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.
Stars of Stripes
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.
Hal Drake, Reporter
A native of Santa Monica, Calif., Drake served 10 months in the Korean War as an artilleryman, viewing up close the carnage on Heartbreak Ridge. He applied for one of a handful of reporting jobs at Stars and Stripes and joined the Pacific staff in July 1956.
Vernon Grant, Cartoonist
Cartoonist and Army officer Vernon Grant had a unique ability to capture the soldier’s perspective during the Vietnam War.
John Olson, Photographer
Former Stars and Stripes Pacific combat photographer John Olson is known for his haunting images of the Vietnam War, particularly those taken during the bloody Tet Offensive and Battle of Hue in 1968.
