Author: Reporter

The names of thousands of people held in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II have been digitized and made available for free, genealogy company Ancestry announced in May. The website, known as one of the largest global online resources of family history, is collaborating with the Irei Project, which has been working to memorialize more than 125,000 detainees. It is an ideal partnership as the project’s researchers were already utilizing Ancestry. Out of over 60 billion records Ancestry holds, nearly 350,000 have been found to be pertinent to camp detainees and their families. People will be able...

In a famous “Twilight Zone” episode from the early 1960s, a bloodthirsty World War II commander stationed in the Philippines finds himself transported into the body of a Japanese lieutenant and, to his horror, expected to help kill an entrapped and wounded American platoon. “What you do to those men in the cave, will it shorten the war by a week, by a day, by an hour?” he pleads to a Japanese officer. “How many must die before (we) are satisfied?” For the show’s host and writer, Rod Serling, World War II was a trauma he would re-imagine often....

Waverly Woodson Jr., a medic who was part of the only Black combat unit to take part in the D-Day invasion of France during World War II, is being posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in recognition of the heroism and determination he showed treating troops under heavy enemy fire. The announcement was made on June 3 by Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has been working for years with Woodson’s family for more recognition of his heroism on that fateful day. “This has been a long time coming,” Van Hollen said during an interview. “Woodson’s bravery on...

One of Idris Elba’s grandfathers fought in World War II, but he does not know what he endured. No pictures or stories survive. “That part of my family’s history has been erased somewhat,” said Elba. That helped fuel the actor’s push to narrate and executive produce the four-part National Geographic docuseries “Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color,” which premiered on June 3 ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Episodes will be available later on Disney+ and Hulu. More than 8 million people of color served with the Allies, and the series digs deep to focus on...

When Associated Press correspondent Don Whitehead arrived with other journalists in southern England to cover the Allies’ imminent D-Day invasion of Normandy, a U.S. commander offered them a no-nonsense welcome. “We’ll do everything we can to help you get your stories and to take care of you. If you’re wounded, we’ll put you in a hospital. If you’re killed, we’ll bury you. So don’t worry about anything,” said Major General Clarence R. Heubner of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division. It was early June 1944 — just before the long-anticipated Normandy landings that ultimately liberated France from Nazi occupation...