Altitude Problems
Madeleine Bradford | Fall 2023She was hailed as a World War II hero, but the primary sources surrounding Elsie MacGill reveal that her life and legacy were more complex and nuanced than the media would acknowledge.
World War IITag Archives: World War II
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Bentley Historical LibraryM Glow Blue
Madeleine Bradford | Fall 2023In 1957, the University of Michigan campus sported a fully functional nuclear reactor, complete with a 55,000-gallon glowing reactor pool. Bentley collections help tell the story of why the reactor was built—and what happened to it.
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Heritage“These Young Americans”
Kim Clarke | August 28, 2023During World War II, the University of Michigan recruited hundreds of Japanese American men and women held in internment camps to work and live on campus. With the University's perception of Japanese people being dictated by racism and war, they were not welcomed when they applied as students.
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Michigan Today‘This line of bullets missed me by 15 feet’
Kurt Anthony Krug | December 7, 2021Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, started quietly for Herbert J. Elfring, BS ’50. The U.S. Army private had just finished breakfast and was scanning the weekly assignments on the bulletin board at Hawaii’s Camp Malakole when he heard bombing coming from the direction of Pearl Harbor.
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HeritageThe Scientist of Peace
James Tobin | November 3, 2021On December 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, J. David Singer turned 16 in Brooklyn, New York. He was hot to be a Navy fighter pilot, but you had to be 17 to sign up. So one year later, on December 7, 1942, he walked into his U.S. Navy recruiting station. That was how the man who would become perhaps the leading proponent of peace studies in American academe — a “90-percent pacifist” who would battle his superiors at Michigan to make his voice heard — went to war.
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Michigan AlumnusHistory Lessons: The Honored Dead
Gregory Lucas-Myers | May 2021The University paid tribute to those who gave their lives in World War II at a special reunion in 1946. In Rackham Auditorium, an audience gathered to participate in a service of “solemn beauty and dignity,” as reported in the July 13 issue of Michigan Alumnus.
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Michigan AlumnusHistory Lessons: Celebration and Solemnity
Gregory Lucas-Myers | October 26, 2021In September 1945, World War II officially came to an end. But news of Japan’s surrender in August prompted celebration at U-M.
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HeritageTom Harmon is Missing
Kim Clarke | October 13, 2021Tom Harmon’s legs were on fire. These were the legs that had carried him and a football into the Michigan end zone time after time, racking up touchdowns and making him the leading scorer in the country. Now, the greatest player in Michigan history was being burned alive from the legs up in the cockpit of his World War II fighter.
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Michigan TodayCan data preserve peace?
James Tobin | January 23, 2020From the time he walked into a U.S. Navy recruiting station at the age of 17 to his work on the Correlates of War Project, J. David Singer was devoted to the intersection of peace studies and war. His prominent work at U-M aimed to accumulate knowledge on military conflict in hopes of ending it.
Correlates of War Project