Top of page

Category: World War II

A medium close up photo of several lines of poetry set onto a chest-high wall.

Veterans Day: Remembering World War I

Posted by: Neely Tucker

"A Soldier's Journey," a new bronze statue, was recently unveiled at the World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Pershing Park. An excerpt from "The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak," a poem by former Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, adorns another wall at the park. Both mark a fitting tribute to the nation's fallen soldiers this Memorial Day.

Handwritten title page of an essay written on lined notebook paper.

Treasures Gallery: Surviving Hiroshima

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Haruo Shimizu, a Japanese schoolteacher, survived the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. One year later, he wrote down his memories of that horrific day for a friendly U.S. soldier stationed in Japan, who brought it home after his deployment. Today, it is one of the items featured in the new Treasures of the Library gallery.

Program cover shows two hands holding a small globe, which is filled by a red atomic mushroom cloud

“Dr. Atomic,” The Oppenheimer Opera

Posted by: Neely Tucker

When the San Francisco Opera debuted “Doctor Atomic,” an opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams based on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the test of the first atomic bomb, its first lines contained a scientific error. Marvin L. Cohen, president of the American Physical Society, was in the audience and caught it immediately. Here's how he and Adams changed it.