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.

Jack Glass describes his experiences aboard the USS Enterprise (CV-6) during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942.

It was only in the wake of Executive Order 8802, and a presidential directive issued directly to the Corps, that the Marines began setting up a new segregated training facility for African American recruits at Montford Point, North Carolina. One of the first recruits was Edgar Cole.

Frank Buschmeier discusses his capture and subsequent imprisonment after his B-17 was shot down during a mission to Merseberg, Germany in July 1944.

Rod Serling, the creative genius behind The Twilight Zone and other memorable film and television productions, was both haunted and inspired by his experiences as a US Army paratrooper during World War II.

In the bloodiest  battle in Marine Corps history, 27 Marines and sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for action on Iwo Jima. No other campaign surpassed that number.

James “Horse Collar” Smith describes his experiences during the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal in September 1942.

Alberta Hunter was already a seasoned performer when she and the “Rhythm Rascals” traveled to the “forgotten” China-Burma-India (CBI) theater as the first African American entertainers to visit there, and she later sang for Eisenhower himself. Her service in World War II, however, is but one of many extraordinary stories of this highly regarded woman’s life.

During a trip to Alexandria, Louisiana in 1970, Maurice P. "Pete" Bowler returned to Camp Claiborne to visit the base where he had trained with the 103rd Infantry Division in 1942.

Walter Jacobs talks about encountering a wounded Japanese soldier during the fighting on Ie Shima and how he believes that his sparing of an enemy soldier’s life resulted in him surviving the fighting there and later on Okinawa.

Ed Bearss, a US Marine who was severely wounded in combat in 1944 and went on to become a great Civil War historian, passed away on September 15, 2020, at the age of 97. He stood for the finest values and traditions of the US Marine Corps.

Florence Reynolds describes a negative encounter she had with an Army Air Forces maintenance officer when she questioned the condition of an aircraft she was ordered to fly.