Incredibly, a handful of American POWs managed to survive the Palawan massacre and with the aid of Filipino guerrillas reached safety.

As the Allied liberation of the Philippines was underway, Japanese commanders acted on orders to annihilate American POWs rather than allow them to assist enemy efforts, and in December 1944 cruelly executed 139 American POWs on Palawan.

Victory in the largest battle of the Pacific War came 82 days after it began, and the costs were high.

On August 28, 1942, the Detroit Times announced that the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion would receive its own official battle song. Newspapers across the country celebrated the battalion, informally called Carlson’s Raiders after the commander Lt. Colonel Evans Fordyce Carlson, for its successful assault against the Japanese on Makin Island in the Pacific.

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

Richard Eugene Fleming not only embodied the concept of a “gentleman and a scholar”- he expanded it to include war hero for his fearlessness in the face of serious risk in the Battle of Midway.

Often overshadowed by the Battle of Midway, the hard-fought carrier naval battle in May 1942 in the waters of the Coral Sea north of Australia marked the end of the phase of Japanese triumphs in the Pacific War and proved to be of strategic significance.

The US military was a nearly unstoppable force during WWII, but the challenges of weather and natural disasters meant that the power of American bombs and bullets could pale in comparison to the power of nature.

Frank Fujita’s American citizenship and Japanese heritage made his time as a prisoner of the Japanese particularly torturous.

The shocking and unexpected death of beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle spawned many efforts to memorialize his storied life.

Thanks to the escape of the “Davao Dozen” from Japanese captivity in April 1943, Americans learned of the Bataan Death March.

Collin Kelly’s story of bravery during the first bombing missions in the Pacific flourished at a time when nearly all war news was grim.