Bob Collins
Not surprisingly, PBS’ documentary, “The Vietnam War” is getting more and more difficult to watch from episode to episode. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
War
We’re three episodes in to Ken Burns’ outstanding series, The Vietnam War, and among the more compelling debates to come from its airing is the question of whether there really is no such thing as a ‘single truth’ in war. Read more →
For people like me who grew up hating everything about the Vietnam War, the politicians who gave it to us, the hard hats who insisted ‘America, love it or leave it,’ the opening of Ken Burns long-awaited documentary, The Vietnam War, came out hard. Read more →
Ken Burns’ ‘The War’ series provided a sentimental, if painful, look at World War II. There’s no way his latest epic can. It’s still too raw. America is still coming to grips with the discovery that our leaders are often con men. And sometimes, 50,000 young people die because of it. Read more →
Marvin Strombo is 93 now. It’s been 73 years since he took a Japanese flag from a dead soldier on Saipan. On Friday, Marvin landed in Tokyo, the first step to bring the flag home. There are, apparently, a lot of old men still out there having second thoughts about their souvenirs of war.
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It’s impossible to imagine that there’s anyone walking the planet who doesn’t realize what will happen in a nuclear war, and for decades that fact alone has been enough to prevent a holocaust that destroys the blue dot. And yet, here we are, comforted only by the thought that two of them can’t possibly be insane enough to try. Read more →
Supporting our troops and honoring our veterans does not mean telling them what chemical experiments were conducted on them as far as the U.S. House of Representatives is concerned.
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It’s not that I don’t honor the unimaginable courage — and acknowledge the unimaginable fear — of those who stormed the beaches, it’s just the feeling that it’s far easier for the nation to recognize the events of World War II than it is to acknowledge Vietnam. Read more →
It’s too late to know now how many of the last men of Luverne wanted to be the last one living.
When their club started in 2010, they bought a bottle of hooch and 24 mugs. When there was only one left, he’d toast the other 23, all veterans of World War II.
Only the aged can reveal the loneliness of losing all of your friends, and nobody really likes drinking alone anyway.
So the three remaining vets aren’t going to wait.
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For more than 70 years, the family of 2nd Lt. Alexander ‘Sandy’ Nininger Jr., who died when he charged alone into a group of Japanese invaders near Abucay, Bataan in 1942, have been trying to get him home.
It may take a Minnesota native to do it. Read more →
Wisconsin’s Bond brothers — all nine of them — signed up to fight in World War II. They all survived the war, returning to work in factories and on the railroad. And now, they’re all gone. Read more →
Glaydon Iverson was never identified — most of the 400 who were killed on his ship weren’t — until a few months ago, though it was clear he was likely dead, the first Freeborn County casualty of World War II.
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Gary Marquardt, of Excelsior, walks through the local cemetery. When he finds a Vietnam vet, he stops and blows Taps. Then he leaves a penny on a headstone.
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The Associated Press today released an incredible investigation into itself, responding to a historian’s claim last year that the news organization ‘ceded influence over the production of its news pictures to Nazi propagandists.’
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The American news media doesn’t cover war on the front line much anymore. But when it did, Anne Morrissy Merick fought her own country for the right to be there. Read more →