VJ Day – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

VJ Day in San Francisco (Yank Magazine, 1945)

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.

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VJ-Day in Rome (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A smattering of opinions on the subject of VJ Day (they all seemed to have been in favor of it) were offered up by a collection of Rome-based American soldiers composed of assorted hues and ranks.

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VJ Day in Paris (Yank Magazine, 1945)

The GIs had managed to keep their VJ spirit bottled up through most of the phony rumors, but when the real thing was announced the cork popped with a vengeance. A spontaneous parade, including jeeps and trucks and WACs and GIs and officers and nurses and enlisted me, snaked from the Red Cross Club at Rainbow Corner down to the Place de l’Opera and back…

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VJ-Day in Boston (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Boston’s peace celebration exploded suddenly after the official news of Japanese surrender poured out of the countless radios. All morning and afternoon while many other cities were already wildly celebrating, the Hub, with true New England caution, waited soberly for confirmation.

But the staid attitude was swept away…The most general impulse seemed to be to shout, sing and hug passers-by. For men in uniform the celebration seemed to be more of a kissing fest than anything else…

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VJ Day in Alaska (Yank Magazine, 1945)

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VJ – Day in Berlin (yank Magazine, 1945)

The city that had seen its own brand of fascism and international banditry tumble only a few months before had little energy left for reaction to the fall of Japan. The American Forces network broadcast the first authentic VJ news at 0210, and most of Berlin’s polyglot occupation population, as well as most native Berliners, were asleep.

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VJ-Day in Pasadena (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A quick dispatch filed by YANK MAGAZINE correspondent Larry McManus from the pristine halls of a Pasadena military hospital (previously the Vista del Arroyo Hotel) where total bedlam broke out when the word was announced that the Japanese had cried uncle:

They went wild…they slid down banisters, they chinned themselves on the hospital’s chandeliers. The remark most of them made was, ‘No Pacific trip now!’

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