the hill.”

This Museum, of course, is dedicated to the memory of the US Army and US soldier. And I’ve delved pretty deeply into those waters, as well—I’ve taught at West Point, I’ve taught at the US Army War College—I am a US military historian. But my real scholarly bona fides have been putting together that interest—that love, if you will—for studying World War II with some ability to access what the Germans thought they were doing.

When you get right down to it, it’s the most interesting question of all: a medium-sized power stuck in central Europe suddenly thought it was capable of conquering the world, and gave a pretty good impression of it in the first couple of years of the war. We look back and it all seems inevitable today that the three great powers—Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States—would crush Germany. It didn’t look inevitable at the time. And so what the Germans thought they were doing on the battlefield, how they thought they were going to construct victory in World War II: that’s what I study. Not just Hitler, but the entire military establishment; I’m much more interested in general officers down to field-grade officers than I am in Hitler.

So saying that my dad fought in World War II is not a good answer. I was born in 1958. Everybody’s dad on my street on the west side of Cleveland fought in World War II, and most of the kids my age outgrew their love of World War II and went on to other professions and other endeavors, but I never did.

Was your dad one of those guys who didn’t talk about his service?

He certainly never gave me any combat stories. My father on Guadalcanal was a medic, so I can only imagine some of the things my father saw. A medic in a jungle environment is the worst possible combination. You’re undersourced, the climate’s horrible, the insect life, the dirt level. My dad didn’t give me a lot of stories. He met Eleanor Roosevelt. She was apparently on some kind of morale-building tour of the South Pacific, maybe on New Caledonia. I’ve never really looked it up. He had a passing encounter with Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna.

In terms of combat stories, it wasn’t really a rah-rah thing. I think my dad’s experience of World War II was that it was something he had to do. Everybody had to do it, and I think he was pretty happy that World War II was over. I think that is a fairly standard view of lot of WWII veterans. Probably the ones that come to the Museum are a little more interested, or maybe at this late stage in their life are more interested in talking about it now.

When I was growing up, I heard it as a series of vignettes. They were almost never shooting or explosions or combat or dying. I just didn’t hear those stories. He didn’t seem to carry weight. I was the youngest child of five, so it’s tough to psychoanalyze your parents. My dad was a pugnacious guy. I don’t know if he was pugnacious because of his wartime experience or if he was just born that way. We’re southern Italian. Citino. That’s the toe. I always have to ask my students, because many are spatially challenged, does it look like a boot to you? Most people say, yes it does, but there’s always a few people in class who say it doesn’t. But the toe of the boot is Calabria, and one of the first phrases of Calabrian dialog I ever learned means “Calabrians have hard heads.” They’re kind of pugnacious naturally. Whether my dad was carrying the weight of his WWII experience or the weight of 5,000 years of poor peasant ancestors, which is what Calabria still is today, is an open question. He’s passed now. I tell you, when I walked into Road to Tokyo, if my dad were here, I don’t know how he’d relate to the Guadalcanal gallery. I was stunned by it and I have never set foot on Guadalcanal.

About your specialty, was it something that was unstudied in Germany after the war? Were German scholars able to study their own army?

To their credit, Germans have faced the WWII experience in a really direct and full-on way. Perhaps not immediately, but certainly in the years since 1945. It would be difficult to say that the Germans have been living in denial, compared for example to the Japanese, for whom the subject of World War II and the story of exactly what happened is still not a topic for public conversation. The Germans have faced the WWII experience.

By and large, German scholars—not popular authors, but university professors by and large—are not too interested in operations, how and why this campaign took place, what its turning points were, what its pressure points were, how it could’ve gone differently. By and large, German scholars who study war today study atrocity. They study the Holocaust. The Holocaust and World War II become one in the German public and scholarly mind. So if you’re a young scholar and you want to write another book on the Battle of Kursk, that would be a difficult sell in the German scholarly community.

I got my PhD in 1984, and that process I’m describing was already well underway. And so you can fill your bookshelf with books on the German army written by American scholars. The vast majority are written by people who don’t read German, who have no ability to access original sources in the original tongue, so there’s a lot of stuff translated. It’s not like you can’t read any German documents. The US Army interrogated virtually all of the junior top-ranking German generals all the way down sometimes to lieutenant colonels about their wartime experience, and they’re all on file at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Those interrogations, those reports, have been translated. But reading something in its original language and reading something in translation are just two different things.

I think I developed a kind of feel for military German—specific words used in specific ways; military discourse, if you want to put it that way—describing the German experience. I can say I think I was doing something different. My books are scholarly. I’ve written nine and I’m putting the finishing touches on No. 10. I’ve had pretty good luck in the scholarly community. The books I’ve written have been well-received. I’ve also managed, I think, to reach a more popular audience in perhaps a way that not every scholar does. I’m certainly not talking about a Rick Atkinson level of popularity, but within a scholarly community that has some outreach to ordinary-interest Americans, the general reading public. That’s a phrase that excites all publishers. For World War II magazine, I have a regular column that comes out every two months.

With scholarly books, you sell in the hundreds. It gets you promotion to associate professor. It gets you tenure. I’ve been fortunate in doing that. My work on the German army reads a bit different than what people are used to reading. I have a pretty cold eye. Perhaps when I was younger I was enthused about the German operational achievement. I’ve developed a colder eye as I’ve gotten older. It’s always written from the inside, which gives it a slightly different cast.

Maybe one of the most impressive things about your career is your ranking on RateMyProfessors.com. It’s an incredible achievement. One of your students wrote, “I went into this class with zero understanding of the specifics of operational warfare, and I didn’t care about it either. By midterms I was driving everyone nuts explaining the nuts-and-bolts of Israel’s Sinai campaign.”

That was my Arab-Israeli War class.

That’s as good as it gets. What’s the secret?

RateMyProfessors.com in an online service. It’s owned by MTV. That was 2007 when I was given that. It wasn’t an award, it was a rating. And then it was a publicity flurry, so it got into USA Today, something we all dream about.

It’s a self-selected group that goes online. Amongst professors, we often kind of pooh-pooh it. I take that honor for what it was. A lot of my students over the course of many, many years bothered to take time out of their busy schedules and say something nice about me online. So, I was really pleased by it. The ancillary benefit was that an MTV camera truck pulled into my driveway one day at Ypsilanti, Michigan—at the time I won it, I was at Eastern Michigan University—and I don’t think my youngest daughter cared very much about what I did for a living until I was on MTV. They filmed me. They would read me those comments and they would film what I had to say. It was very funny. Those videos, if you Google “Citino” and “MTVU”, should still be online. I even got to play Fender Telecaster. I whipped off “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin, or whatever it was they asked me to play.

citinobook2You asked me what the secret is. Any answer you give to that question is probably going to sound self-serving. I really love the subject. I live and breathe the subject. It’s not something I do when I walk into a classroom and then forget when I walk out of the classroom. And it’s not just World War II. It’s history in general. I’m a historian. I’ve taught 500 students in History of Western Civilization 101 all the way to very detailed classes and graduate seminars. I really do love history. If you can’t get geeked up walking into a class to talk about World War II for 45 minutes, and you’re making pretty good bread doing so …

Maybe it’s the Italian heritage. I talk with my hands. I love talking to people. I think it’s a combination of loving that experience, loving your ability to express yourself, and then being given a topic that just became an obsession of mine from a very, very early age. I think if you read a lot of comments on RateMyProfessors.com, you hear it again and again: “The enthusiasm level of this class.” “The professor really digs this material. He really seems to be into it.” And I am. So maybe that is my secret. I was given a gift in that my talents matched up perfectly with my obsession. You know, I’d also like to be a power forward in the NBA, but that’s not happening. I had to drop that one early for a whole host of reasons.

My question was kind of a bridge to your role here at the Museum.

This is a new position, so it’s a work in progress, as I see it. I think everybody has a lot of good ideas about what the senior historian should be doing here. At the first level, I think one of the things I’m going to be doing is showing the flag, the academic and scholarly flag, for this institution, and reach perhaps some venues that it hasn’t really cracked in its 16 years of existence. I’m thinking of scholarly conferences. I give, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 12 public lectures, maybe more than that, a year, and a larger number of smaller talks, sometimes to local groups. I get invited by all sorts of diverse audiences. I’m flying next week to Washington, DC. General Milley, the chief of staff of the Army, read one of my books and told one of his officers, who got in touch with me. I’m addressing a seminar of very senior leaders in the Pentagon next week. So I have that scholarly side. I’m going to continue to publish books and articles, and every time I do that, there’s going to be The National WWII Museum speaking to various public groups. I have my toe in the intellectual military side, and now the Museum is going to be part of that conversation in the future.

As you know, Dr. Mueller has some pretty big ideas about this Institute for the Study of War and Democracy that we’re going to be getting underway. I don’t think the Museum will ever be a research library in the way that Harvard has a research library. You have to have hundreds of years and millions of books and another building—another 15-story building, in fact. I don’t think it’s going to do that. But it can have a role as a center of scholarship, as a clearinghouse of information, as a call of first resort for a student.

Say a graduate student wants to do something on the Home Front’s industrial mobilization. I or someone in the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy could have information to answer that student or that scholar. If you need a recommendation for a good speaker on whatever topic, the first place you would call would be The National WWII Museum. That’s what I see the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy doing. I think it’s going to require people who love the Museum and love the subject matter but who also have a foot in the scholarly and public community, so you get that synergy. It’s going to part of the Museum, but the displays here are always going to be what attracts people here. Right now, I guess I’m the first investment or the first installation of what the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy is going to be.

Here’s why I think the work is important, if you don’t mind me riffing off of your question. I love the operational side. That’s what I write. That’s what I’m really excited about. But the war is a big story, and in essence the war is about human freedom and human liberation. If World War II had been lost and the other side had won World War II, the globe would be a very different place. I know the Museum is going to have a Liberation Pavilion. If you look at how a place like America, or Western Europe, has changed since 1945 and the end of the war, it’s essentially been a story of individual liberation. It’s kind of messy. We don’t often like it. I know that for as many people who loved the 1960s in America, there was an equal number who hated them. Polling numbers for the Vietnam War, if they ever fell below 50 percent, I’d be surprised. I don’t have those numbers, but support for the war was always very high.

At any rate, people began to do their own thing, and you couldn’t be doing your own thing in a world run by the fascists. The Museum will always be about the operational side. I think that’s the heart and soul of what goes on here. Road to Tokyo, Road to Berlin—man, those are going to be bringing audiences in forever. But the Museum has to represent the broadcast possible meaning of World War II. We should be open to all approaches, and all themes, and I think the sky’s the limit for what this place can achieve in the future.

What kind of a Museum dedicated to World War II, with Higgins boats and aircraft everywhere, also puts up a Canopy of Peace? To me, when I heard that, that was the greatest thing I ever heard. I came here for my interview and saw them laying the pile caps. Unbelievable.

The Peace Canopy is nonfunctional. It doesn’t do anything, but it says something. While we celebrate the memory of the heroes who fought World War II, I don’t think anybody should really celebrate the war. The fact that a war had to be fought to maintain our basic freedoms is a human tragedy. It just shows how little we’ve progressed, not how far we’ve come. And that’s why I think putting up the Canopy of Peace is such a great thing for this Museum. I was really, really impressed when I saw they were doing it.

Story by Dave Walker, communications manager at The National WWII Museum.

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Courage, Strength, and Sacrifice: War in the Land of the Rising Sun

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Road to Tokyo Infographic
 

The National WWII Museum Presents Road to Tokyo: Pacific Theater Galleries

The National WWII Museum’s Richard C. Adkerson & Freeport-McMoRan Foundation Road to Tokyo: Pacific Theater Galleries retraces US involvement in the World War II’s Pacific Theater from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. Through artifacts, oral histories, short films, and recreated environments, the exhibit brings the war to life, telling the story of the Americans who forged a road to Tokyo through courage, ingenuity, and great sacrifice, ending the war at last.

Road to Tokyo: Pacific Theater Galleries, now open at The National WWII Museum, is the latest addition to the Campaigns of Courage pavilion. This $6 million exhibit includes more than 400 artifacts from the battles of the Pacific campaign. Approximately 7.3 million American soldiers supported the fight for freedom. Ultimately, the war that changed the world wounded more than 25 million and cost 15 million lives.

Road to Tokyo

Facing the Rising Sun

On the heels of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy have declared war on the United States. America is headed to war. Facing the Rising Sun takes visitors into this daunting moment in history, introducing the key leaders whose loyalties and ambitions define the moment, and the logistical challenges of a two-front war that will shape the years to come. Made possible through a gift from The Starr Foundation.

Briefing Room: Japanese Onslaught

A recreated bridge of the USS Enterprise places visitors at the center of US strategy, aboard the carrier fleet that would be so critical to the success or failure of Allied efforts in the Pacific. Here, visitors take in an overview of US strategy and meet military leaders from both sides, while newsreels report Japanese victories and brutal treatment of American POWs. The Enterprise is steaming into hostile waters, and the odds for its survival—and the survival of the sailors, pilots, and mechanics on board—look grim indeed. Made possible through a gift from Madlyn and Paul Hilliard.

The New Naval Warfare: First Blood

In this two-part gallery, a ship’s interior presents the quieter side of life aboard ship; “outside” on the ship’s deck, story panels introduce key naval actions, and the Midway theater dives deeper into the Pacific’s most pivotal battle. Actual footage of planes in action on the Enterprise flight deck completes the illusion of being onboard ship as visitors take in themes of the new naval warfare, including submarine fatalities, code-breaking work, and the dramatic speed with which the tides of war can shift. Made possible through a gift from Lt. Commander Alden J. “Doc” Laborde, USN. Additional funding provided by the Strake Foundation, Houston, TX and Grace and Tom Benson.

Guadalcanal: Green Hell

The setting shifts from sea to land at Guadalcanal, the site of World War II’s first major amphibious landing and the first ground assault by US forces. Vividly rendered and viscerally impactful, this experiential gallery features an immersive environmental narrative that draws the visitor into a towering palm jungle, following in the footsteps of American GIs as they battled heat, mosquitoes, disease, dense vegetation, and unfamiliar terrain along with a ferocious enemy in an all-consuming, round-the-clock battle. Made possible through a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker Hayes. Additional funding provided by Devon and Jackson Anderson and Gustaf W. McIlhenny Foundation.

Pacific Theater Challenges: Fighting in the Tropics

In addition to a merciless enemy, US troops in the Pacific Theater were faced with non-existent infrastructure and rampant disease. Under assault to body and mind, Americans needed superior engineering and ingenuity just to survive. This gallery tells the story of those who answered that call: Seabees who built roads and airfields, nurses and medics who treated new diseases with new vaccines, and chaplains who helped lift spirits wearied by the relentlessly brutal nature of the Pacific war. Made possible through a gift from the Estate of Patrick F. Taylor. Additional funding provided by Jones Walker, LLC.

Island Hopping: Footholds Across the Pacific

The “island hopping” strategy targeted key islands to capture and equip with airstrips, bringing B-29 bombers gradually within range of the enemy homeland. In this serpentine gallery, a realistic beachscape recreates a landing site on the island of Tarawa. Other exhibits describe the integrated effort between sea, land, and air, as well as successes in intelligence (Native American code talkers), technology (the long-range B-29 Bomber), and carrier warfare (the Marianas Turkey Shoot) in the fight for control of the skies.

China-Burma-India: The Pacific War’s Second Front

“CBI” held critical strategic importance for US forces: while 11 Japanese army divisions battled US forces on the islands and at sea, a staggering 40 more were tied up in the Sino-Japanese War in China—and the Allies were determined to keep them there. Doing so meant supplying the Chinese with essential materiel, overcoming a maze of logistical challenges. A contoured topographical map helps illustrate the geographical obstacles American troops faced as they defended supply lines, rescued downed pilots, and engaged in covert operations in support of this critical ally.

Philippines: Returning to the Philippines

As an American Commonwealth, the Philippines held special meaning for US forces: this was American territory in enemy hands—and a people to whom the United States had promised independence. Its liberation, which MacArthur saw as a moral imperative, was a strategic necessity: the Philippines were perfectly positioned to control shipments of oil and other supplies. The fight would be costly and vast: it included the war’s largest naval battle, McArthur’s return, kamikaze attacks, and a daring rescue operation by the US Rangers. Manila, a city once known as “the pearl of the Orient,” was decimated by the conflict, resulting in the urban ruins depicted in this immersive gallery.

Death at Japan’s Doorstep: First Assault onto Japanese Soil

Desperate fighting underscored the implacable fervor of the enemy—Japanese soldiers willing to resist to the last man. The enemy also had a logistical advantage: an underground defensive network of caves and tunnels, realistically depicted in this environmental gallery. Exhibits discuss the lifesaving impact of Navajo code talkers; the headline-grabbing losses of General Simon B. Buckner, journalist Ernie Pyle, and nearly 20,000 others; and the extraordinary valor that earned US Marines a total of 27 Medals of Honor in Iwo Jima—more than in any other battle in US history.

Downfall: Endgame Against Japan

This haunting gallery surrounds the visitor with scenes from the aftermath of the atomic bombs, presented on oversize screens and accompanied by a musical soundtrack that is both somber and contemplative—an invitation to reflect on a moment that has spurred debate ever since, and a moment when Japan at last saw the hopelessness of its cause. Visitors pass through to a final room in the gallery to witness the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, which marked, at last, an end to the war that changed the world.

Visitors can learn more by visiting this interactive exhibit at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

 

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Sources:

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/personnel/seabees/seabee1.html
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/macarthur-returns

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