Long Overdue: The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion Recognized with the Congressional Gold Medal

Robert Brown was an educator, civil rights activist, community leader, elected official, and a WWII combat veteran.

Training in twin engine B-25 “Mitchell” bombers, the 477th never actually saw combat overseas, but fought another battle here in the United States. Formed as an all-Black unit, it became famous not for its combat record, but for its fight against the military version of “separate but equal.”

At the outset of the Aleutian Islands campaign, 800 native Unangan were removed and interned in squalid camps from 1942 through 1945.

Los Alamos and other Manhattan Project Sites developed across the US in 1942 and 1943.

When President Franklin Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in January 1944, he tasked this new government agency with rescuing and providing relief for Jews and other groups facing Nazi persecution and murder in Europe. By that time, more than five million European Jews had already been murdered. The War Refugee Board staff used creativity and the near-certainty of Allied victory to aid hundreds of thousands of people in the final seventeen months of World War II.

While Rosie the Riveter manned the wartime industries, the Annie Oakleys patrolled prisons as the first female guards.

Naval Reserve officer Grace Hopper was a pioneer of computing during World War II, laying the foundation for today’s technology.