Remembering VJ Day after 73 years

Note: Tuesday, August 14th was just another day at Brookdale. But when one of the residents, a Veteran of WW II stopped by to remind me of another day, 73 years ago, it brought memories of that day coming back in a flood. Wow! Suddenly I wasn’t an old man anymore. I was caught up in a rosy wave of nostalgia.

By the Spring of 1945 the American people were tired. For three and a half years, my entire high school career, the War ground on and on. Little hopes from overseas battles were followed by long periods of disappointment. Rationing of food, gas, and tires conserved products, but it also made people edgy. Every month of the War young men left for the service. In Plainview they usually they left in little groups. The Mayor and a few dignitaries and family members would have a brief ceremony to send them off. The little blue star flags, marking the home of a serviceman, in windows in our town multiplied. Families complained about no mail from their serviceman. Then, whole packets of letters would come all at once. Sometimes — too often, the message was a telegram, ”Oh God, no!” — the dreaded telegram — “We regret to inform you…” Blue stars were replaced with gold stars.

Through all those months of War our one constant, whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, was our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt — a father figure, the man who would see us through the War and lead us into Peace. When he died at Warm Springs, Georgia in April, the nation was devastated. We mourned. The new man, Harry Truman was an unknown quantity, a Vice President, who was rarely seen, rarely consulted in War related matters. People could only speculate — and pray, that he would be able to direct the War to a successful conclusion.

Then, in June, the War was over in Europe. Nazi Germany had surrendered, unconditionally. The celebrations for VE Day (Victory in Europe) were tempered by the realization that the War still waged in the Pacific and who knew how many of our boys would have to die to achieve the victory over Japan. The Japanese had been ferocious in defending their outlying Pacific islands. What would it be like to invade their homeland?

During that summer of 1945 my Mother, sister, Judy, and I were in Kansas City, MO for several weeks. We were staying at one of the hotels in downtown KC, on 10th Street, street from the elegant Muehlebach Hotel. News of the War dominated the daily papers and the radio. (In 1945 there was not yet any TV.) Our boys were having success in the Pacific, but it seemed as if we were going to have to struggle for every little island all the way to Tokyo. The fanaticism of the Japanese soldiers in defending these islands previewed a horrendously bloody battle when we got to the Japanese home islands. Washington authorities warned that casualties for both the Americans and the Japanese in this final push would dwarf anything we had seen up to this time.

In Kansas City, each day the downtown Central Rail Station was gorged with troop trains carrying GIs across the country from assignments in Europe to West Coast ports for embarkation for the coming invasion of Japan. It looked as if the War was going to last for a very long time.

Then on August 6th, 1945, Col. Paul Tibbets and his crew took off from the Pacific Island of Tinian in their B-29 Super Fortress, Enola Gay. Their mission was to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima — the bomb that would change the world. Three days later another American B-29 dropped an even more powerful nuclear bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Then, suddenly, the War was over! Those thousands of American boys on their way to the invasion of Japan were saved from that inevitable slaughter, along with, who knows how many, Japanese lives. Harry Truman had passed his test.

Kansas City (along with the rest of the country) went crazy. It was estimated that a half million people turned out to celebrate in K>C. — and all of them, it seemed, congregated in front of the Muelebach Hotel, on 10th Street, certainly the largest crowd I’ve ever been a part of. It was pandemonium. The streets were clogged with people. Automobile traffic was forced to a standstill. Folks trapped in their cars honked their horns until their batteries were spent. Bottles of liquor were passed from hand to hand, never to return to the original owner. Girls, young and not so young, pretty and not so pretty were kissed and kissed some more, by service men and civilians alike.

Service men in uniform were hoisted onto the shoulders of civilians and impromptu parades were formed — with shouts of “Victory”, and the accompanying “V for Victory, two fingered salute”. Guests housed in the upper floors of the hotels on 10th St. joined the celebration by throwing towels and toilet paper from their windows. Even the throwing of buckets of water from the upper floors did not dampen the spirits of those doused with water. Everywhere shouts of “Victory”, and “It’s Over”, from the crowd that moved slowly, more or less North and South, along 10th Street.

The celebration lasted most of the night. I’m sure that there must have been fights and acts of vandalism that night, but I didn’t see any, and there was very little in the way of complaints from merchants or the police (that were reported in the papers in the days following.)

The day after VJ Day there was a problem for those of us who were staying in downtown hotels. Almost everyone who worked in a restaurant decided to take the day off. The only restaurant that opened in that downtown cluster of hotels was the coffee shop at the Muehlebach Hotel. The waiting line, to get into that place, extended entirely around the block. By the time the three of us got into the restaurant the only items left on the menu were hamburgers (no bun), and coffee (black). We were grateful to get even that.

A few days later General Eisenhower stopped in KC for a short time on his way to his boyhood home at Abilene, and it was arranged for him to give a little speech at a small park near the RR Station. At that moment General Ike, the hero of the campaign in Europe, was probably the most popular man in the world. The speech was impromptu, and his appearance was not widely publicized, yet there was a big crowd — though it paled beside the crowd on VJ night.

His greeting to us, which later became so familiar during his political career, both hands raised high over hear (a two-arm V for Victory salute), and that wonderful grin, which so endeared him to the American people, was greeted with thunderous applause.

In his speech he was generous in his praise for the American GIs, “The finest fighting men in the world”. Then, he attempted to put the events of the last three and a half years, and especially the last three and a half months, into perspective for us. We warned that the task of winning the peace, in some ways, would be every bit as hard as was the winning of the War on the battlefield, and would take a long time, with many obstacles along the way.

He was right, of course, but at that moment, we were still basking in our shining moment — of the military victories over Nazi Germany and Japan. The cold dawn of reality, and decades of dealing with new foes in the “Cold War” — well, that would come later.