(Editor's Note: This article was originally published on April 9, 2018.) This Thursday, the world recognizes Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For Ephraim Hadjis of Madera, it is a time of horror he will never forget. Hadjis was born in Greece. He thinks it was 1943, making him 75 years...
Chuck Yeager, 1st to Break Sound Barrier, Dies at 97
Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles “Chuck” Yeager, the World War II fighter pilot ace and quintessential test pilot who showed he had the “right stuff” when in 1947 he became the first person to fly faster than sound, has died. He was 97. Yeager died Monday, his wife, Victoria...
On 75th Anniversary of UN, Its Chief Appeals for Peace
UNITED NATIONS — Born out of World War II’s devastation to prevent the scourge of conflict, the United Nations marked its 75th anniversary Monday with an appeal from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to preserve the longest period in modern history without a military confrontation between the world’s most powerful nations. The...
75th Anniversary of End of WWII Is Mostly Virtual Amid Virus
HONOLULU — When Japanese military leaders climbed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, the battleship was packed with U.S. sailors eager to see the end of World War II. On Wednesday, the 75th anniversary of the surrender, some of those same men who served the United...
‘Hiroshima Peace Tree’ Planted in Clovis as Reminder of Atomic Bomb 75 Years Ago
A descendant of a tree that survived the atomic blast from the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Japan has been planted in Clovis to commemorate the devastating wartime event 75 years ago. The "Hiroshima Peace Tree" was grown from a seed harvested from a camphor tree located less than a mile...
World War II Veterans to Join Trump at V-E Day Ceremony
WASHINGTON — Seven World War II veterans, ages 96 to 100, planned to join President Donald Trump at a wreath-laying ceremony Friday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. The veterans had hoped to mark the day in Moscow, but that idea was dashed because of the...
Factory Shutdowns Near WWII Demobilization Levels in US
WASHINGTON — American industry collapsed in March as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy. Manufacturing and overall industrial production posted the biggest declines since the United States demobilized after World War II. The Federal Reserve reported Wednesday that manufacturing output dropped 6.3% last month, led by plunging production...
For McConnell, Virus Carries Echo of His Boyhood Polio
WASHINGTON — Mitch McConnell’s earliest childhood memory is the day he left the polio treatment center at Warm Springs, Georgia, for the last time. He was just a toddler in 1944, when his father was deployed to World War II, his mother relocated the family to her sister’s home in...
Of America and Sacrifice: Is the Country Ready to Step Up?
WASHINGTON — For most Americans alive today, the idea of shared national sacrifice is a collective abstraction, a memory handed down from a grandparent or passed on through a book or movie. Not since World War II, when people carried ration books with stamps that allowed them to purchase meat,...
California Apologizes for Japanese American Internment
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers on Thursday became the first political leaders in the nation's most populous state to apologize for discriminating against Japanese Americans and helping the U.S. government send them to internment camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor during World War II. The Assembly unanimously passed the resolution and...