This website was created and maintained from May 2020 to May 2021 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Stars and Stripes operations in the Pacific.
It will no longer be updated, but we encourage you to explore the site and view content we felt best illustrated Stars and Stripes' continued support of the Pacific theater since 1945.
Our History
Letter from the Publisher
When United States forces responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and when the U.S. celebrated V-J day in August 1945, it was not envisioned how the world would change, and that the U.S. and others would be military partners in the Pacific today.
A look back at Stars and Stripes' 75 years in the Pacific
TOKYO – For 75 years Stars and Stripes reporters across the Pacific have covered wars, revolutions, natural disasters and the political changes tha
The cost of newsgathering
Pacific Stars and Stripes has lost two reporters in two wars — one a 37-year old veteran, the other a youngster only 24. I knew one only slightly and the other not at all.
Looking back on the career of Hal Drake
It still seems surreal, that we at Stars and Stripes Pacific must adjust to a world without longtime newsroom character and icon, Harold A. Drake, who died Sunday in Australia after a lengthy battle with stomach cancer.
Muroi Norio, Librarian
Preserving Pacific history: Stripes librarian spent 40 years among the archives
After wartime terror and defeat, a life rebuilt around America
Toshi Tokunaga Cooper and her coworkers listened on the radio as Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender to the Allies on Aug. 15, 1945.
Shelley Smith, Reporter
Shelly Smith, now a correspondent for ESPN’s SportsCenter, was hired by Stars and Stripes in late winter 1982, arriving in Tokyo to become the first full-time civilian woman staffer on the previously all-male sports desk.
