Oct 10, 2017 | Air Force
Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese-American woman to pilot aircraft for the U.S. military. After taking her first flight in 1932, she fell in love with flying and earned her pilot’s license later that year. Lee moved to China ahead of the Second Sino-Japanese War...
Oct 9, 2017 | Army
America was at war in the summer of 1943 when Ernest Gallego graduated from high school. He tried to enlist but had to wait until he turned 18 that November for the Army Air Force to take him. His ambition was to be a pilot but he failed the depth perception test and...
Oct 8, 2017 | Army
Ruth Buckley enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps after graduating from the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing in 1940. Buckley was first stationed in North Africa, working in the pre-operation tent. She was exposed to the enormity of the war through her...
Oct 5, 2017 | Marines
John Cockburn had been a Marine for nearly eight months on December 7, 1941, when he was stationed on the USS Maryland in Pearl Harbor. His most memorable experience in the war came as part of an artillery company that landed on Iwo Jima on its D-Day, February 19,...
Oct 4, 2017 | Army
Gene Takahashi’s experiences in Korea began shortly after the end of the Second World War. He had enlisted in the Army late in that war, after spending most of it with his family in an Arizona internment camp for Japanese Americans. After the Japanese surrendered,...
