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Navy photo
Bob Feller aboard the USS Alabama in World War II
AP
Clarence Turner, an 87-year-old World War II veteran who parachuted into Japan, parachutes in tandem with an instructor near Waynesville, Ohio, Saturday, May 25, 2013.
Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Tents housing Seabees (members of the U.S. Navy's Construction Battalion), Adak Island during World War II, 1943. Among the first to land on Adak, Attu, Kiska and Amchitka, the Seabees -- carpenters, mechanics, electricians, welders boilerman, and plumbers -- built airfields, roads, barracks and wharves.
J.R. Eyerman—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Unpublished. World War II vet, decathlete and football star-turned-actor Woody Strode, as the gladiator Draba. Todd von Hoffman, author of The Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness, once wrote that Strode was "one of the most ridiculously perfect human specimens to ever walk the Earth." Note the camera peeking in from the lower left.
Navy photo / Petty Officer 2nd Class Martin Carey
Navy divers assigned to Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2, Company 4, and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, stand Oct. 19 with the American flag, and the POW/MIA flag, on the wreckage of a B-17 bomber that was shot down and sank during World War II. The team is deployed alongside JPAC aboard the USNS Grapple (T-ARS 53) as part of a 30-day underwater recovery mission for an unaccounted-for service member who went missing during the crash into the Mediterranean Sea.
George Strock—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Three American soldiers lie half-buried in the sand at Buna Beach on New Guinea. This photo was taken in February 1943, but not published until September, when it became the first image of dead American troops to appear in LIFE during World War II. George Strock's photo was finally OK'd by government censors, in part because FDR feared the public was growing complacent about the war's horrific toll.
Frank Scherschel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Frank Scherschel (1907-1981) was an award-winning staff photographer for LIFE magazine during World War II and well into the 1950s. His younger brother Joe was a LIFE photographer, as well. In addition to the Normandy invasion, Frank Scherschel photographed the war in the Pacific, the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth, the 1956 Democratic National Convention, collective farming in Czechoslovakia, Sir Winston Churchill (many times), art collector Peggy Guggenheim, road racing at Le Mans, baseball, football, boxing, a beard-growing contest in Michigan, and countless other matters, both epic and forgotten. Above: Frank Scherschel in uniform during WWII.
US Army—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Tending to the wounded in the Ardennes. While the Allied forces triumphed, victory came at a heavy price, with nearly 20,000 Americans killed and tens of thousands more wounded, missing, or captured. For American forces, the Bulge was the single bloodiest battle of World War II.
Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Thousands throng the Arc de Triomphe to celebrate the end of World War II in Europe, on May 8, 1945, in this famous Ralph Morse picture. Morse was back in the City of Light less than a year after chronicling Paris' liberation — his certainty that the German surrender there signaled the beginning of the end for the Third Reich rapturously vindicated when Germany surrendered to the Allies in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945.
Andreas Feininger—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
The silhouette of the Statue of Liberty in the World War II era, January 1943.
William Vandivert—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Britons work a "victory garden" in the midst of World War II, 1940. Countless numbers of these gardens sprang up in England, the U.S., Canada and elsewhere -- even Germany -- on private land and in public parks, as civilians pitched in to try and help the war effort by whatever means, no matter how seemingly small, available to them.
Alfred Eisenstaedt—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
1945 | On August 14, 1945 — VJ Day — a jubilant sailor plants a kiss on a nurse in Times Square to celebrate the Allies' long- awaited World War II victory over Japan. Originally published (not as a cover shot, as most people assume today, but as just one in a series of "VJ Day victory celebration" images featured in the middle of the magazine) in the August 27, 1945, issue of LIFE.
Toru Yamanaka / AFP / Getty
Japanese parliament members visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, August 15, 2007, to mark the 62nd anniversary of the end of World War II. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not attend.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
U.S. Senator and World War II veteran Frank Lautenberg
GETTY IMAGES
World War II brought Europe and the U.S. together
Scene at German surrender in World War II, Reims, France, May 7, 1945.
Scene at German surrender in World War II, Reims, France, May 7, 1945.
Scene at German surrender in World War II, Reims, France, May 7, 1945.
Scene at German surrender in World War II, Reims, France, May 7, 1945.
US Navy
The German battleship Tirpitz, as illustrated by the U.S. Navy's intelligence staff during World War II.
A group of women at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony during World War II, 1945.
A group of women at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony during World War II, 1945.
GETTY IMAGES
If you didn't check it out during World War II, you have no excuse.
US Army / Time Life Pictures / Getty Images
Japanese commander Tomoyuki Yamashita surrenders to U.S. troops in the Philippines at the end of World War II.
Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Kiska Island, Aleutian Campaign, World War II, 1943.
wiki
P-38s roll down Lockheed's Burbank, Calif., production line in World War II.
AP
A 1999 file photo of the self-proclaimed sovereign principality of Sealand, built aboard a World War II artillery platform about seven miles off the coast of Essex, England.
Walter Sanders—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Reading the comics section of the Detroit Times on a typical Sunday during World War II.
Alex Brandon / AP
A man walks through the snow at the National World War II Memorial with the Washington Monument barely seen through the blowing snow in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 19.
JOOWAN LEE/AP
Design for the proposed World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.
Mikhail Klimentyev / RIA-Novosti / AP
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, stand with World War II veterans during the annual Victory Day parade on Moscow's Red Square.
FILE / AP
Jo Stafford, a singer who was a favorite of GIs during World War II and whose recordings made the pop music charts dozens of times in the 1950s.
CHARLIE HOPKINSON
BLITZED: Waters' new novel takes readers back to World War II
Sharon Perry / Reuters
FAMILY TREASURES: The Israel Museum displays over 100 artworks stolen in World War II
AP
Children learn English songs at a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II
MYKHAYLO MARKIV/AFP/Getty
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, front right, with cadets, carries a coffin with remains of World War II prisoners during a reburial ceremony on Memory Field, not far from the western Ukrainian city of Slavuta
Everett
The director on location in Tuscany for "Miracle at St. Anna," his film about black soldiers in World War II
Chung Sung-Jun / Getty Images
South Korean hold placards carrying the images of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto during a rally on May 23, 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. Recent remarks by the mayor of Osaka on the historic perception of 'comfort women', conscripted by Japanese military brothels during World War II, have recieved intense criticism from neigbouring countries and the U.S.
REUTERS/Kyodo
Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe poses in a jet trainer emblazoned with “731” -- the same number as an infamous Imperial Army unit from World War II.
Not published in LIFE. Desert scene, World War II, Tunisia, 1943.
Not published in LIFE. Desert scene, World War II, Tunisia, 1943.
Not published in LIFE. American artillery, World War II, Tunisia, 1943.
Not published in LIFE. American artillery, World War II, Tunisia, 1943.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber crew member during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber crew member during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber and crew during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. Working on a bomber’s ball-turret during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. Working on a bomber's ball-turret during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. Loading bombs on an American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. Loading bombs on an American bomber during World War II, England, 1942.
Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not originally published in LIFE. Attu Island, Aleutian Campaign, World War II, 1943.
AP / Itsuo Inouye
Toyo Ishii, a former military nurse, speaks about Unit 731, Japan's germ and biological warfare outfit during World War II, at her home in Tokyo
Junji Kurokawa / AP
Shizue Ikehata, 101, of Omiya near Tokyo, holding a picture of her late husband Masao who died in World War II
Yevgeny Khaldei
Yevgeny Khaldei's famous photo of a soldier raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin, toward the end of World War II.
U.S. Latino and Latina WWII Oral History Project / AP
A group of Latino American soldiers pose for a group portrait after landing on Cebu Island, Philippines, near the end of World War II.
UWE MEINHOLD / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
Workers raise the cupola and gilded cross on Dresden's Church of Our Lady 59 years after it was destroyed in the Allied firebombing of World War II
Not published in LIFE. American bomber crew member with stuffed good-luck charm during World War II, England, 1942.
Not published in LIFE. American bomber crew member with stuffed good-luck charm during World War II, England, 1942.
Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not originally published in LIFE. Attu Island, Aleutian Campaign, World War II, 1943.
Dmitri Kessel—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not originally published in LIFE. Street sign in the town of Unalaska during World War II, Aleutian Islands Campaign, Alaska, 1943.
Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Another Margaret Bourke-White photograph of this scene -- of inmates digging a drainage ditch in Greenville, SC -- appeared in the Sept. 17, 1956 issue of LIFE. "The white girl," read the caption to the original photo, "lives in a nearby house [and] came out to watch when she saw the gang start work." One of the 20th century's most acclaimed photojournalists, Bourke-White was one of LIFE first four staff photographers. She shot the cover story for the November 1936 inaugural issue of the magazine; was America's first accredited woman photographer in World War II; was the first woman authorized to fly on a combat mission in that war; was one of the first photographers to document the Nazi death camps in the spring of 1945; and was the last person to interview Gandhi, six hours before he was assassinated in January 1948.An alternate view of this photo of inmates digging a drainage ditch appeared in LIFE magazine. "The white girl," the caption read, "lives in a nearby house [and] came out to watch when she saw the gang start work."
Photo Essays
The Ruins of Normandy: Unpublished Color Photos From France, 1944
The ruins left behind after warfare speak a language of their own. And, even more strikingly, no matter where the conflict has taken place — whether it’s in...
Hatred on the Home Front: The Detroit Race Riots, June 1943
The popular notion that the American home front during World War II was a place of unclouded unity, sacrifice and common purpose is — like most overly simplified...
