Yesterday the nation observed the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor: December 7, a date that has lived in infamy for seventy-four years now. Flags flew at half-staff, news media featured recollections of elderly survivors, groups with common bonds to WWII gathered to commemorate the day, schools held assemblies, and thousands attended the ceremonies on Oahu. I understand the significance of the day and honor those who lost their lives...

Wake Island was the center of action last week when it anchored a test of the U.S. military’s multi-layered, integrated ballistic missile defense system. The irony is inescapable. Wake Island, where the absence of even the most rudimentary radar in 1941 doomed hundreds of Americans to devastating surprise attacks by undetected Japanese bombers, became the base of operations seven decades later for state-of-the-art missile detection and...

Recently Doug Miller, webmaster at the excellent Pan Am Historical Foundation website, shared a very interesting story with me. Miller was contacted by the son of a Wake Island civilian contractor who had in fact escaped the island aboard the Philippine Clipper following the initial attack by the Japanese on December 8, 1941. In all my research I had never come across any mention of a contractor seizing the opportunity for a ride out that...

Last week President Barak Obama proclaimed September 18, 2015, National POW-MIA Recognition day, reinforcing our national commitment to those defenders who never came home. “We rededicate ourselves to our ironclad commitment to never leaving one of our own behind,” the proclamation reads, “and we pay tribute to those patriots known to God and never forgotten.” The quest to locate, identify, and return the remains of our nation’s war dead...

Plans are underway for a Manhattan Project National Historical Park, a joint effort of the Department of Energy and Department of the Interior to link the three sites that developed the atomic bomb during World War II: Hanford, WA; Los Alamos, NM; and Oak Ridge, TN. The two federal agencies are consulting with local political and tribal leaders and community members as they work toward a December 19, 2015, deadline to formally establish the...