"...There were crowds in Piccadilly Circus and Leicester and Trafalgar Squares. Quite a few people got rid of their waste paper by throwing it out the windows, a sign that the need for saving such things for the war effort was just about over."
Even though the war had ended some four months earlier, the American people were still receiving envelopes from the Department of War about the deaths and maimings of their sons when this article appeared.
These columns reported that peacetime took some getting used to, but day by day, the nation was slowly swinging into its post-war stride.
What if the Atomic Bomb had never been invented? When would the war have ended?
Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here. When World War Two finally reached it's end, the small, quiet and usually well-behaved city of Washington, D.C. gave a big sigh of relief, forgot about "Robert's Rules of Order" for the day and shrieked with joy:
"One officer, standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, waved a fifth of Rye at arms length, repeatedly inviting passers-by to "have a drink on the European Theater of Operations."
Click here if you would like to read an article about 1940s fabric rationing and the home front fashions.
In a city prone to revelry, New Orleans had prematurely celebrated the end of World War Two on three previous occasions; not willing to go down that path a fourth time, the residents were in a state of disbelief when the news of the Japanese surrender began to circulate all over again. However, when it was understood that this time the rumor proved true everyone seemed grateful for the rehearsal time. "Some of the highlights: Firecrackers, hoarded in Chinatown for eight years, rattled like machine guns... Servicemen and civilians played tug-of-war with fire hoses... Market Street, the wide bar-lined thoroughfare that has long been the center of interest for visiting GIs and sailors, was littered with the wreckage of smashed War Bond booths ... A plump redhead danced naked on the base of the city's Native Sons monument after servicemen had torn her clothes off. A sailor lent the woman a coat, and the pair disappeared." *Watch a Film Clip Depicting V-J Day in San Francisco* |
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