Posted on 08/14/2010 10:22:09 AM PDT by mdittmar
August 1945 marked the end of World War II fighting in the Pacific Theater. Now, 65 years later, while historians still debate the ethics of the atomic bombs, four Hunterdon County veterans only remember how relieved they were not to be sent to Japan.
They told their stories during a gathering of the Gem Vac Veterans, an informal group that meets every Tuesday at the Glen Gardner vacuum cleaner business.
Bill Langston, now of Clinton Township, joined the Marines on Feb. 19, 1943. He was sent to Maui, Hawaii for 14 months and then to Midway for nine months, where he was a loader on a 90-mm aircraft gun.
In April 1945, Langston returned to the United States and reported to Camp Pendleton. He was assigned to a tank outfit and sent into the California desert.
“We were training for the landing in Japan,” he said. But Langston was never sent back to the Pacific.
When the atomic bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, he knew the fighting was over.
“A lot of people say that dropping the atomic bomb was a crime, but it saved a lot of American lives. There would have been a lot more dead people,” he said. “We’re thankful they dropped that bomb, because we would have been shipped to Japan.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
It saved Japanese lives too, averting the bloodbath that would have occurred had we invaded the islands.
It was the summer between the 1st and 2nd grade for me. Our school traditionally kept classes together with the same teacher for those grades. We had spent all of 1st grade learning patriotic songs and we sang them in a special program for our parents at the beginning of 2nd grade. I suspected that the government had arranged to end the war just at that time so that we’d all still be with the same teacher for the program, because if the war had gone on any longer the new teacher (3rd grade) wouldn’t know our songs and it would have spoiled the program.
Funny how little kids think.
After finishing up in Germany, I was in Austria occupation wondering if we would head for the Pacific. VJ day meant we could go home. It was over, thank God.
I was just a twinkle in my Dads eye in 1945,He was an Aviation Machinists Mate stationed on a ship in the Pacific.
You kid, you!
The best part of the Japanese surrender is that all my uncles in the Navy came home. But, my uncles in the Army went to Japan to help with the Occupation. My father had suffered polio at age 2, so he was 4F.
All the influx of people moving in and out of our town and the aftermath of the Depression made housing hard to get. (We had an Army airbase located in our town.) We had sold our house in 1943 and moved in ‘briefly’ with my grandmother. Housing was very tight, and ‘briefly’ extended to 6 years until we could finally find another house in 1949. We were able to assume a GI Loan from a man divorcing his wife who wanted out of his house obligation.
My 97 year old mother lives there still.
Check out this VJ Day footage. pretty awesome!
http://vimeo.com/5645171
Had an uncle in the Navy too,Uncle Billy.
A couple of years ago, I found a wet piece of paper that had blown into a bush on the edge of the parking lot at our manufacturing plant. I picked it off the bush and carefully spread it out to read.
It was a letter from George to Joe written in July 1945. George was in Boot Camp in WI just about ready to finish up. He was writing to his old school buddy, Joe, who was a year, or so, younger and still in high school. Apparently they’d been on the track team together. There was nothing earthshaking in the letter, except that George was anxious to get out of Boot Camp and on with his duties in the Army. He discussed track, high school, and girls a little bit.
What was remarkable about the letter was:
1) Somebody saved it for more than 60 years. Why was it so important for Joe to have saved it?
2) I found it in my tree in a town 15 miles from where both Joe and George went to high school, although I know that kids did travel that far to school back in the 1940s. How did the letter get into my bush? Did somebody die and someone else was cleaning out his papers? Did Joe move to a nursing home? Did it blow off the garbage truck?
3) The letter was written in ink in perfect penmanship and perfect English with perfect punctuation and syntax. Any English teacher would have been proud to claim the writer as one of her students.
I feel like I’m supposed to do something with this letter because, through serendipity, I found it in a bush when I was getting in my car to go to lunch. What? Should it go to the American Legion of the town where the letter was found, or the one mentioned in the letter? Do you think someone could find Joe and George in the 1944 Yearbook of Whitefish Bay on the track team?
I wonder what they did the rest of their lives?
And ball point pens certainly ruined everyone’s penmanship.
See #8
Computers are far worse for penmanship !!
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won....
As I look back upon the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that he has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.
A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.
Men since the beginning of time have sought peace.... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural development of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
General Douglas MacArthur
Radio Address after the Japanese surrender, to a world audience.
September 2, 1945
Absolutely!
Very interesting. If the letters had last names your congress critter might be able to check with the VA to see what their insurance status is. Your idea of the Legion or the VFW might strike a note with someone in those groups. Thanks for posting.
Unfortunately, there was no envelope and no last names. Just a single sheet of thin, “air mail type” paper, written on both sides.
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