A Date That is not Remembered

Today is August 15.

On August 15, 1945, imperial Japan, on order of its emperor, capitulated in its war against the allied nations.

The war, intended by Japan to expand its influence throughout the Pacific with the so-called “Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere“, began with the invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s. The aggressor went head-to-head with China, a country divided and subdivided by warlords, generalissimos and just plain bandits. The fighting was sub-human, as evidenced by the Rape of Nanking, where the soldiers of Emperor Hirohito slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians.

And then the attack on Pearl Harbor came on December 7, a date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy”.

More lands fell: the Philippines, Malaysia, islands across the vast Pacific Ocean. Australia was threatened. As the Imperial troops came, civilization went out the window. The Bataan Death March, prison camps and unmarked prison ships that were often sunk by our own planes, the construction by thousands of prisoners of war of the infamous railroad made famous later by the movie “Bridge on the River Kwai”, only demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man.

The Japanese themselves were not immune. The pecking order in their armed forces dictated that the lowliest soldier would be kicked and beaten as he was ordered into combat if the officer saw fit. The infamous “Banzai” charges throughout the jungles of the islands in the southern Pacific were not only an offensive tactic but a requirement of the code that required death at the hands of the enemy in preference to surrender.

But Japan gave up, announcing her capitulation on August 15, a date that, to the best of my searching, was not mentioned in newspapers or recognized on radio or television.

But some remembered.

There were fifty two United States Navy submarines that went out and have never returned, and are listed on memorials as on “eternal patrol”. Families of the crew members know only that they are still missing.

Visitors to Honolulu often visit the USS Arizona Memorial. Many do not realize that the structure where they stand straddles a sunken ship that entombs hundreds of sailors. Ashes of Arizona survivors can, by request of the families or the sailor, be taken down by divers and placed with the remains of their shipmates.

Many believe that the formal surrender later in September in Tokyo Harbor should have taken place on the USS Enterprise, a ship that first stood into harm’s way just after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and carried Admiral Bill Halsey’s flag throughout major battles as our Marines island-hopped from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The USS Missouri won the honor because it was Admiral Nimitz’s flagship, or maybe because it was named after President Harry Truman’s home state or because his daughter Margaret christened it.

The grandfather of Senator John S. McCain was one of Admiral Halsey’s senior officers. He was worn down but he was ordered to stay for the surrender. The next day he flew home to California. His wife had a party for him and invited their friends; Admiral McCain excused himself during the festivities and went into another room and died of a heart attack.

I recall a friend that served in the USS Saufley, a destroyer, in sixteen battles. E. J. was from Chattahoochee, and he stayed with the ship through all of the battles, surviving to write a best selling book about this fine ship. The book is “Tin Can Man” and it is still in print.

When I was in business with my father I would attend dealers’ meetings, and on occasion we would gather in a restaurant or lounge at the end of the day. One sallow and emaciated man would, after a couple of drinks, start weeping. I found that he was one of the survivors of the Bataan Death March and of the prisoner of war camps. He lost his dealership in a poker game.

Grady, a gentleman in his nineties, and I occasionally have coffee together in Chattahoochee, and we talk about our childhood in that small town, and about the rivers. Last week he mentioned Eisenstadt’s photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square when the announcement of victory came. We laughed about that, and then he said: “I had been in combat in Europe and I was waiting to be shipped to the Pacific for the final invasion of Japan”. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan’s homeland probably saved his life, and that of a million or so fellow servicemen, and uncounted Japanese who were set to defend their shores to the death.

I did not find any mention of this date in the newspapers or on television, but I did find a print in Walmart of the sailor kissing the nurse. I looked at it and then walked on. But now I believe I will go back and purchase a copy.

And take it to my friend Grady.