By Suzanne Stamatov The Japanese siege on the American forces in the Philippines transpired over a four-month period. Japan began aerial attacks on the Philippines on the same day it attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (8 December in the Philippines as it is across the International Date Line). Ordered…
By Suzanne Stamatov As General Krueger pursued the fleeing enemy to the north, one of his officers approached him and informed him that the Cabanatuan prison stood in his path. That officer had spoken to an American guerilla leader named Robert Lapham. Lapham said that, once the Japanese believed…
By Michael Ann Sullivan Sandia National Laboratory was originally the engineering division (called Z-division) of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the central laboratory of the top-secret Manhattan Project during WWII. The Manhattan Project scientists developed an atomic bomb which was deployed against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on…
By Michael Ann Sullivan On 16 July 1945 the U.S. Army and civilian scientists attached to the Manhattan Engineering District detonated the first atomic device in the New Mexico desert at Trinity Site, a remote location sixty miles northwest of Alamogordo. At 5:30 am in the morning a brilliant…
By Suzanne Stamatov The U.S. government operated two internment camps in New Mexico. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, and the roundup of Japanese-Americans began in California, the Justice Department named New Mexico as a site for internment camps. Between March 1942 and April 1946, the…
4 22 1904 By Michael Ann Sullivan Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born 22 April 1904 to Julius and Ella Oppenhiemer. Julius, a German-Jewish immigrant, came to America from Germany in 1888. His father started with nothing and worked hard to become a successful cloth importer. His mother Ella came…
By Linda Aldrich In 1942, when the WWII Manhattan Project took over the Los Alamos Ranch School and adjoining ranches and homesteads on the Pajarito Plateau, the Corps of Engineers was responsible for setting up and operating the town of Los Alamos and the Project facilities. The University of…
“Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” –Major Howard Conner, 4th Marine Division Association Reunion, Chicago 1969 By Suzanne Stamatov When armies and marines engage in combat, they need a communications system to remain in contact with their fellow troops and their…
By David Joshua Anderson The history of Los Alamos is a fascinating chapter in New Mexico history. Los Alamos is one of the youngest counties in the state and has had a rich and varied past ranging from Indian tribes around 1100, Spanish explorers, ranchers, homesteaders, and one of…
Japanese, Asian, Nisei, POWs, internment camps, World War II Claude Stephenson, State Folklorist, Department of Cultural Affairs Rick Hendricks, State Historian, State Records Center and Archives Internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II is now seen as a national embarrassment, however, no one interned at the Santa Fe…
