Remember VJ Day, Aug. 14-15

VJ Day-Victory over Japan Day, marked the day when the bloody carnage in the war of the Pacific Theater in World War II marked its curtain call. Yes, everyone is familiar with the iconic pictures of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima when Marines raised the American Flag on a Mt. Suribachi after a ruthless and bloody struggle. And all of us are familiar with that wonderful picture of the sailor kissing a beautiful girl in Times Square to mark his joy. But for so many of us, the ending of World War II was very personal.

To rewind the story a bit, look at Japan in its dark and final days. The savagery of the A-bomb that annihilated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well known. John Hershey immortalized the suffering of the people of Hiroshima in his book of the same title. This terrible weapon killed without pity and permanently etched the shadows of Japanese in the walls of the buildings. To this day, the terrible price paid by those souls marks the reminder that we must never have a nuclear war.

But as Sherman said, "All war is hell." The use of the atomic bombs will always remain controversial, but beyond an argument the War in the Pacific was a special kind of hell fought on volcanic islands by boys who would not be legal to buy a beer today.

My first love's father was a veteran of that war. Caught on Corregidor, after its fall, he was a participant in the Bataan Death March and was fortunate to survive to marry and bear a son. So many people did not. It was for him, and so many that Mac Arthur's defiant words were spoken, "I shall return." And return he did.

And then there was the sorrow of the Japanese people. Driven into a war they would not win by mad Fascists, they sacrificed gallantly in defense of their country. The famed Kamikaze attacks were not fueled by a desire for suicide, but rather a desperate need to make every bullet, bomb and plane count in a war where the country was rapidly running out of options.

The Japanese were infused with the spirit of Bushido which made surrender unthinkable. Even after the Emperor had decided to end the war in the wake of two devastating bomb blasts that would extract casualties to cancer and radiation poisoning for years, there was a cabal of highly placed military officials within the palace that insisted on fighting on.

It was only the loss of light in the palace caused by American bombers on their way to one of the last raids that plunged the seat of government into confusion and allowed the emperor, the precious surrender documents and the palace staff to slip away in safety to insure a peaceful end to a war that should have never begun and by them had taken too many lives.

But the surrender did take place in spite of the thwarted wishes of the few. On Aug. 14, 1945, Emperor Hirohito cabled his surrender to President Truman who announced it to the world the next day.

As I said, the end of World War II was personal. It would end my great Aunt Evelyn's short career as a baggage porter in Pennsylvania station along with the careers of so many Rosie the Riveters who energized the industrial might of a nation too needful to cling to chauvinism. The demobilization would send mighty rivers of men home. My father's voyage to America on the maiden voyage of the Queen Elizabeth, star of the Cunard lines, since she had been reconverted from troop carrier back to elegant lady of the sea would take place a few short weeks after the end of hostilities. The men and women of that generation knew--it was good to be home, to make a home and to wash the blood away. VJ Day would never be forgotten by those who lived those days.