The Road to VJ Day, 75 Years Later - LIFE

U.S. Marines, with full battle kits, charged ashore on Guadalcanal Island from a landing barge during the early phase of the U.S. offensive in the Solomon Islands in Aug. 1942 during World War II.The following is the introduction to LIFE’s special issueOn the evening of August 14, 1945, the words “OFFICAL—TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER” streamed around the New York Times Tower’s news zipper. President Harry S.

The most devastating war in human history was truly, indisputably over. It was almost impossible to believe. In Europe, where Nazi Germany had surrendered on May 7, troops who had nervously been preparing to take part in a planned invasion of Japan let out a collective sigh of joyous relief. Paul Fussell was a second lieutenant based near Rheims, France. Thirty-six years later the author recalled in an essay for thethat “for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried .

Japan had begun the war in China by attacking Beijing in 1937; with Adolf Hitler’s ravenous aggression in Europe two years later, bloodshed spread like a pandemic across the globe, taking the lives of 65 million people, including more than 400,000 American servicepeople. After years of grinding, seemingly interminable conflict, two U.S. attacks on Japanese cities with a terrifying new weapon hastened the war’s end.

Some 27,000 U.S. military members had been held prisoner by the emperor’s forces. One of those now liberated was Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who had been imprisoned since the Philippines fell in 1942.

The once strapping and now bent American warriors all wondered why they were the lucky ones who could be there. “I had a lot of Marine buddies killed here,” said E. Bruce Heilman, who served as a sergeant . “For 74 years these guys have been dead, and I’ve been having family and marriages and success. You think about that.

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