Even while held as POWs by the Germans in the POW camp Stalag Luft IV, American servicemen exercised their civic duty and made their voices heard, at least to each other, when they held a straw vote for the 1944 presidential election.

Mexican American US Army medic Corporal Anthony Acevedo suffered unimaginable horrors as a POW of the Germans. He survived Stalag IXB and then the Berga slave labor camp as well as the trauma and stigma of having been a prisoner of war.

International Translation Day is an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of language professionals and their role in bringing about peace. Roughly 6,000 Japanese Americans served as translators and interpreters with the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) in the Pacific, using the language of their parents and grandparents to shorten the war and save lives.

Vernon Baker was one of seven African Americans to receive the Medal of Honor for service in World War II, an award delayed decades by bias and discrimination. In both war and peace, Baker served as an inspirational leader for the soldiers that served under his command and for generations to come.

International Peace Day focuses on building a peaceful and prosperous future. The exhibition Remembered Light spotlights the McDonald Peace Windows and how one chaplain’s remembrances of destruction were woven into new, imaginative works of art out of the ruins and devastation of war.

At the end of the war, more than 12,000 American POWs were scattered in camps across the Pacific in desperate shape. From August 30-September 20, 1945, in Operation Swift Mercy, B-17s and B-29s flew 1,000 missions and dropped 4,500 tons of supplies to American troops no longer prisoner, but still trapped.

The USS Benevolence was one of three hospital ships in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. The ship served as a haven and first stop in rehabilitation for thousands of Allied POWs.

From January 1943 to June 1945, writer Kurt Vonnegut served in the US Army. His experiences with the 106th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge and then later as a prisoner of war in Dresden imprinted his life and provided traumatic (and sometimes comedic) material for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five and other works.

In advance of a discussion on Slaughterhouse-Five, Assistant Director for Curatorial Services Kimberly Guise posed some questions to Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library Curator Chris Lafave.

Dr. Rothacker Smith looked death in the eye several times during World War II. In these moments during his wartime service, during captivity as a German POW and beyond, his faith carried him through and indeed directed much of his life, as did the proud tradition of the Buffalo Soldier which he upheld.