In Honolulu, marching bands, parades, ticker tape, and blowing papers filled the streets. In backyard celebrations, shirtless veterans drank celebratory toasts in the warm sunlight. Veterans and their girlfriends also crowded into and on top of trucks and cars some even riding on fenders , waved flags, and excitedly drove through the city, relishing the moment Americans had hoped for since the attack on Pearl Harbor.
More than , Americans—and an estimated 65 million people worldwide—had died in the conflict. As historian Donald L. When Germany and Italy declared war on the United States days later, America found itself in a global war. On December 7, , Kermit Tyler was called about aircraft approaching Pearl Harbor and told the radar tech not to worry about it. His reply has been debated for the past 80 years.
As the American military desperately tried to protect Pearl Harbor, US anti-aircraft shells fell everywhere—and the Japanese got the blame. Weisgall, Naval Institute Press, A different criticism of victory that you started to hear in the s was: It's always been named Victory Day on the statute books. But as you said earlier, it commemorates a victory over Japan because Japan surrendered.
Germany had already surrendered. Nesi: No. And that's one of the things that they have always been complaints about from Japanese Americans, as well as people sympathetic to the argument that there is a holiday that coincides solely with the victory over Japan in World War II and nothing in May when victory over Germany was won.
The other side of the coin is you have people who support keeping Victory Day in remembrance saying, well, you know, it's that's more about how the war ended than anything else. But this was a good example this year of the tension there, because it's now always observed on the second Monday in August.
This year that actually coincided with the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Because of how the war ended and the misgivings people will always have about the atomic bomb, whether it was the right decision or not, I think there's always a bit of tension there around it.
Rath : I remember about 10 years ago, I met a man who served on the U. Missouri, that was sailed into to the harbor where the surrender articles were signed. Is there is there a push still for keeping this this alive so we don't lose track of history? I think even the feeling toward Victory Day has changed yet again. And, obviously that generation is passing from the scene.
It's getting very far back in history. I think that also makes it more poignant when some veterans still can come [to commemorations]. There was amazing fellow, 98 years old, named Leo Beland. He came this past Monday to the Victory Day commemoration in Pawtucket.
He served in France, landed on Omaha Beach. He was gravely wounded, taken to the hospital. By midsummer of most responsible leaders in Japan realized that the end was near. In June, those favoring a negotiated settlement had come out in the open, and Japan had already dispatched peace feelers through the Soviet Union, a country it feared might also be about to enter the war in spite of a nonaggression treaty between the two nations.
Truman decided to employ the newly tested atomic bomb against Japan in the event of continued Japanese resistance. Despite the changing climate of opinion in Japan, the still-powerful Japanese military blocked negotiations by insisting on fighting a decisive battle to defend the empire's home shores.
Thus the Japanese government announced its intention to ignore the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. On 9 August the Soviet Union entered the war, and a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
The next day Japan sued for peace, and on 15 August Japan's surrender was announced. After finishing an eloquent introductory statement, General MacArthur directed the representatives of Japan to sign the two instruments of surrender, one each for the Allied and Japanese governments. Volcanic activity beneath Iwo Jima, site of a defining World War II battle, is pushing sunken naval vessels to the surface. He describes what life Twenty-nine of the forty-four men who have served as our nation's commander-in-chief have military backgrounds themselves Armistice Day remembrances have been observed worldwide after the coronavirus pandemic wiped out ceremonies last year to mark
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