The war was almost over

VJ (victory over Japan) day was in September 1945. This magazine had an issue date of August 18, 1945. It was all over but final surrender by that time. Everyone knew it was over, finally over. The well known Jeep would be converted for peacetime use. The cover illustrates a family still intact after four years of fear and angst whenever the doorbell would ring. I can only imagine if they were a real family what thoughts would have gone through their minds. How anything, how any dream is now possible to dream.

THE BEGINNING






The day the Japanese became the Japs.

The Japanese war lords were rampaging across Asia, making their intention to control the continent evident. The Americans knew what they were up to, but the country was divided into preparing for war and/or staying out of it and hoping it would go away. In December 1941 the politics of non-intervention still held sway, even though Roosevelt saw the inevitability of it all.

On December 6, Admiral Nogumo, the task force commander of the invading force, opened a top secret message that said 'climb mount niitaka', the coded message that set into motion the attack on December 7, 1941 upon Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian islands.

On December 7 the attack that decimated the American fleet of battle ships commenced at 7:55 in the morning and was completed 110 minutes later. It filled the American people with a hate that continued until August 1945 when President Truman authorized two atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima first, and then Nagasaki, which ended the second world war.

It took arguably decades for the American people to revert to the more polite term of Japanese so deep was their hatred. But the war that started in violence against an unprepared country, ended with violence against the hostile Japanese from a previously unknown weapon. The age of the atom was born.

WWII deaths suffered by the nation of Japan-2,700,000
WWII deaths suffered by the nation of USA-418,500

War is an abomination, and a last resort for civilized peoples.


THE END

Anyone who watched the mini-series BAND OF BROTHERS, will be glad to hear that Spielberg and Tom Hanks are producing another ten part mini-series called THE PACIFIC. I loved the band of brothers series, but what I was surprised about was my wife really liked it also. She said she obtained insight about what they went through, so she and I will be looking forward to the new series. It begins shooting film in August this year, when it will be availible is anybodies guess.

One of the books they will be using as source material will be the book WITH THE OLD BREED by Eugene B. Sledge, a marine from that war. A fighter nicknamed Sledgehammer, who became after the war a 'mild mannered' college professor of many things including the study of birds. Sledgehammer died in 2002, but was interviewed years ago by Studs Terkel for his book THE GOOD WAR. How about these names, Studs and Sledgehammer.



THE AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH EUGENE B. SLEDGE 'SLEDGEHAMMER'

http://dlv1.matrix.msu.edu:8080/ramgen/terkel/a0/a0/terkel-a0a0i8-b.rm



THE AUDIO INTERVIEWS WITH VARIOUS INTERVIEWEES FROM 'THE GOOD WAR'

http://www.studsterkel.org/gwar.php

A review of Studs Terkels book, THE GOOD WAR.

Jan 21, 1999 Dorothy Spangler recommends:The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs TerkelPulitzer Prize-winning book "The Good War" does an excellent job of giving you a very broad view of the war from a human-interest standpoint. Terkel interviews more than 100 people, many of them non-Americans, who experienced the war in very different capacities -- there's the Marine infantryman, Eugene Sledge; Maxene Andrews of the Andrews Sisters; a conscientious objector; a scientist who worked on the bomb; an advisor to FDR; a Japanese man who was a teenager during the war; a Red Army war correspondent, etc. ... Terkel basically lets these people tell their own stories, only occasionally inserting a question here and there. If you are a writer plumbing for story ideas & prospective characters, this book is a great source; it contains a huge array of people, each part succinctly told.